The Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) has just released a new research report Let me out – Subscription trap practices in Australia (published August 2024, written by Chandni Gupta, with thanks to CHOICE and Swetha Meenal Ananthapadmanaban) detailing harmful subscription trap practices in Australia and their affect on consumers. Additionally, the report explains best practices for subscriptions and summarises the protections other countries and jurisdictions have implemented to protect consumers against subscription traps.
If you’ve ever subscribed to a service and then tried to unsubscribe you might be one of the 45% of Australians who spent more time than intended trying to cancel a subscription, one of the 32% of Australians who felt pressured into keeping a subscription, or even one of the 10% of Australians who were forced to give up cancelling a subscription due to the difficulty of the process. Whether it’s social media, fitness, retail, meal delivery, health apps, or even some charity programs – Australia has a serious subscription trap issue rife with practices such as:
- last-minute offers,
- dark patterns (see here for more information),
- restricting how people can cancel or opt-out,
- nagging after unsubscribing,
- creating situations where consumers pay for something they are no longer using, and
- offering disingenuous free trials.
Recently, the European Union, United States of America, India, and the United Kingdom have all taken action or released guidelines and Acts around restricting or penalising the use of subscription traps – specifically around the use of dark patterns. The report finishes by calling for an Australian law against unfair business practices which would, amongst other consumer protections, prevent the obstacles and psychological manipulation currently used in many subscriptions and render opting-out a simple, quick, and painless process.
For CPRC’s media release and summary of the report please see their website here. For a free and downloadable copy of the report click here.