Fair-treatment traps in pricing, cancellation and free-trial promotions, MBA Training, MBA Training
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Fair-treatment traps in pricing, cancellation and free-trial promotions
# Fair-treatment traps in pricing, cancellation and free-trial promotions
In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million and change how Prime cancellation worked after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged the sign-up flow was easy and the cancellation flow was deliberately maze-like, a design the FTC nicknamed internally "Iliad" after the long journey users had to take to exit. That case became the reference point for regulators worldwide. If you work in media marketing today, cancellation UX (user experience) and free-trial copy are no longer just conversion levers. They are compliance surfaces.
This lesson gives you a working audit method for pricing, cancellation and trial promotions in streaming, publishing and media subscriptions.
Why this sector is exposed
Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), music streaming and digital publishing all rely on the same growth mechanics: free trials, discounted intro pricing, auto-renewal, and multi-step retention flows ("win-back" offers) before a cancellation completes.
Each of those mechanics has a matching regulatory failure mode:
Free trial → charging before the trial ends, or making the trial-to-paid conversion unclear.
Discounted intro pricing → hiding the future full price or the renewal date.
Auto-renewal → billing continuously without clear, easy opt-out (a "subscription trap").
Cancellation flow → more steps, more friction, or more persuasion to cancel than to subscribe (the "dark pattern" asymmetry regulators now target explicitly).
Dark pattern: a UX design choice engineered to manipulate users into a decision they would not otherwise make (e.g., confusing button hierarchy, hidden opt-outs, forced continuity).
The regulatory mapmapUsing software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and campaigns, enabling personalisation at scale across channels like email, web, and social.Voir la définition complète →
You don't need to be a lawyer, but you do need to know which bodies can act and on what basis.
United States
FTC, under Section 5 of the FTC Act (prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts or practices") and the ROSCA (Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, 2010), which specifically governs negative-option/continuity billing: clear disclosure of terms, express informed consent, and a simple cancellation mechanism.
The FTC's 2024 "click-to-cancel" rule required cancellation to be at least as easy as sign-up; it was vacated by a federal appeals court in 2025 on procedural grounds, but the underlying ROSCA obligations and FTC enforcement appetite remain, and several states (e.g., California, New York) have their own auto-renewal statutes with similar requirements.
European Union / UK
Consumer Rights Directive and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive set EU-wide baselines on pre-contract information, cancellation rights, and misleading omissions.
The EU's 2024 Digital Fairness Act consultation process specifically flagged dark patterns and manipulative subscription design in digital services, streaming included, as a priority area for 2026 rulemaking.
In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), gives the CMA direct fining power (up to 10% of global turnover) for breaches of consumer protection law, including subscription contract terms, from 2025 onward. The CMA had already pushed Amazon Prime and other subscription services to simplify cancellation before this.
Media examples regulators have cited or investigated: Amazon Prime (FTC, 2023 settlement), Adobe (FTC, 2024, over early-termination fees hidden in Creative Cloud subscriptions, a SaaS case but directly analogous to media bundles), and multiple streaming and gym-style subscription models flagged by the CMA and EU consumer authorities under "subscription trap" sweeps since 2022.
The pre-launch compliance audit
Before any pricing page, trial offer or cancellation flow ships, run it through these checks. Treat this as a marketing sign-off gate, not just a legal one.
1. Price transparency
Is the *full* price shown clearly before checkout, not just the discounted intro price?
Is the renewal date and renewal price stated in the same visual weight as the offer price, not in fine print?
If price rises after month 3 (common in streaming intro deals), is that disclosed at signup, not buried in a T&Cs link?
2. Consent and billing
Does the user take an affirmative action to start paid billing (checkbox, explicit "start paid subscription" click), not a pre-ticked box?
Is the trial-to-paid transition communicated (email/push) before the first charge, with enough lead time to cancel?
3. Cancellation parity
Count the clicks/steps to subscribe. Count the clicks/steps to cancel. If cancellation takes materially more steps, more menus, or requires a phone call while signup was self-serve online, that is a documented risk pattern under both ROSCA and CMA guidance.
Are retention offers (discounts shown mid-cancellation) allowed to *delay* cancellation completion, or does the user have a clear "cancel anyway" path at every step?
4. Visual and language design
Button hierarchy: is "Keep my subscription" visually dominant (bright color, bigger) while "Cancel" is greyed out or hidden as a text link? This asymmetry is a classic dark-pattern flag.
Countdown timers, "3 people just subscribed" style urgency prompts, and false scarcity claims on limited-time pricing all fall under deceptive practices rules if not genuinely true and verifiable.
1. Why did the FTC's action against a major streaming/e-commerce cancellation flow become a reference point for regulators worldwide?
2. A streaming service offers a discounted intro price but displays the future full price and renewal date only in a small footnote reachable via a separate link. What regulatory failure mode does this best illustrate?
3. Why should media marketers now treat cancellation UX as a 'compliance surface' rather than purely a conversion/retention lever?
CHOIX MULTIPLES
4. Select ALL correct answers about what qualifies as a 'dark pattern' in subscription UX.
Sélectionnez toutes les réponses correctes.
CHOIX MULTIPLES
5. Select ALL correct answers about regulatory failure modes tied to subscription growth mechanics described in the lesson.
Sélectionnez toutes les réponses correctes.
What "good" looks like in practice
Netflix, Spotify and the BBC's iPlayer registration flow have each, at different points since 2022, simplified cancellation to a one-page, one-click "cancel plan" action inside account settings, partly pre-empting regulatory pressure rather than waiting for enforcement. That's the commercially smart posture: treat parity and transparency as a brand-trust asset, not just a legal cost.
The marketing lens matters here specifically because these are *campaign and product-copy* decisions, not just legal boilerplate: the words on the pricing page, the color of the cancel button, the timing of the renewal email. Marketing teams design these, so marketing teams need the compliance literacy to catch problems before legal review, not after a regulator's letter arrives.
🎬 [VIDEO: "The FTC's Click-to-Cancel Rule Explained" - youtube.com - search for FTC or consumer-law explainer channels covering the click-to-cancel rule and ROSCA basics for a plain-language regulatory walkthrough]
Key Takeaways
Treat pricing, trial and cancellation flows as compliance surfaces, not just conversion funnels: US enforcement runs through the FTC Act Section 5 and ROSCA; EU/UK through the Consumer Rights Directive, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the UK's DMCCA (enforced by the CMA).
The core test regulators apply is parity and clarity: cancellation should be as easy as signup, and price/renewal terms must be as visible as the promotional offer.
Dark patterns (pre-ticked boxes, hidden opt-outs, asymmetric button design, false urgency) are now explicit enforcement targets, not just UX debates.
Build a pre-launch audit checklist (price transparency, consent design, cancellation step-count parity, visual hierarchy) and run it per region before every campaign or pricing page ships.
Fines are material: UK's CMA can levy up to 10% of global turnover under the DMCCA; the Amazon Prime FTC settlement was $25 million, plus the reputational cost of a public "dark pattern" finding, which is often larger than the fine itself.