> Except that you already agreed to this behaviour when you signed up.
I miss the days when burying awful things that nobody would willingly accept in the fine print (which few people read and most people have a hard time understanding) was something we all understood to be immoral, to the point that it was a cartoon trope as something the Devil would do.
I recently had my phone fixed at a uBreakiFix location and at and on the bottom of the credit card receipt it has a contract written at the bottom that among other things says your waving privacy rights, property rights to your old parts, swear you have read some link to a TOS. When checking out they never mentioned any of that when signing the receipt (with the exception of the not returning the parts when I told them I would like them back). In my option any contractual language should have to me signed for separately then a CC receipt.
EDIT: with that said they did a great job fixing my phone with an hour or two.
I suspect that that is straight-up illegal in two different directions: it is unlikely that the credit card company would be pleased to find out that these folks are trying to use a credit card signature for something else, and I'm pretty sure any lawyer could get such a contract thrown out with exactly zero effort, if it truly is framed as just being the receipt that you use to pay (a contract has to be intentionally signed by person who intended to agree to it in order to count for anything)
IANAL either, but you are not wrong. I know about this because I was involved in a lawsuit that involved contract law. In order for a contract to be valid it is not enough to have a document with a valid signature on it. There has to be an actual "meeting of the minds". Both parties have to actually intend to abide by the terms of the contract at the time it was signed, which logically implies that both parties have to know the contract's actual content.
The real underlying strategy here is to leverage people's general ignorance of contract law in order to intimidate them into thinking that they are contractually bound when in fact they are not, at least not legally. As a practical matter, the need to pay a lawyer often trumps the actual law (another lesson I learned the hard way).
Interesting theory. And indeed, it is just. But On its face it negates the validity of any drive by scroll down to accept contract, but I believe they are binding to some extent at least. Maybe the scroll down click is considered at tacit acceptance of what’s inside.
This is so they can reuse the parts as “genuine” to do the next customer. The watch repair industry is notorious for this. They replace more than they need to, using aftermarket parts, and keep the originals for their own stock.
I had a gold watch, a family heirloom, that I had repaired. It was missing the buckle. The jeweler, a large one, sent it off to a 3rd party and it came back smaller around the wrist...
I was naive but I couldn’t conceive of that happening, going through a legitimate and large jewelry business.
I worked at a uBreak for a time and the manager encouraged us to mention they were signing a TOS regarding the phone repair, if they don't come pick up their device after 90 days they abandoned it, etc.
The receipt was really long and not like a normal checkout receipt.
Also part of the profitability of uBreak was selling broken components removed from devices (like good LCDs with broken glass) back to OEMs to be refurbished, so that's why they don't let you have the old parts back.
>Also part of the profitability of uBreak was selling broken components removed from devices (like good LCDs with broken glass) back to OEMs to be refurbished, so that's why they don't let you have the old parts back.
I worked there about 5 years ago, but I have heard that since then, they have struck deals with some manufacturers - they might actually have a partnership with Samsung now, and send the LCDs back to them (still for $$).
We certainly didn't tell them it was some company policy, and LCD replacement was cheaper if your LCD was in good shape so its pretty transparent
I think pretty much everyone understands it to be immoral. There are just many people who continue to do it because they don't care about behaving in an immoral manner or are "just following orders", and many more who don't care enough to pay attention to what they are agreeing to all over the place.
They're not burying this. They're _highlighting_ it. You've already agreed; they're making sure you're bluntly aware.
Could the phrasing be better? Of course. One option is "I have deleted all private content on this account. I understand that anything remaining will be made public as part of our 'Free Tier.' Click here to delete your presentations if you have not done so already."
But calling it immoral to screw up in the manner of highlighting the issue seems a bit much to me.
They're "highlighting" it AFTER you "agreed". Not before you agree to it. What kind of ethics is that? "I'll screw you over but I'll admit to it afterwards"?
I'm not sure how they're screwing you over. You are not allowed to have free, private content. If you stop paying, you need to decide whether to delete or make public stuff.
Friendliest way to do this would be to keep content for a month after cancelling, but only let -you- see it if you renew or decide to make it public.
In cartoons, the Devil also liked to highlight what the contract said. In much the same way as is being done here, too: by springing it on victims long after the contract was signed and sealed, and timing the delivery of the news to cause maximum mental distress.
If you have a free tier with only public content allowed, and a paid tiers that allow paid content... you're going to have to do one of two things when someone cancels:
A) delete a lot of their stuff, or
B) make all their stuff public
Either could be really, really bad.
You could let the user pick between the two options, I guess. But really, most everyone cancelling something like this needs to go through their stuff and decide for each item: "Keep, but make public" or "Delete".
> You could let the user pick between the two options, I guess.
If both options are likely to be extremely undesirable to a substantive fraction of canceling users, that's the best option.
If there was a most-likely-safe option from the user perspective, choosing that by default and having it confirmed would arguably be better UX, but I don't think "keep everything that used to be private and make it public" is really a "clearly-safer option". Nor, even in the cases where it is safer, do I think that this presents the confirmation well.
> But really, most everyone cancelling something like this needs to go through their stuff and decide for each item: "Keep, but make public" or "Delete".
Some people do, but I bet lots of people have collections that very easily fall into either "Delete all" or "Keep all and make public" by the time they cancel (if only because they are only canceling after everything to which that decision wouldn't apply has been migrated to an alternative service.)
I miss the days when burying awful things that nobody would willingly accept in the fine print (which few people read and most people have a hard time understanding) was something we all understood to be immoral, to the point that it was a cartoon trope as something the Devil would do.