Truth be told, auto-renewal without prior consent for anything needs to be universally illegal.
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Except it informs you that your subscription is auto renewed when you sign up for it.
For example mine says
“USD 41.97
Billed every 3 month period. Cancel online anytime.”
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I and a lot of people don’t want to use the subscription at all regardless of if it lets you know or not.
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Great but that has nothing to do with what I was responding to…
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I dont think you understand the basic premise of a subscription.
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Ok.
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This really doesn’t sit well, just a blatant money gouging tactic. Why should we magically be forced to commit to 2 months at a time if we chose not to go the route of an active sub? Literally for the last 17 years this was the norm, now all of a sudden its changing for “reasons”.
They are just trying to push players towards sub because they know any reoccurring subscription that automatically charges you, outside of manually cancelling will result in potential increased revenue when a player accidently forgets to cancel their subscription which is just a statistical reality.
Not to mention the higher 90, 180 day game time options were purchasable at discounted rates for those willing to commit for longer periods of time.
Its so petty that they would reach so hard for such a monetary optimization strategy.
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Sure let me sub to this magazine for $5 then they boost it to $500 next month. All good.
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It informs you at the time of subscribing that you are signing up for a recurring subscription.
I honestly can’t think of a thing that auto-renews, outside of shady telemarketers and gym memberships, without fully informing the consumer.
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Or, here’s a wild idea: customer accountability.
If you don’t want to be auto-renewed, cancel your sub immediately after purchasing it. It requires literally no effort.
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Informing is not tantamount to obtaining consent though. It’s sort of an apples and oranges. In my eyes, just because someone “informs me” they’re going to autobill, doesnt mean i want them to…I dunno, sort of like the filling station saying theyre “informing me” they’re going to charge me for gas whether i want to drive or not.
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You consent when the terms are right there in front of you and you press the “purchase” button. This isn’t a philosophical debate, and you aren’t buying a house; it’s a $15/month sub. You can try charging back through your financial institution, but they’ll just lock you out of your account until you pay it back.
If you’re tight on money you probably shouldn’t be spending it on subscription-based services anyways, because that’s the easiest way to lose track of your spending.
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Honest and fair comparison.
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That’s the part at least four people in this thread seem to have looked past when I wrote “without prior consent”.
As it stands, and with so many subscription services, the auto-renewal option is BAKED INTO the process of obtaining the subscription. That’s the shady part. They’re obtaining our prior consent by sneaking it into the process. Auto-renewal should be a subsequent option to a service requiring a direct, explicit confirmation from the user. Some subscription services used to be this way, but like credit card companies, they count on our negligence and contract law to cynically pull profits from people not staying vigilant. It’s borderline graft.
Maybe I should have included the word “explicit”.
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As cynical as it sounds, it’s kind of pointless to argue this sort of thing. It’s a boiling frogs scenario.
Little by little, increasingly anti-consumer practices will be introduced. Only the ones that truly incense people (see: Battlefront 2’s lootboxes) will be confronted.
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“Is your MMORPG company trying to cut you off?! Find out in the news at 11!”
No, but seriously, this is a terrible change. Im a casual player that purchases game time when i feel the itch. I don’t want to sub and cancel, i dont want to have to bother with blizzard once they start “accidentally charging for the next sub” early, because blizzard support is not something i ever want to deal with.
I loved that i could just buy a month of game time and play for it, no strings attached. Now, its either sub/cancel or buy a wow token that’s like $8 more. (dunno im from EU, its 7 euros more here).
Also, say what you want, but its a weird change in the time when the game is in a weird place, it just paints them even more money hungry then they already seem.
Dunno, you guys that aren’t affected with this, more power to ya, i hope they don’t mess with you in the future, but for me, this means the end of my wow adventures. I am voting with my wallet and am sad that i didn’t do it earlier.
Hope you guys who decide to stay have fun and that things look up for you.
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‘WoW is doing fine’ – Your average brown-nose.
When I woke up and read the news I CACKLED. 
The game is being scorched-earth’d from Activision Blizzard.
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The ability to buy 1 month at a time was never removed. You just select Game Time instead of subscription on the wow section of the store.
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There is nothing strange about this at all. Companies today want to have “reoccurring” revenue on their books (it satisfies wall-street). Subscription based revenue is where it is at. Adobe, Microsoft, and countless others are opt’ing for subscription based licensing and this is their way to move you towards that.
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It was removed though (along with the 90 and 180 day non-subscription options), and now it’s only available in 60-day increments.
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