Not telling surfers how to cancel free trials....
 

The other thread about cancelling a webmasters account for letting surfers know how to cancel the free trial has lots of mixed views.

My question is, why do program owners have a problem with letting their customers know up front how the free trial works? I could see a class action suit down the road from surfers who WEREN'T informed exactly how a free trial works ahead of time.

Can you imagine what the courts would have to say about program owners openly admitting in their TOS they don't want customers to know how to cancel? :1orglaugh

i haven't followed up on this, but if there are actually programs like that... they're morons. you aren't going to get far if you don't have faith in your own product.

when a surfer signs up for a site, they agree to certain terms and conditions and a link is provided to those terms and conditions.

those terms and conditions almost always clearly state exactly how the free trial works.

if they choose not to read it, that's their perogative.

bingo!

dont go telling them how to fuck over your sponsor

c'mon, you can't see that? You can't see how telling your surfers to cancel before the trial is over is bad for the guy sending you a check?

from Epoch's Terms and Conditions, provided on every site they process for (including Epic Cash sites):

by cancelling a free trial the surfer is fucking over the sponsor? LOL

a trial is just that a trial, if they hate your site you dont deserve the monthly price

I agree, and most webmasters already know this.

What I'm saying is, can you imagine what the courts would say about a program owner specifically telling affiliates they aren't allowed to tell customers how to cancel? Not to mention when it's a porn site we're talking about. Regardless of what all industry people know we want kept on the down low you can't just tell people that you are actively trying to deceive your surfers and get away with it IF someone were to press the issue.

Program owners that are so unfaithful in their product that they cringe at an affiliate telling the surfers how to cancel if they choose shouldn't offer free trials in the first place.

Yipee! I'll go put that in laymens terms on my website. Since they openly acknowledge this information what's the problems with letting a surfer see it ahead of time?

Think I'll get cancelled as a webmaster?

The whole "FREE" trial business model is based on the assumption that many surfers will fail to read the terms and get screwed into paying a monthly membership. If you inform the surfers that they will be paying $40/month if they don't cancel, the whole business model will then fall apart. :2 cents:

Oh yeah duh, so that must make it legal.

Text in question folks...


ALL Sites Listed Below Are One Dollar Trial Memberships


Select any site from the list below and click on the link to enter the site!

Click Join Today, and enter your CREDIT CARD information to Verify your age!!

That's it, you're done!



Please Note: All Sites Include Hassle Free Cancellation Process, GUARANTEED !!!



To Cancel your membership, click on the support link on the bottom of the page you signed up on. Click the cancel membership button, and your done, Hassle Free!!!!!



I have verified the above process myself, with my own personal credit card. The above statements are accurate!!


____________________

Looks like a straightforward and honest representation of the sites being advertised to me.

What is so hard to understand here?

The problem is not really that anyone wants to _DECEIVE_ the surfer... but if a _WEBMASTER_ tells surfers SPECIFICALLY that they should just signup for the free trial, they can cancel it again anyway and won't be charged, then the _WEBMASTER_ is _DECEIVING_ the _PROGRAM_. Don't you guys see that?

Its like sending people into a store and getting a referral fee for sales and telling the people they should just go and buy something and give it back the next day and get their money back. Of course people might KNOW they can do that, but you are deceiving by moving your number of sales UP.

This kind of practice is illegal in any kind of market and is in most market's TOS. Go to any non-adult advertiser.

Illegal to tell the truth now? :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Illegal to pretend you are sending someone customers, when you are actually sending someone freeloaders.

You do not understand it, do you? It has nothing to do with telling the truth or not.

You are deceiving the program, whats so hard to understand? If you put ads on your website for big ad networks and put a line below them saying "If you buy this, just do this and that and you'll get your money back" then you immediately get canceled as a member of that ad network.

Why don't you just tell your surfers they should just chargeback their monthly membership, nothing will happen anyway?! Thats the truth too, should we all start doing that to get more sales?!

i think you are right..
all the program owners must!!! tell to the costumers how to cancel membership..

Affiliates in a way sell customers to some affiliate program. If you start selling customers that the program can't make money from, it becomes almost equivalent to a traffic broker selling hitbot traffic.

That kinda shit just aggrivates people.

No you just don't get it. :1orglaugh

I see that you have awesome arguements for your point :)

It's a suggestion factor, works in all areas of marketing.

It will ALWAYS increase the cancel rates to a site no mater how good it is. They get to see how good the deal really is right up front, so when they join, they are thinking about quiting the trial rather than enjoying the sites. The owner has no chance.

So seeming, this is about epiccash, he pays flat rate and a trial to conversion loss = a huge fucking loss.





If people like this so much then on your own sites put a big ass banner that says. FREE PORN, DON'T CLICK A BANNER YOU NEVER NEED TO USE YOUR CREDIT CARD I have everything you need.. Shoot yourself in your own damn foot.

Ok, one more time for you ignorant motherfuckers.

Did I say program owners would have any interest in being honest with surfers?

If you could read English you would understand what I said, which is anyone telling affiliates in TOS, in person, or by fucking carrier pigeon that they are going to get terminated for pointing out "readily available info" to potential customers is being retarded. If 1 single affiliate wanted to press the issue there's a damn good chance he could bring all kinds of shit down on said program owner.

By the way, it's nice to be reminded about the shady fucks we deal with on a regular basis in this business.
:1orglaugh

If the program in question here was making cancellation during the free trial period especially difficult for the surfers, I could see you taking issue...but whats the problem here, really? You cant see why any program offering PPS wouldn't want their webmasters explaining directly and in detail to the surfer how to fuck the sponsor over?

Besides, If I remember correctly, Epiccash even posted a section of their TOS specifically saying they could cancel the account of any webmaster who's free trials didn't convert to full memberships more than 40% of the time -- so it was only a matter of time before this guy got the boot, anyway.
*shrug*

That is called deceptive marketing. No affilate program would ever get into trouble for closing an account for this reason.

Not much different than a car salesman telling you that you can test drive a car, drive it and bring it back in one week. Just do this every week and you have a new car a week.

I know in our terms we have..
8) Any misrepresentation of our sites, which includes but is not limited to misrepresenting the cost of membership, terms of membership, or content contained within our sites will not be tolerated. Exploitation of our terms and conditions, and/or instructing the member to sign up and cancel is also not permitted in any way. Any changes that we make in our membership price, terms, etc, will be emailed to you and you must make the changes.

To add one more thing...Stocktrader...have you ever had anyone in retail specifically suggest to you to return the item you were purchasing after you had finished using it? No, no, I didn't think so -- and I think that sales person would be fired pretty quickly. How is this any different?

Calling us names now huh? :)

Accept the fact that everyone in the non-adult world has this kind of stuff in their affiliate TOS.

It is likely going to be easier to sue the affiliate for that kind of practice than sueing the program owner for having this in their TOS and using it.

Its the owner's job to explain to the surfer what a trial is and that he can cancel it. The billers also tell all surfers about it in multiple places. (Both join page and join email.) So thats already 3 places the surfer gets told about it.

There is a difference in telling the surfer "your 3 day trial will convert to a full membership for $XX.XX" and "cancel your membership at least 1 day before the trial ends, so you will not be charged for the full membership!".

BTW, if you think its so great telling your surfers to cancel the membership, go and send your traffic via a partnership percentage based program, I bet noone has anything against that.

Tell me where that affilate "told" them to cancel. Is it really that hard to comprehend a few sentences?

And deceptive marketing? Deceptive marketing is telling affiliates not to make your cancellation info available, not the other way around. :1orglaugh

See, pure fucking ignorance. If the person in retail told me the product was a free fucking trial it would be relevant. But being that most people that have a product choose to outright charge for that product your example has no relevance.

i would act exatly like pimpdog for the first time i can remember
the doc just stated the reasons

Why can you people not make the obvious distinction between a site telling customers to purposely sign up and cancel right away and one letting customers know that if they decide to cancel here's how?

Two totally different things.

Why would an affiliate have a site that says "hey, if you do decide to cancel, here's how."

Give me a good reason for that.

I can't understand why you DON'T have a problem with that.

"The other thread about cancelling a webmasters account for letting surfers know how to cancel the free trial has lots of mixed views."

Looks like that is pretty easy to comprehend, you said it. And it has been abit but I do think the guy said join for $1 then you can quit.

Marketing I'm sure you can understand. The deceptive part would be misleading the surfer to think that all he has to do is join and then quit. Hell, he should just go ahead and tell the surfer.. Sign-up for a $1 so I make $35.

I have no idea why an affiliate would give customers the same information available on the site they would be signing up for.

Can you tell my why a program owner wouldn't want surfers to know how to cancel if they chose to?

Not the affiliates fault program owners have $1 trial sites so they can rebill $40 a month starting the same day and sneak in a couple of cross sales while they are at it.

Speaking of which, from the TOS as posted my psyko

---------------

If you purchase a trial subscription, and decide to terminate your trial subscription, you must do so AT LEAST one (1) day prior to the end of the Trial Period and you will not be charged any further. If you do not cancel at least one (1) day prior to the end of the Trial Period, you are agreeing to continue as a regular subscriber upon the terms and conditions for regular subscriptions set forth herein, and you authorize the Company to charge your credit card (or other approved facility) at the then-current monthly rate on a monthly basis until you request termination of your subscription according to the terms hereof.

---------------

So, a surfer has to cancel their trial 1 day before it's over. Best part, the trial is for 1 day! So if the surfer clicks submit at 1:30 and clicks cancel at 1:31 he's not cancelling 1 full day ahead of time.

Blame the affiliate!

:1orglaugh

Do you think a surfer is more or less likely to cancel a free trial, if they go into that trial with specific instructions on how to cancel it? Like TheDoc said, its marketting designed to get the surfer thinking down a specific path...unless you think this guy is just giving them this information out of the goodness of his heart? Yeah, what a standup guy :1orglaugh

Stocktrader, It's not about telling the surfer what he can and can't do with the site, it's HOW he told the surfer.

The affiliate is scamming the program for $35 a sign-up, by telling the surfer in a very shady way how to go around the sites 'real' marketing idea by using suggestive and devious marketing tricks.

Yeah the affiliate has any interest in whether they cancel or not. :1orglaugh

Get a grip dude, he gives the info to help his sales pitch same as all the Satisfaction Guaranteed shit you see on TV.

The problem is how this industry has evolved.

Paying out webmasters "$30" on a "$3" trial has to be backed up by the surfer spending a lot more than $3. So you are assuming the site is so good he will continue his membership, because the site is too good to cancel or the surfer misses out on the cancellation.

So when he's signing up for the trial does it cleary say he will be billed for the FULL amount if he does not cancel 24 and how much he will be billed? Hiding it in the TOS is not ethical, IMHO.

The thing is, how long will Visa allow these trial memberships, becasue to me they are all based on tricking the surfer and hoping he will not cancel.

I agree 100% and it's the program owners problem, not affiliates. Program A offers $1 trial memberships which you can cancel. If I wanted to promote program A and tell surfers exactly what's offered I'd be terminated without pay? Bah, so why offer the shit in the first place? :1orglaugh

The only 'real' marketing idea used by those sites is to get the guys credit card out and bill it for all it's worth. You know it and I know it. Only difference, you don't want to admit it.

Program owner by chance?

I could have a non trial site and if one of my affiliates tells the surfer he can cancel then I will cancel his account. You are to advertise my site, using either my marketing material are material that promotes my site in a positive manner.

Not the process of how to join, what to do once you join, how to cancel, support, or anything other than market the site. I control ALL of this just in case the affiliate fucks up and makes false statements.

Yes I'm a program owner. My program does not use $1 or free trials and I don't have xsales at all.

I've heard...
A 3 Day free trial for example can not unsubscribe and get away Free since it wont be recorded for up to 5 days by the processor or somthing like that.
That might still be going on to this day I do not know I not really looked for it lately.

For those who think a trial membership that does not show very clearly and plainly that the credit card will be billed for the full ammount, is an acceptable and ethical way of doing business can please note my new offer.

100 trial sets for $5

In the small print of the license will be the following;

Should you not return the sets withing 24 hours of ordering you will be billed the full amount.

See how many of these guys read the terms and conditions. :winkwink:

Or is it only surfers who are fair game for this?

Read the original post... The person who got termed wasnt saying "Signup and cancel", he was explaining how to cancel the membership. it's a fine line

Epoch should term EC the same way EC termed the webmaster. Misleading the surfer into a free trial which is never free and auto-rebills before you can even cancel seems a little more shady than explaining how things work to a surfer

Nathan some people are just not going 2 get it. I bet if they ran the program they would FAST.

I agree, it's like asking for a refund before the sale.

:2 cents:

It doesn't auto-rebill unless it's not cancelled before the end of the trial. I don't know why they put that 'one full day' clause in there, but it ain't true.

If the trial isn't over, you can cancel and prevent rebilling.

By the way, the TOS I posted is not Epic Cash's TOS. It's Epoch's TOS. It's the same TOS provided on every single site processed by them.

Stock: "Get a grip dude, he gives the info to help his sales pitch same as all the Satisfaction Guaranteed shit you see on TV."

Very true. That's a very good analogy. If you ever go to an electronics store like Future Shop here in Canada, you can benefit from buying open boxes at a nice discount. Most of these open boxes are from people who go into the store, buy something like a video camera for their vacation, and then return it when they're done for a 100% refund.

:1orglaugh