I suppose right now there is no federal preemption - but I fully expect gym & similar lobbying at the federal level to get a rule in place to allow preemption challenges.
It's unclear whether this junk fee law will have teeth. In theory, California has the same anti-drip pricing law, but restaurants have a specific carve out [1] which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.
From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.
Fees on one time services are not what this is targeting. This legislation is not meant to address that, and wouldn't apply to that.
They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.
It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.
> Rule from Mamdani administration ... targets ‘junk fees’
> The city is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”, according to a release shared with the Guardian.
The latest one for me is renting a new apartment, getting told it cost $XXXX a month, then being told I'm required to have $XXXXXX amount of renter's insurance at $XXX a month and oh, by the way, click here to use ours.
The insurance requirement isn’t uncommon where I am (California). Though I would avoid whatever plan they are pushing. I got mine through my existing insurance provider and it worked out to ~$15 per month IIRC.
It’s not your property they care about. They usually want this because it includes liability insurance if you damage their property or someone else’s, or your negligence causes harm to someone.
In Australia we have very strong consumer protection law, here it’s expected (by the bank usually) the landlord has at least a minimum “landlord insurance” that covers all that stuff.
For anything not covered, where a tenant does damage thats what the bond is for.
Same here. This has only been a thing recently when landlords figured out they could make money selling the insurance. When I was a renter, insurance was never required from me.
It was required in all my boilerplate leases going back to the late 90s. Just rarely if ever enforced or even asked about.
You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.
The liability limits on most renters insurance policies are low $100Ks, because most renters don't have many assets they need to protect. This would be pretty inconsequential in the scenario of "burning down the apartment complex."
Landlords/owners have their own fire and liability insurance (ultimately paid for by the tenants as part of their rent); it's unnecessary to demand that the tenants provide their own. Renter's insurance is for the tenant's protection, not the landlord's.
My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.
> My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.
I generally agree, obviously for a "burn the place down" incident the renter's policy is going to be rather inconsequential, and likely not even actionable.
But for more "medium" stuff like "flood the unit below me because I left the bath on and left for work" where the liability is in the low $10k's, that's where I see landlords (and their covering policies) wanting the renter's insurance to kick in and cover.
I personally find it a bit slimey - if you're a landlord this is just part of the risk of being a landlord. If you don't have the capital to cover such incidents, then you should simply not be a landlord. Sorry.
Trying to squeeze an extra few dollars per month out of tenants is ridiculous, but seems to be the way everything is going when you get hyper-financialization and PE type firms buying multiple buildings.
The answer to every question like this in the US is "because the wrong people would benefit".
In the past (and still today but less so), that literally meant black people. Now it mostly means poor people of all races.
It's been shown over and over that it's practically an American cultural value to accept lower benefits to yourself in trade for denying benefits to what you see as an undeserving group.
I’m pretty sure EVERYONE is covered under the public system, a levy is added in the car rego fee that is the funding mechanism. You don’t need to be a driver to be covered.
That’s a legal requirement though. If I rent a car and the rental company requires me to also insure it or they won’t give me the keys, surely that should be included, even if the insurance money isn’t going to the rental company.
Then they should include it in the rent. My landlord wants a Porsche too, he doesn't get to add a separate Porsche Fee or mandate me to pay a Porsche payment, he has to take some of the money coming out of the rent and put it towards his Porsche.
If you’d rather pay $500 for the landlords insurance rather than $200 from your own policy, that sounds like a great plan. You’re paying for the Porsche either way.
Renters insurance protects the landlord from liability claims. They don't care if you insure your own property, but I don't know of an insurance company that decouples those.
> which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.
I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.
It's unfortunately somewhat common these days and personally I actively avoid any place which does this. At least it's only somewhat common rather than the standard so it's still possible. Couple of examples:
https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."
Restaurant owners interviewed in the media here in SF are directly quoted saying they can’t do that because “customers would notice”, or think “oh that’s expensive, I can’t eat out twice a week”.
These are arguments for including the fees that make the customer __still pay the same higher price__, implying that the whole point is that they won’t notice. And reporters don’t seem to even register the absurdity of those remarks or question them in any way.
It’s the same thing with any “menu” vs actual price.
Airline baggage fees are probably the prototypical case for this. Airlines that did not display the lowest price during flight searches got outcompeted by those that did. This led the entire industry to change since it took an entire decade long marketing campaign centered around it (Southwest) to try to stay even.
Consumers make irrational choices all the time, and this is one of them. They absolutely notice the final bill and complain while continuing to patronize businesses that engage in such behavior.
Consumers would need to reward honest pricing if they wanted this to change. Or vote for regulation.
More akin comparison would be charging for carryon vs condiments.
I just did trip with family where our allowance was 8 suitcases of 184 kg total weight. Buying same on a budget carrier we used on our leg would cost more than flights itself.
The restaurant fee isn’t a fee for something “extra”, it’s just a blanket extra charge on everything.
It’d be like the airline sold you a ticket for $500, but as you step off the plane at the destination they say “actually it was $550”, because it said so in the fine print.
I tried searching for what a "lifestyle fee" is and all I could find is references to "living wage fee" which is essentially a forced tip added to the bill.
A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.
I'm somewhat skeptical that they actually require more attention per person. Does an 8-person group require more than 2x as much attention as a 4-person group?
They do need more attention per person. Doing anything with a group of eight is just more complicated, and you’re more likely to have a person in the group who slows things down for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.
They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
And the group is big enough that people will be having side conversations while one side of the table talks to the server, which also slows things down.
> They do need more attention per person. Doing anything with a group of eight is just more complicated, and you’re more likely to have a person in the group who slows things down
More likely to have such a person in a group of 8 than in a group of 1 maybe but that's meaningless.
> for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.
And group members helping each other never saves the restaurant any time?
> They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
Appetizers they would likely have never ordered if they did not have people to share them with.
> They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
So they're even bringing new customers that would have never given the restaurant any money on their own.
Wasn’t the argument for tips that tipped workers had a low minimum wage, but CA now has a minimum for tipped workers of $16.90 (actually the same minimum wage for non tipped workers too)?
The fact that Scott Wiener made that carve out for restaurants via emergency legislation (SB 1524) made my blood boil and I vowed to vote against him in any election is runs in.
The worst part of restaurant fees are the people (both owners and somehow the patrons) that will justify the existence of the fee as if it's too difficult to just print the final price in the menu.
I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line
> I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.
In Germany and Croatia, there is no % at all, the prices are final and include all taxes and fees by law and no one will bat an eye if you pay straight cash - however I personally always tip around 10%, simply because I was happy about that when I worked in hospitality myself.
When I was in high school my German teacher taught us to tip by default by rounding up and paying with exact change. Is that still a thing when everyone is paying with card?
I'm German and in the rare instance I eat out in an actual restaurant, I still do that "rounding up" if I've been happy with the service. Cash or card is not really an important factor for that scenario.
Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.
Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.
DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.
This is an odd response. I've been to countries that have special tourist police trained in english who frequent tourist locations to prevent this kind of behaviour.
I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.
Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.
I'm afraid that police wouldn't do a thing if a practice is widespread and accepted by most. Legally speaking it's not a scam because it's not a hidden charge.
The 3% credit card charge on the other hand... but I'd rather pay cash than confront the poor cashier.
The police are paid and trained to organise against crime. That's quite different than disconnected tourists beginning to organise, which was the idea I responded to.
Hasn’t Sadiq Khan been a similar story, from a Muslim immigrant family turned popular mayor of the nation’s largest city? Though from what I understand he’s from the more business-oriented center-left, in contrast with Mamdani.
Yeah, he's much more centre left, but also the London Mayor has very little actual power. It's the PM vacancy we need a Mamdani in but we're about to get a near clone of the bloke who just resigned.
Maybe it should be required to review quality laws in other countries in general. One advantage is that you don't have to pretend or imagine what will happen if it's been tested in the wild.
A big one I’ve been seeing a lot lately is advertising annual subscriptions as monthly rates. It isn’t $12/month subscription if I have to pay $120 in a lump sum up front. The actual monthly rate is often basically double what they’re advertising.
Queenslander here and not a term I've noticed myself, bar one commercial on tv that used an animated meerkat, other than that not a big consumer of buying much or booking things online, though I'd understand if I saw it tagged to something where one time pricing event might sprawl ... subscription stuff, nah not happening.
You don't recognize it? Haha oh man, I wonder if: it's invisible to you because you're swimming in the soup, or it's just something people in Sydney say. Or maybe it was tourists from another country that I overheard! Haha sorry to generalize I was only there a few months!
Nintendo (subscription I have for my switch to access some older a classic games btw) is very good reminding me I have a subscription and whether I want to cancel (or renew). I don't have the email at hand but what I remember is thinking they really desire you to reflect to cancel (rather than a push to renew) if not wanting continued service. Sentiment of politeness and I find a good example what to do.
Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
> Subject: Information about Your Automatic Renewal
> This is an automatically generated email from Nintendo for customers who have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership set to renew automatically.
> Dear [user],
> Your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership will automatically renew soon.
> ...
> Deadline to turn off automatic renewal: [1 month from now]
It also does this right when you first sign up for automatic renewal except the deadline is [1 year from now].
Even if that were true, Nintendo is better than most companies, which will use deceptive practices wherever they are allowed, even if they have to pay to maintain multiple systems and configurations.
I really appreciate companies that are transparent with renewals. I’m sure it cuts down on customer support load a lot too. Kagi goes as far as not billing you if you don’t use their service in the prior month. I was pretty shocked the first time I got that email. Made me a customer for life.
Another one that belongs on this list: AI-generated photos in housing listings. You can no longer tell what the property actually looks like, and the images conveniently erase the problem spots you'd only catch in person. False advertising is getting completely out of hand.
The irony with all this, is if a company makes it difficult to cancel their subscription, it's probably not a good product. Antidotically, I've found that making it easy for users to not only cancel, but refund, has given me eye opening things to fix in some products that made it so less people cancelled or refunded. So I try to always err on best user experience.
NYT made it difficult, and they are a pretty good product. If you didn't live in california and wanted to cancel your subscription, you were required to talk to a service rep who would try to get you stay by giving you some free period before normal subscription billing resumed
I doubt so, I think a large amount of serious companies do it as well because it's a very simple way to earn a very serious amount of money, many businesses (even "good") often rely solely on this, Gym businesses is the typical example of this and many gyms will just not be able to make money at all if people actually used their membership correctly, literally space-wise, it can't fit, many businesses are entirely based on "failure", however, we can acknowledge that some Gyms are exceptional in quality, but will still bank on the fact that the user will just going, ideally as soon as possible.
I'm not saying it's right, but the reality is that probably half the gyms would close immediately if this is enforced.
I wonder if the bit about 'junk fees' will include undisclosed hotel fees. I just stayed there last week in a no-frills "hotel" which doesn't include daily room cleaning, has no staff at night, and has no amenities whatsoever, and they charged me a surprise-at-check-in $35 a night resort fee. This fee was not described in the booking.
That hotel may have broken an FTC rule that's been in effect for about a year now.
> Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
Every hotel I've stayed at in Hawaii charges one - usually to the tune of $50+/day - even if the hotel has no resort-like facilities. It's a bullshit fee.
I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.
Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.
yes, that is happening to me real-time, the article in the Economist reminded me (https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/01/can-bending-sp...), right down to Evernote being the one they are attempting to gouge me on at best and charge illegally at worst. so i had a closer look at bank and PayPal GLs
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
There’s a reason they were used as a poster child of a bad actor when the FTC rule was made a few years ago, before the current administration shredded it.
I was so annoyed with how slimy Evernote had become and how the product regressed and they were clearly not spending money on it, I switched to Apple Notes and have been very happy.
Is this something that cities can really enforce? Like I get that NYC is a bit of an exception but let's say a 5 person town in Wyoming decides that they want to make this practice illegal and they all vote to do so. It's not clear to me that would mean anything at all.
NYC has ~2% of the US population, and it’s a relatively wealthy slice compared to the mean. NYC has roughly 13x as many people as the entire state of Wyoming. I could see a company writing off Wyoming entirely (not likely, but possible) but not NYC.
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
Sure but say some company based in Lousiana has a website that violates NYC law.
What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison.
If it were a state passing the law then they could sue for enforcement in federal court but I don't think a city could?
I think, in practice, they'll only spend effort enforcing against service companies in the city, he announced the policy at a gym. As a bonus, a bunch of web companies happen to have NYC presence.
It ultimately depends on if there is overriding state or federal law. But yeah, it's something a city can enforce.
A small town in Wyoming could do the same and could sue (and probably win) against businesses that do business in that small town and break the law. What most likely happens in that case is that small Wyoming town ends up blacklisted by that business.
This is one way how "states rights" types of policies will favor large corporations at our expense. We need strong advocates for regular people at the highest level of law/enforcement. Having advocates at all levels is good, of course.
This is where getting it via Apple’s App Store is nice for consumers.
I (a non-American) had a NYT subscription through the iOS app some years back and cancelling it (like any other subscription through the App Store) was as as simple as:
- Open Settings
- Tap my account
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the New York Times option (or whatever it’s called)
- Tap Cancel
While the gate keeper aspect of Apple may not be good in many ways, at least we get this kind of benefit from it.
I ended up having to dispute credit card charges from Patreon because I couldn't solve captchas needed to log in or to talk to support. I won, but it was an annoying process, and now I use disposable/virtual cards.
This is really a banking / credit card thing. CC suppliers put a lot of effort into packaging recurring subscriptions for their businesses because … people forget to cancel. So the real leverage here is not go to each individual website to one click cancel, but just cancel the direct debit / subscription from in your banking or credit card app.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 89.7 ms ] threadFrom what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.
It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.
For anything not covered, where a tenant does damage thats what the bond is for.
Renter insurance should be optional.
You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.
Landlords/owners have their own fire and liability insurance (ultimately paid for by the tenants as part of their rent); it's unnecessary to demand that the tenants provide their own. Renter's insurance is for the tenant's protection, not the landlord's.
My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.
I generally agree, obviously for a "burn the place down" incident the renter's policy is going to be rather inconsequential, and likely not even actionable.
But for more "medium" stuff like "flood the unit below me because I left the bath on and left for work" where the liability is in the low $10k's, that's where I see landlords (and their covering policies) wanting the renter's insurance to kick in and cover.
I personally find it a bit slimey - if you're a landlord this is just part of the risk of being a landlord. If you don't have the capital to cover such incidents, then you should simply not be a landlord. Sorry.
Trying to squeeze an extra few dollars per month out of tenants is ridiculous, but seems to be the way everything is going when you get hyper-financialization and PE type firms buying multiple buildings.
However , it is landlord and location dependant - it's the norm in NYC, for example (see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/11bl350/does_your_a...)
Absolutely. I assumed the parent was talking about the US because that's the only place in the world I've encountered this.
In NZ we are not required to have third party medical cover because everyone is already covered by yearly car registration fee.
In the past (and still today but less so), that literally meant black people. Now it mostly means poor people of all races.
It's been shown over and over that it's practically an American cultural value to accept lower benefits to yourself in trade for denying benefits to what you see as an undeserving group.
I used my insurance company I already had.
Your building would be fine if you found a renter’s insurance that didn’t cover your own goods (which would cost like $3/year less).
I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.
https://sushiconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sc_... "3.5% Living Wage Surcharge added to each bill which allows us to provide the service you have always enjoyed!"
https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."
These are arguments for including the fees that make the customer __still pay the same higher price__, implying that the whole point is that they won’t notice. And reporters don’t seem to even register the absurdity of those remarks or question them in any way.
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-restaurants-junk-fees...
https://www.kqed.org/news/11992412/californias-junk-fee-ban-...
Airline baggage fees are probably the prototypical case for this. Airlines that did not display the lowest price during flight searches got outcompeted by those that did. This led the entire industry to change since it took an entire decade long marketing campaign centered around it (Southwest) to try to stay even.
Consumers make irrational choices all the time, and this is one of them. They absolutely notice the final bill and complain while continuing to patronize businesses that engage in such behavior.
Consumers would need to reward honest pricing if they wanted this to change. Or vote for regulation.
I just did trip with family where our allowance was 8 suitcases of 184 kg total weight. Buying same on a budget carrier we used on our leg would cost more than flights itself.
The restaurant fee isn’t a fee for something “extra”, it’s just a blanket extra charge on everything.
It’d be like the airline sold you a ticket for $500, but as you step off the plane at the destination they say “actually it was $550”, because it said so in the fine print.
I run Union electrical jobs and I don’t list out every fringe benefit they receive on an itemized invoice. It’s $163/hr with everything baked in.
If restaurants want to pay a living wage, charge more money for food.
A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.
They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
And the group is big enough that people will be having side conversations while one side of the table talks to the server, which also slows things down.
More likely to have such a person in a group of 8 than in a group of 1 maybe but that's meaningless.
> for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.
And group members helping each other never saves the restaurant any time?
> They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
Appetizers they would likely have never ordered if they did not have people to share them with.
> They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
So they're even bringing new customers that would have never given the restaurant any money on their own.
Wasn’t the argument for tips that tipped workers had a low minimum wage, but CA now has a minimum for tipped workers of $16.90 (actually the same minimum wage for non tipped workers too)?
I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line
In Germany and Croatia, there is no % at all, the prices are final and include all taxes and fees by law and no one will bat an eye if you pay straight cash - however I personally always tip around 10%, simply because I was happy about that when I worked in hospitality myself.
Paying in cash is still common at German restaurants though.
Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.
Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.
Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.
DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.
I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.
Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.
The 3% credit card charge on the other hand... but I'd rather pay cash than confront the poor cashier.
I will just respond with a 1-star review.
> What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee?
Just about what would happen if you refuse to pay the bill, most likely you'll end up being shared on some Facebook group or worse.
Sounds like they are giving you two months free if you pay with a lump sum in advance.
So many scummy apps exploit this by offering a 1 week trial and saying like "only 4/month!" but charging a 1 year's sub after the trial period ends.
"7 dollars sorted." for example.
Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
> Subject: Information about Your Automatic Renewal
> This is an automatically generated email from Nintendo for customers who have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership set to renew automatically.
> Dear [user],
> Your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership will automatically renew soon.
> ...
> Deadline to turn off automatic renewal: [1 month from now]
It also does this right when you first sign up for automatic renewal except the deadline is [1 year from now].
Why would EU rules apply?
Nintendo is just a decent company compared to most others.
https://www.al.com/news/2026/07/att-customers-your-cell-phon...
Anecdotally
I’m sure they know the exact stats, and are getting more cash as a result of their BS.
Good site, trash business practices.
I'm not saying it's right, but the reality is that probably half the gyms would close immediately if this is enforced.
> Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-...
I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.
Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.
"What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799966
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
*Direct click-to-cancel with subscription receipt.
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison.
If it were a state passing the law then they could sue for enforcement in federal court but I don't think a city could?
A small town in Wyoming could do the same and could sue (and probably win) against businesses that do business in that small town and break the law. What most likely happens in that case is that small Wyoming town ends up blacklisted by that business.
I (a non-American) had a NYT subscription through the iOS app some years back and cancelling it (like any other subscription through the App Store) was as as simple as:
- Open Settings
- Tap my account
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the New York Times option (or whatever it’s called)
- Tap Cancel
While the gate keeper aspect of Apple may not be good in many ways, at least we get this kind of benefit from it.