I wanted to cancel my Ubisoft+ subscription because I haven’t touched it in ages, and of course they’ve made it as painful as possible. This is known as a dark pattern.
Common subscription dark patterns include:
- Making it easy to sign up but nearly impossible to cancel
- Hiding cancel buttons or making them hard to find
- Requiring you to call during “business hours” to cancel
- Forcing you to “fix” payment issues before allowing cancellation
- Making you jump through multiple confirmation screens
The Problem
The cancellation form exists - it’s right there in the HTML:
<form action="https://store.ubisoft.com/anz/subscription-cancellation?lang=en_NZ" method="post">
</form>
But instead of a “Cancel” button, they only show “Manage my payment method”. Absolute cowboys:
The Solution
There’s a trick though. Open your browser console (devtools, F12) and chuck this in:
document.querySelector('form[name="dwfrm_subscriptioncancellation"]').submit();
You may have to type allow pasting for Chromium browsers (I used Brave).
This is what I did:
const form = document.querySelector('form[name="dwfrm_subscriptioncancellation"]');
if (form) {
form.submit();
}
That’ll force the form to submit even though they’ve hidden the cancel button. This should work regardless of what other buttons they show or hide.
The Legal Side
This kind of crap is probably illegal under the Fair Trading Act in NZ. Under the Act, businesses can’t use misleading or deceptive conduct, and subscription services should make cancellation “as easy as signing up.”
You could file a complaint with the Commerce Commission if you’re feeling motivated.
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