Today, the Federation of German Consumer Associations (vzbv) presented its current research on the issue of online cancellations and the legally required cancellation button. For fee-based fixed-term contracts that are also offered online, such as newspaper or streaming subscriptions as well as mobile phone or electricity supply contracts, 72 percent of the nearly 3,000 websites examined lacked a legally compliant implementation of a cancellation button.
For this investigation, 354 reports from consumers were evaluated. Moreover, the vzbv developed a script in the programming language Python for an automated website analysis, which effectively filtered 2,995 online providers of fixed-term contracts that have been required to offer a cancellation button since July 01, 2022.
These are the key findings:
- In the reports submitted, consumers said that a cancellation button was missing or difficult to find on most provider websites.
- In the case of websites with a designated cancellation button, affected consumers reported that the contractual relationship was not completely terminated, and that money was still being debited even after the contract had ended. They also reported that they did not receive confirmation of cancellation, or that cancellations were not processed at all due to technical issues on the website.
- The automated website analysis confirmed that only 28 percent of the 2,995 websites examined complied with a legally compliant implementation of the cancellation button.
- On websites with a cancellation button, the labels sometimes deviated from the specified wording or were only placed with limited visibility at the end of the webpage.
Ramona Pop, vzbv executive, commented: "It is unacceptable that not all companies have yet implemented the cancellation button on time. Companies have had enough time to deal with the new legal situation and its effects on practice."
Source: vzbv
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