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by wkat4242 411 days ago
That's also something that's the fault of US lawmakers. In the EU cancelling a service must be as easy and through the same channels as signing up. Hence it's illegal to require that customers mail a hand-posted registered letter only on the second Tuesday of the month. Unless that's also the only way to sign up.

Transferring you to a "customer loyalty specialist" when cancelling is also illegal if you refuse.

Don't worship Apple because they're a bit more "consumer friendly" (while cashing in 30% for the privilege!!) when you could have everything be customer friendly for free just by electing honest politicians.

2 comments

Fair point, and I don’t worship them. Reality is US governance philosophy is that the market will mostly self-regulate. Apple’s behavior is best aligned with my interest.

If i were an app developer, maker of Skinner box games, or selling virtual products, i would feel differently. But I’m not, and allowing Amazon to extract more margin in exchange for cheapening my experience does nothing to benefit me.

So Apple is bad because US lawmakers aren’t forcing other companies to follow their practices.
No they're bad because of the 30%. But almost all American companies are bad, really. It's just a inevitability in unrestricted capitalism. That's why we need the EU to put legal constraints on them. Apple isn't the bad Apple in the bunch but they're not great either.