RealNetworks will create a $2 million “claims-based pool” for all...
RealNetworks will create a $2 million “claims-based pool” for all U.S. consumers who unwittingly signed up for paid subscriptions, in a settlement with Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, his office said Thursday. The office and the Better Business Bureau have…
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received more than 500 complaints since 2005 about “odd charges” appearing on consumers’ credit cards for “monthly subscriptions for premium television, sports or game content that they never ordered,” owing to “pre-checked boxes” on RealNetworks’ free trials that, in “fine print,” automatically charge the consumer once the trial ends, the office said. “People were charged for months -- sometimes years -- paying hundreds of dollars for subscriptions they knew nothing about,” McKenna said. The office said some consumers told it they had trouble getting RealNetworks to stop the charges, were offered more free trials when they tried to cancel, or were only given partial refunds even when they canceled service before the trial ended. As part of the settlement in King County Superior Court (http://xrl.us/bm9asw), the company said it will stop using pre-checked boxes to obtain consent, stop offering “free-to-pay conversions” that don’t clearly disclose automatic charges for subscriptions, provide an online method of cancellation, remind consumers by email that they're in a free-to-pay conversion and give instructions on how to cancel, and inform consumers who have called to cancel a subscription of “additional subscriptions on their account.” The $2 million pool will cover the three-year period prior to December 2009 when the alleged practices were “most common,” McKenna’s office said: RealNetworks voluntarily has made “numerous changes” since then. RealNetworks will also pay $400,000 in the state’s legal fees as part of the settlement. Consumers who unwittingly signed up through pre-checked boxes will get a postcard informing them of their eligibility for the pool, and they can also visit www.realnetworksrestitution.com to submit a claim. President Thomas Nielsen said separately the company disagreed with McKenna’s court complaint -- filed concurrently with the settlement -- but “we acknowledge that some aspects of RealNetworks’ e-commerce practices were not what our customers expected of us,” and “were not up to the high standards we expect of ourselves.” The company stopped the faulted practices “years ago,” before McKenna’s office reached out, Nielsen said. The company has created a “customer bill of rights” and start a new site, www.realnetworksfacts.com, so customers, employees and stakeholders can “understand the situation and all that we've done, and are doing, to make things right for our customers,” Nielsen said.