Marketing is at an all time low. That is not to say that marketing is unsuccessful in any definition of the term, but rather that some of its practices are as unethical as ever. One known ploy is negative option marketing. This legal (in most of the world) scam (yes, I’m aware of the oxymoron) is a practice where extra services or goods are provided for the client for a limited time with no extra charge. The providers deceit lies in attempting to slide by you the fact that failing to cancel your extra services by the end of the trial period will be at your (and your bank account’s) expense. This “strategy” has been and is used by numerous magazines and cable providers. One of the most famous of the group is Rogers Cable, who, in 1995, attempted to get customers to purchase specialty channels unless the customer actively opted out of it. Thankfully, There was a large kerfuffle made over this and Rogers eventually backed down, but only after they received over a hundred thousand calls with regards to the billing and lost thousands of clients.

In short, it is simply unfair and unethical for the client to be forced to take action to prevent paying for a service that they in no way wanted or asked for. Imagine if all of the services and goods you subscribe to used negative option billing, one would be forced to spend hours upon hours canceling all the extra “free” stuff. Yet, for magazines, black option billing is done all the time because it is thought to be standard procedure. Thankfully, in British Columbia as well as Ontario, this type of marketing is illegal. Simply put, although it can be called negative option marketing, it is not a (good) marketing at all and is essentially counterproductive.