California Automatic Renewal Compliance Law

It looks like CA Senate Bill 313 requires club members to be able to cancel their membership online. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB313

Is there any way to add functionality to a WD site that allows a club member to cancel their membership while they’re on the winery website?

Thanks!
/Bradley

I’m no lawyer, but the text of the law below would seem to allow email as an acceptable mechanism for requesting a cancellation:

(b) A business that makes an automatic renewal offer or continuous service offer shall provide a toll-free telephone number, electronic mail address, a postal address if the seller directly bills the consumer, or it shall provide another cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation that shall be described in the acknowledgment specified in paragraph (3) of subdivision (a).

(c) In addition to the requirements of subdivision (b), a consumer who accepts an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall be allowed to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, which may include a termination email formatted and provided by the business that a consumer can send to the business without additional information.

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Thanks @ElJefe!

My plan was to have a mailto link that already had cancellation text inside the body of the email. I’m hoping that will suffice for now.

I’d love to hear how other wineries are prepping for this change?

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FYI, WineDirect is building a feature you can turn on to allow members to cancel online.

https://ideas.winedirect.com/ideas/SUB-I-201

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Hi @BradleyPirman3 - Thanks for flagging this and thanks @ElJefe and @EdFarmCollective for chiming in.

We agree with the solution to create a “mailto:” link with cancellation subject line or email text pre-filled. This link should live somewhere easily accessible on your website, but there are no specific requirements as to where.

Another option would be to create a club cancellation form, where you could ask additional questions such as reason for cancelling, and embed it on a dedicated Club Cancellation page.

This section of the law that states the requirement to “provide an acknowledgment that includes … information regarding how to cancel in a manner that is capable of being retained by the consumer” suggests that you would need to provide the “mailto” link and/or the link to cancellation form in your wine club sign up confirmation email and in subsequent club notification emails.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and WineDirect does not provide legal advice, so we always recommend consulting your own counsel in these matters.

As @EdFarmCollective noted, we are working on building the capability for club members to cancel fully online. It’s part of a comprehensive update we are making to our club tools, which we expect to begin testing out later this year.

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@adriennestillman I’m assuming that you’ve released this functionality, but I can’t seem to find anything in documentation about it. Would you be able to point me to documentation?

Thanks!

WineDirect never completed this iteration of the Wine Club tools, but is working on it for when they move onto Big Commerce.