Automated Renewal without my authorization

[kparadis]

Because of your practice of automatically renewing as you have our account information, we must refrain from purchasing from you again.

We have not used this product since a couple of months after purchasing it.

We did see a notice come in but briefly looking at it didn't seem to say that you would automatically take payment. It seemed to say that we needed to act on the notice in order for this to happen, which we did not.

Such notices are not right as opt out and must be opt in only.
Please change this practice, it is not a good one.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Andy]

If you sent an automated notice, then you are relying on people not noticing your notice in which case you still do not have authorization to process such a payment.

Not at all.

After clicking "Purchase now" on any of our product pages, the prices are given in a format resembling "$69.99 Annually" so that users are informed before purchasing that the prices are annual. Below that there is a link describing what annual billing is. After purchasing the product, there is a PayPal subscription generated, which emails the user as well. One week prior to the renewal, an invoice is sent out with a link to the cancel subscription page, which is also linked to from the bottom of our every page on our site.

To summarize, we are not at all trying to hide the fact that all of our services are subscription-based nor are we trying to rely on customers being uninformed. It is opt-in because users are prompted to create a subscription and they have to agree to it.

An unexpected renewal ends up costing us more money because when we have to spend time addressing the issue which is a labor cost and we end up losing the fraction of the subscription cost that PayPal takes when we do the refund.

If you have suggestions to make it more obvious that a subscription is being generated, please let us know. Our business model requires that we provide our products as subscriptions because of the nature of GPL software.

Your subscription has been canceled so you will not be billed in the future for this product. If you purchase anything else from us, you can cancel the subscription after purchase in PayPal by following these directions.

For an explanation of our subscriptions, please read our TOS.

Kindest regards,

[kparadis]

>To summarize, we are not at all trying to hide the fact that all of our services are
>subscription-based nor are we trying to rely on customers being uninformed.

I don't care how often it is mentioned here there and everywhere else. The fact is that you need to verify EACH and EVERY time that someone wants to be billed and not take it for granted.

>If you have suggestions to make it more obvious that a subscription is being generated,
>please let us know. Our business model requires that we provide our products as
>subscriptions because of the nature of GPL software.

Companies such as ours have many websites, countless subscriptions and we count on having to opt in when each payment reminder comes in otherwise we would easily keep getting billed for things we aren't using. When we miss it, then it's our fault and it's our time lost having to contact the vendor and arranging to re-subscribe.
It is bad practice to automatically opt in people through a reminder, regardless of what you think. It is up to each person to ok each and every payment.

Anyways, I appreciate that you refunded quickly but I do hope you'll consider what I've said. You have great products, I would hate to see people feeling concerned about subscribing because of such practices.

[Andy]

We cannot "automatically opt" you in to anything. This is against PayPal policies. The act of creating a subscription is solely performed by the end user. Otherwise, malicious people could create subscriptions on others' behalves and bill them. When signing up for a product, the user creates the subscription. We do not create it for them.

It is inherently an opt-out system because it is a subscription service that a user has already opted into. To use an analogy, when you buy a chair, you buy it once and that is all. When you pay your phone bill, you pay every month because it's a subscription. We're like a phone bill subscription. The fact that it is a subscription is specified throughout the checkout process to make sure people don't think they're buying a proverbial chair.

On a sort-of related note, most of our users have a site that is online for more than a year. Wordpress (like all software) is continually adding features and security updates. Having insecure software online is typically bad practice so maintaining an active subscription is a good idea.

Kindest regards,