Emerging Issue - Negative Option Marketing

Negative option offers come in a variety of forms, but generally these offers contain a term or condition under which the seller may interpret a consumer's silence or failure to take affirmative action to reject a good or service or to cancel the agreement as acceptance or continuing acceptance of the offer.

These types of offers can be made in several different ways, including:

• Pre-notification negative option plans, whereby sellers send periodic notices offering goods. If consumers take no action, sellers send the goods and charge consumers.
• Continuity plans, under which consumers agree in advance to receive periodic shipments of goods or provision of services, charged at regular intervals until they cancel the contract.