Illusion of Choice, Illusion of Consent: The Bite of Apple — Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal

Which choice is the default choice can make a big difference for a software companies profits. When Apple notified me it was going to charge me $11.99 a year for iCloud services I didn’t need and never asked for, it was quite annoying that I had to research how to undo things to avoid being charged. I thought they were giving me a lesser of two evils choice of pay $11.99 a year or pay in trouble and bother and time. But it turned out to be worse. I unchecked backup for my iPhone photos–something I had never asked for and didn’t realize was happening. Then I went through the procedure to downgrade (not a well-displayed option at all) and got to the window you can see at the top of this post. I have the “free option” checked, but the “Done” button is grayed out and does not function. So there is no way to save my choice, and as far as I know I am still slated to be charged $11.99 on December 21.

Note how it says that I am using less than 1 gigabyte, so it wasn’t a problem of lagged recognition of unchecking the photo backup on my iphone.

I suspect there is a way to fix this by going to my local Apple Store or calling up customer service. But that isn’t fair at all! That is definitely charging me more than $11.99 in time and bother to avoid a $11.99 charge. And maybe if I were more of an expert, I would know what to do, but I am fairly confident that many, many people would have the same problem I had and give up–which means paying up. This is bad enough I think it could easily constitute an anti-trust violation.