Cancellation Button and Chat: Handling Requests to Cancel

Anyone who wants to end a subscription, a membership or a software contract often asks in the chat first. For an assistant that otherwise answers questions and recommends products, this is a different task: it is not meant to persuade, but to show the way out. For contracts that consumers can conclude via a website, Sec. 312k BGB describes that way precisely, with a cancellation button, a confirmation page and an acknowledgement of receipt. This article shows what the provision requires, what role a chat assistant may play alongside it, what it should refrain from and where it hands over to a person. It explains the legal position and does not replace professional advice in an individual case.

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Labels in the illustration

• Chat
• Website
• Business
• 1
• Spot the request
• “I want to cancel”
• 2
• Point the way
• Name page and source
• Deadline, reason, validity
• Handover to a person
• 3
• Verträge hier kündigen
• Cancellation button
• 4
• Confirmation page
• Details, “jetzt kündigen”
• Not before step 3:
• forced offer, detour,
• reason as a condition
• Sec. 4a UWG: onerous
• obstacles to cancelling
• 5
• Text-form confirmation
• content, time of receipt, end of contract; immediate, electronic
• Not in the chat window:
• confirming receipt,
• stating the end date
• The chat points the way; under Sec. 312k BGB it generally replaces neither button nor confirmation

Request to cancel in chat: who handles which step

What Sec. 312k BGB Requires

The provision starts from the website. It applies where consumers are enabled via a website to conclude a contract in electronic commerce that is aimed at establishing a continuing obligation and obliges the business to provide a service for payment (Sec. 312k (1) sentence 1 BGB). Typical cases are subscriptions, memberships, software billed monthly, and streaming and telecommunications contracts. Excluded are contracts for whose cancellation the law exclusively provides a stricter form than text form, as well as websites and contracts concerning financial services. Whether a particular contract is covered is a question of the individual case.

Whoever is covered must ensure that the consumer can submit a declaration of ordinary or extraordinary cancellation on the website via a cancellation button. For its label the law sets out exact wording, and an assistant pointing to the button should know precisely these words:

The button must lead the consumer directly to a confirmation page. This page asks the consumer to provide certain details and enables them to do so. At the end there is a second button, labelled “jetzt kündigen” (cancel now) or with a corresponding unambiguous wording; only by using it does the consumer submit the declaration of cancellation. The buttons and the confirmation page must be permanently available as well as directly and easily accessible. The confirmation page asks for these details:

• The type of cancellation, and for an extraordinary cancellation also the reason.
• Details that make the consumer unambiguously identifiable.
• The unambiguous designation of the contract, for example a contract or customer number.
• The point in time at which the cancellation is to end the contractual relationship.
• Details for the swift electronic transmission of the cancellation confirmation, usually an email address.

The Chat Is a Signpost, Not the Button

Going by the wording of Sec. 312k BGB, a chat assistant generally cannot replace these steps. The law describes a button with a fixed label, a page with fixed details and a second button through which the declaration is submitted. A dialogue in which a program asks one question after another is something different, even if it collects the same details in the end. Anyone who moves the cancellation path into the chat and leaves out the button risks not meeting the obligation.

The consequence is set out in subsection 6: if the buttons and the confirmation page are not provided in accordance with subsections 1 and 2, the consumer can cancel the contract concerned at any time and without observing a notice period. The term a business model relies on is then open to question. The chat is therefore not a substitute but an addition. It helps those who cannot find the button or are unsure, and guides them to the place where the cancellation is actually submitted. Especially in industries with many fixed-term contracts, for example at a gym with a chat assistant, cancellation is one of the recurring requests in the chat.

What the Assistant Does With a Request to Cancel

Requests to cancel rarely come in legal language. They read “How do I get out of my contract?”, “I want to end my subscription” or simply “cancel”. An assistant that recognises this as the request should name the way in its first answer, and do so completely: where the button is, how it is labelled, what the confirmation page asks for and that the confirmation then arrives electronically. A follow-up question only makes sense if it helps the customer, for example when several contracts could be meant.

• Name the cancellation path in the first answer, not only after several messages.
• Point to the page with the cancellation button and state its label.
• Say which details the confirmation page requires, so the customer has the contract number to hand, for example.
• Explain that the confirmation comes electronically from the business instead of confirming receipt itself.
• In special cases and for legal questions, hand over to a person together with the conversation so far.

For this answer the assistant needs a basis. If the knowledge base contains a public page describing the cancellation path, it can answer from it and cite the source. If that page is missing, all it can say is that nothing is stored on the subject. In XICBOT this is the intended behaviour: an answer that uses no source is recorded as a gap, and if no excerpt supports the answer, the assistant is instructed to tell the visitor that nothing on this is stored in the knowledge base. For cancellation questions, that is a reason to add the description of the cancellation path to the knowledge base deliberately.

No Obstacles: What Should Not Happen

The most delicate part is not what the assistant says, but what it puts between the request and the way. Sec. 312k BGB requires the button to lead directly to the confirmation page. Competition law draws a more general line: under Sec. 4a UWG, a commercial practice is aggressive if it is likely to significantly impair the consumer’s freedom of decision through harassment, coercion or undue influence. This assessment has to take into account, among other things,

A chat can easily create such barriers, often without intent. A model tuned for helpfulness and customer retention asks follow-up questions, makes offers and redirects, because that is what it does in other conversations too. The following patterns can arise in conversations and should be explicitly ruled out in the assistant’s rules:

• Making the reason for cancelling a condition before the way is named.
• Putting a counter-offer first and revealing the way only after it has been declined.
• Asking several times whether the customer is really sure.
• Referring to another channel, such as a hotline or a letter, although the button exists.
• Describing the way vaguely, such as “somewhere in your account”, instead of naming the page.
• Steering the conversation to another topic as soon as the word cancellation comes up.

Offers to Stay Only on Request

This does not mean an assistant has to stay silent about alternatives. Many customers do not actually want to cancel but are unhappy with a plan, are moving or need a break. If someone asks, information about a smaller plan or a pause is real help. The order is what matters: whoever wants to cancel gets the way first. Whoever asks about alternatives gets the alternatives and, in addition, the note on where cancellation is possible in case they decide otherwise.

This order does not belong in a single answer template but in the assistant’s rules: topic boundary, tone and the rule on when to hand over to a person. How such rules are worded so that they hold up in conversation is described in the article on the system instruction of an assistant. When annoyance goes far enough that a person should take over is covered in detecting frustration in chat. Offers are treated like any other factual statement: the assistant is meant to name only what is stored and not to invent a discount to save a conversation.

The Confirmation Comes From the Business

After the click on “jetzt kündigen” (cancel now), the law looks at both sides. The consumer must be able to save the declaration with the date and time of submission on a durable medium in such a way that it is apparent that it was submitted via the confirmation button (Sec. 312k (3) BGB). The business must confirm receipt, and with fixed content:

Under Sec. 126b BGB, text form means a legible declaration naming the person making it, on a durable medium. Such a medium must enable the recipient to keep or store the declaration and be suitable for reproducing it unchanged. A chat message in a window that empties when the page is closed generally does not meet this; the confirmation belongs in the process that handles the cancellation, typically as an email to the address entered on the confirmation page. If the consumer does not state a point in time when submitting, the cancellation takes effect, in case of doubt, at the earliest possible point in time (Sec. 312k (5) BGB). Which day that is, is stated in the business’s confirmation; the assistant can refer to it and does not have to determine it itself.

Reasons and Validity: Where the Subject Limit Applies

Besides the way, questions come up in the chat that require a legal assessment: Can I leave the contract early because I am moving? Is the cancellation I sent last week valid? Can I cancel immediately after a price increase? Each of these questions depends on the individual contract and on circumstances an assistant cannot check. An answer would be legal advice in an individual case, and a wrong answer may cost the customer a deadline. Factual statements from the operator’s own documents, such as the term of a plan, are a different matter: the assistant reproduces them and cites the source; only applying them to the individual contract would be an assessment.

XICBOT treats this boundary as a fixed limit. No legal advice means: no assessment of an individual case, no statement on which deadline applies in the visitor’s case or whether it has been met, no assessment of prospects of success or claims. A deadline that appears in a stored excerpt, such as the notice period of a plan, is not covered by this; the assistant states it with the source. The limit takes precedence over any role, topic boundary and handover rule an operator sets, and it cannot be unlocked. If a question touches it, the assistant says in one sentence that it is not allowed to judge this, names the way to a person and hands over. So that the limit is not merely a request to the model, the service checks the question and the finished answer a second time and, on a match, itself appends the mandatory notice naming the limit touched. This second check looks for words from a built-in list; none of the three questions above contains one of them, so for these it comes down to the instruction to the model.

Special Cases Go to a Person

Not every request to cancel fits the standard path. Some cases need a person who may look at the contract and decide. These are typical:

• An extraordinary cancellation where the customer describes a reason and wants to know whether it holds.
• A cancellation on behalf of another person, for example after a death or with a power of attorney.
• A contract that the customer cannot clearly designate on the confirmation page.
• A dispute about the term, billing or a cancellation already submitted.
• A message that combines a cancellation with a complaint.
• Uncertainty as to whether a withdrawal or a cancellation is meant.

In these cases, better wording does not help; a person with access to the contract does. The handover should carry the conversation history, so that the customer does not have to repeat the request, and arrive at the team that processes cancellations. How such a handover is structured is described in when the assistant should hand over to people. In XICBOT, the handover sets the conversation to escalated, creates a record and notifies a person. For the assistant to hand over the cases above, they belong explicitly in its handover rule. The frustration detection does count the German word “kündigen” (cancel) as an annoyance word, but with the default threshold it only hands over after a further signal in the same conversation, such as a second “kündigen”. Until someone takes over, the assistant keeps answering and can name the way to the button.

Setup and Test Questions Before Go-Live

For the assistant to fill this role, it needs a source, rules and an acceptance test. The source is a public page that describes the cancellation path in words: where the button is, how it is labelled, which details are requested and how the confirmation arrives. If the page with the button itself cannot be reached for ingestion, this description belongs on a help page. The rules lay down that the way is named first, offers follow only on request and special cases are handed over. The conversation analytics show under which topics cancellation questions turn up in operation and what share of them is handed over.

The second check from the section on the subject limit can be extended on the assistant: under “Custom trigger words per topic”, the operator adds terms such as “fristlos” (without notice), “Sonderkündigung” (special termination) or “wirksam gekündigt” (validly cancelled) to the Legal topic. A question containing such a word is then handed over; a question without one is not recognised by this check. Questions about moving house or a price increase therefore belong in the handover rule and, as test questions, in the acceptance test. The search matches parts of words and also covers the assistant’s answer; a match there gives even an ordinary answer from the stored terms the notice on legal advice. A broad word such as “wirksam” (valid) would thus also match “unwirksam” (invalid) or “Wirksamkeit” (validity), and a general one such as “kündigen” (cancel) would also match requests to cancel for which the way is enough.

• A public page describes the cancellation path and has been added to the knowledge base.
• The assistant’s rules name the cancellation path as the first answer to a request to cancel.
• Plan changes and pauses are stored in the knowledge base and are only mentioned on request.
• The handover rule covers extraordinary cancellations, cases of representation and disputes.
• The handover rule also names cancellations declared in the chat window, questions about the end or status of one’s own contract and questions about a right to cancel, for example because of moving house or a price increase.
• Under “Custom trigger words per topic”, the Legal topic contains narrow terms such as “fristlos” (without notice), “Sonderkündigung” (special termination) or “wirksam gekündigt” (validly cancelled), not a general “kündigen” (cancel).
• The handover goes to the team that processes cancellations.

Whether this holds up is shown by test questions that are asked before go-live and whose answers are signed off, and again after every change to rules or knowledge base. How such an acceptance test is structured overall is described in acceptance testing an AI assistant before go-live. For cancellations, these questions are suitable:

Frequent questions