Consumer Agency: "1 in 3 Consumers Have Experienced Accidental Subscription Auto-Payments"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeon Jinyoung] The Korea Consumer Agency announced on the 15th that consumer complaints related to subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) for creating or editing documents, photos, and videos continue to persist.

Among 268 consumer consultations related to SaaS received by the Consumer Counseling Center over two years from 2019 to November of last year, complaints about contract cancellations accounted for the largest portion at 50.4%, followed by withdrawal of subscription at 20.9%.

As a result of investigating the contract condition disclosures of 30 SaaS applications sold on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, 93.3% of the surveyed apps simply indicated at the contract stage that "cancellation is possible at any time" without providing guidance on the effects of cancellation. Regarding the method of withdrawal, 86.7% (26 apps) did not display this information at the contract stage, making it difficult for consumers to understand the specific details.

Additionally, a survey of 507 consumers who had experience using software subscriptions via regular payments over the past year revealed that 33.9% of respondents had unintentionally subscribed to a recurring payment due to error or mistake.

The reasons included "failure to cancel subscription during the free trial period" at 55.2% (95 people), "not checking notifications before payment or at the end of the free trial period" at 41.9% (72 people), and "misunderstanding the meaning of free trials" at 38.4% (66 people), among others.

More than half of the app terms of service being written in English also increased consumer confusion. Among the 30 apps surveyed, 53.3% (16 apps) had terms of service written in English, which appears to be due to most app developers being overseas businesses.

Based on these findings, the Korea Consumer Agency recommended to app market operators (Google and Apple) to ▲ clarify the display of payment and cancellation information by app developers ▲ provide Korean versions of app terms of service ▲ strengthen notifications regarding the end of free trial periods.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.