Deceptive Patterns
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America’s Test Kitchen: Difficult to cancel free trial/subscription

Author
Dark Patterns Tip Line
Date
30 Jan 2022

“Their website offers free 14 day free trials that require you to enter your credit card information and promise that you can cancel at any time. Once you are signed up however you are unable to remove your credit card information and have to call a hotline in order to cancel. This hotline has long wait times and repeatedly drops your call. This is the only way to cancel.”

America’s Test Kitchen was reported to the Deceptive Design Tip Line over its free trial and the process for cancelling. According to the report, the website offers a 14-day free trial that requires the customer to enter their credit card details and promises that they can cancel at any time. The reporter said that, once signed up, they could not remove their card details and could cancel only by calling a hotline, which had long wait times and repeatedly dropped the call, and was the only way to cancel.