"Negative" Billing on Free Trial Offers

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seocrimson

Pwner of Nubz.
Mar 30, 2008
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Do you guys see the free trial----------> subscription offers, especially weight loss, going away any time soon? Or if not, will they have to change?

Or are they OK enough that they're unlikely to be regulated?

As an affiliate who pushes some of these offers and thinks about what it must be like from the merchant side, I wonder how much customer service trouble they deal with (outsourced I'm sure), etc.

Has Wu-Yi Source or other similar offers had legal trouble?
 


nickycakes said:
why would they have legal trouble? it's completely legit
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True, it is all legit, but all of the auto re-bill offers take advantage of consumers who fail to read the fine print. The percentage of rebills is part of the advertisers business model. If all of their free trial orders cancelled after paying $5.95 s&h for the sample they'd probably go out of business pretty rapidly.

seocrimson, the offers are usually around for quite some time. Most of the large networks won't help promote anything on the sketchy side ... there are actually dozens of these types of offers that have been around for years (ie Gevalia Coffee.)
 
Spades said:
True, it is all legit, but all of the auto re-bill offers take advantage of consumers who fail to read the fine print. The percentage of rebills is part of the advertisers business model. If all of their free trial orders cancelled after paying $5.95 s&h for the sample they'd probably go out of business pretty rapidly.

seocrimson, the offers are usually around for quite some time. Most of the large networks won't help promote anything on the sketchy side ... there are actually dozens of these types of offers that have been around for years (ie Gevalia Coffee.)
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"Take advantage"? The offers I've checked are definitely not fine print. In most it's bold and near the "order" button(2nd page).
If you can't read bold print, then it's time to just consider it a "stupid tax"
 
Cool, thanks for the replies. I don't personally have an ethical problem with it at all, just interested in the business model's longevity.
 
No, I agree xcmp... "take advantage" might be the wrong terminology for all of these offers. There are quite a few that make the re-bill text very clear. But then you have offers like the girls gone wild dvd club -- which simply brought their existing re-bill model (late night tv ads) to the internet. If I remember correctly, the terms text on that particular offer were pretty fine.
 
A lot of them on the networks are smaller companies, but this is exactly what big companies like Guthy Renker (Proactiv acne stuff) and Enzyte (penis pills) do. I think Enzyte got into some trouble several years ago because they didn't let people cancel, but seem to be doing fine now.
 
I agree with what most of you have said; this business model has been around for years, I don't see it going away any time soon.
 
Although it's similar to what happend with the credit card companies. You know, you miss one payment and that apr goes from 5% to 29%. It was legal cause it was in the fine print but they still got bitch slapped by the courts (took about 20 years though)
 
Spades said:
No, I agree xcmp... "take advantage" might be the wrong terminology for all of these offers. There are quite a few that make the re-bill text very clear. But then you have offers like the girls gone wild dvd club -- which simply brought their existing re-bill model (late night tv ads) to the internet. If I remember correctly, the terms text on that particular offer were pretty fine.
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I know it's getting a little off topic here, but has anyone noticed a new trend in TV ads where the fine print is so fine, that you can't actually read it unless you've got an HD set that meets 1080 standards?

I've got a 31cm set so I can still play my NES and SNES (shutup! I'm a sucker for nostalgia), and I noticed that most of those ads are totally illegible on it, even though I can read it on my new(er) LCD.
 
its a numbers game. I have dealt with direct response clients and typically the stick rate on a "free trial" offer is 70-80%
 
HarveyJ said:
I know it's getting a little off topic here, but has anyone noticed a new trend in TV ads where the fine print is so fine, that you can't actually read it unless you've got an HD set that meets 1080 standards?

I've got a 31cm set so I can still play my NES and SNES (shutup! I'm a sucker for nostalgia), and I noticed that most of those ads are totally illegible on it, even though I can read it on my new(er) LCD.
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Yeah, sneaky representation of terms is used on just about all advertising mediums ... what about the last 3 seconds of certain radio ads -- the terms are given in auction style gibberish.

It gives the companies somewhat of a leg to stand on if they end up court (ie. their argument: our terms are visible on most modern tv's, impossible to be compatible with ALL tv's)
 
its part of the business model. break even on the traffic hope to cover costs and shipping and make some profit on the rebill
 
The industry/legal term for this is "negative option". The FTC is interested but in general if your pricing is disclosed in large enough fine print and your advertising is not deceptive then you are ok.

Biggest problem is there is some hit an run advertisers out there offering to pay huge bounties and then reneging due to lead quality after a few weeks of traffic. Then they resell the lead, capture the cash, refuse to pay the networks and then declare bankruptcy leaving creditors with some chairs, and a fridge full of month old Chinese food and little else to pay their affiliates with.

If you are going to do negative option affiliate stuff make sure not to work with the flavor of the month but with solid long term advertisers.
 
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