I think this is an example of contracts being broken, often online but elsewhere too. You can't rent a hotel room without a credit card which helps hotels avoid you running off without paying for minibar peanuts or rock star damage to a room. OTOH, the fact that you can't update your iphone, rent a hotel room or do a lot of other things without agreeing to a "contract" or policy so long that it's impractical to read it, is a clear sign this institution is broken.
We need new laws. Not the vague hodgepodge we have now. Policies designed to not be read need to be considered completely invalid. This credit card charge should be treated like any merchant taking a card and then charging £100 more than expected. Fraud, theft, some mild form of racketeering, whatever that falls under.
I think the most common abuse of this sort is "out of contract" telecom charges where using 2X the contract number of minutes or data could result in over 10X (often over 100x) the cost of the original contract.
I'm not sure how exactly the laws need to work, but there is obvious stretching of the systems well past the point of ridiculous. An iphone privacy policy or a hotel "sign this" agreement is not free actors contracting freely.
Also, the sooner "pull" payments become a rare exception, the better. If hotels need some sort of escrow, then it should be an escrow.
We need new laws. Not the vague hodgepodge we have now. Policies designed to not be read need to be considered completely invalid. This credit card charge should be treated like any merchant taking a card and then charging £100 more than expected. Fraud, theft, some mild form of racketeering, whatever that falls under.
I think the most common abuse of this sort is "out of contract" telecom charges where using 2X the contract number of minutes or data could result in over 10X (often over 100x) the cost of the original contract.
I'm not sure how exactly the laws need to work, but there is obvious stretching of the systems well past the point of ridiculous. An iphone privacy policy or a hotel "sign this" agreement is not free actors contracting freely.
Also, the sooner "pull" payments become a rare exception, the better. If hotels need some sort of escrow, then it should be an escrow.