Originally Posted by fluffygrrl

Here's the deal.

When you buy a subscription on a sponsor's page, you enter your cc number and hit a submit button.

A cross sale is when a subscription to another site is included. Usually, this is in the form of a pre-checked button with some verbiage (also subscribe to xyz site). Usually this is a free for a limited time offer - so if you don't cancel by x time, you start being charged.

Sometimes, these are hidden (ie th form field is type=hidden) so the surfer doesn't even know. This would be, imho, fraud. Having the boxes ticked by default, rather than unticked by default, is right on the edge of deceptive business practices.