It would appear that the new federal law Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act is going to affect the online dating industry a lot more than just data-pass (sharing of credit card information with third parties).
This use of ‘‘free-to-pay conversion’’ and ‘‘negative option’’ sales took advantage of consumers’ expectations that they would have an opportunity to accept or reject the member ship club offer at the end of the trial period.
Of interest, what is the definition of “clearly and conspicuous disclosure”:
provides text that clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms of the transaction before obtaining the consumer’s billing information.
Anne Holland of Subscription Site Insider shares some helpful information about the new law.
This is an urgent bulletin for all of you who offer auto-renewals (aka recurring billing) and/or trial offers where your site charges the customer’s card automatically at the end of their trial if they don’t cancel first.
Last Wednesday Dec 29th, President Obama signed a new Federal Act entitled ‘Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act’ — that appears to go into effect immediately and is enforceable at both the Federal and State levels.
Although the act is mainly focused on stopping so-called ‘data pass’ (which practically no subscription site does anymore, since last year’s multimillion dollar legal settlements), the Act’s Section 4 directly applies to most subscription and membership sites … yes, even the “good guys”.
It attempts to regulate your paywall, subscription offer text, and cancellation procedures. I’ve reviewed more than 500 membership and subscription sites…. and ~90% of them appear to my eyes to possibly be breaking this new law. So, nearly everyone needs to make some changes if you want to be more compliant.
We are not lawyers. But, our advice to you is as follows:
#1.View our 50-minute legal video workshop from December, featuring specialist attorney Lisa Dubrow. It’s got practical real-life examples of subscription site offer pages, so you can see exactly what the problems might be with yours. It’s free for all our Members (Membership is $57 or less per month). Join here.
#2. Review our Members’ legal section which features copies of the Act plus relevant State laws, and FCC documents and presentation decks directly applicable to the Act. We’ve posted everything for our Members in our legal department. For a free site tour, go here.
