Today, the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) presented its current research results on the implementation of the cancellation button on the Internet, one year after having become the law. According to the results, a legally compliant implementation of the cancellation button was present on merely 42 percent of the examined websites.
The vzbv developed a Python script for automated website analysis and thus determined a total of 3,000 websites of different providers in November 2023, which are obliged to offer a cancellation button since July 2022. First in November 2022 and later in June 2023, a final 2,946 of these pages were subjected to automated website analysis for compliance with the button solution.
These are further details:
- Only 42 percent of the analyzed websites had a legally compliant implementation of the cancellation button, so that consumers could easily cancel online.
- However, compared to the first survey from November 2022, the number of websites with a cancellation button increased by 14 percentage points from 28 to 42 percent in the current review in June 2023.
- Since July 1, 2022, providers of paid-for long-term contracts have been obliged to set up a cancellation button on their website to make it easier for consumers to cancel newspaper subscriptions, streaming services, mobile phone or electricity supply contracts online.
Ramona Pop, executive director of the vzbv, commented: "Consumers must be able to cancel contracts offered online with one click. The fact that even after one year the majority of the investigated providers do not comply with this obligation is unacceptable. Companies have had enough time to come to terms with the new legal situation. There is no excuse if the cancellation button is still missing or poorly implemented. We continue to observe that providers only make the final cancellation form available after the customer login. However, in the opinion of the vzbv, this is not permitted. For consumers there are therefore still considerable obstacles and problems if they want to cancel contracts online."
Source: vzbv
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