Most Subscription Sites Are Breaking US Laws: The Perils of Autorenews and Trial Offers

I’ve been involved in selling and reporting on selling online subscriptions since 1995. On a daily basis. So I’m kinda freaked out by all

I’ve been involved in selling and reporting on selling online subscriptions since 1995. On a daily basis. So I’m kinda freaked out by all the new stuff I’m learning as we work with specialist attorney Lisa Dubrow on our upcoming virtual workshop Laws on Recurring Billing & Trial Subscriptions: How to Avoid Trouble.There are more laws and regulations on autorenewals for online subscriptions than I ever suspected. California just enacted a new one this month in fact. And now that 52% of online subscriptions sold to consumers are sold using debit cards, even the Federal Reserve Board is getting into the act of regulating our industry with their Regulation “E”. (The darn thing is something like 600 pages long, but I’ll have our editors excerpt out the section that matters and post it on the legal section of our site shortly.)The other thing that’s been freaking me out is how incredibly hard finding good samples for the presentation has been. It’s super easy to find samples of online publishers breaking the law. Because nearly everyone is.Ignorance is rife. For example, did you know you may have to send a printed retention notice via first class postal mail 30 days before you auto-renew certain online customers? Or how to copywrite your free trial offers so as not to fall afoul of Regulation E?But does it matter? Why should anyone care if they are breaking the law if it’s never enforced? I asked Lisa Dubrow how much we really should worry about this stuff. She said the problem now is that watchdogs are starting to really look for violations. And, even if a state government or the feds don’t come after you, because to them you are small fry, the credit card companies are now starting to act as judge and jury. And to them, small fry are the easiest merchant accounts of all to cut off. So it’s not prison or fines you have to worry about so much as it is losing your ability to charge customers using Visa cards… permanently.

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