Warner Bros. Discovery
Communication Services
76
out of 100. Number 23 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Warner Bros. Discovery does well
- Cancellation itself is straightforward: 'YOU CAN CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AT ANY TIME,' access continues through the paid period, and direct-billed users cancel in their Max account settings.
- The arbitration clause has real consumer guardrails: small-claims court remains an option, Max pays arbitration filing and hearing costs for claims under US$75,000, and if an award beats Max's settlement offer the subscriber gets at least US$10,000 plus double attorney's fees — Max also agrees not to seek its own attorney's fees from you even if it wins.
- On privacy, Max is unusually candid: it plainly lists what it 'sold or shared' under CCPA and offers opt-out rights, rather than hiding data sales.
- Subscription providers must communicate price changes 'in accordance with applicable law,' and in states like California and New York advance price-change notice is legally required, blunting the 'without notice' clause.
You cannot sue Max in court or join a class action; almost all disputes must go through private, individual arbitration.
The fine print
12 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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You cannot sue Max in court or join a class action; almost all disputes must go through private, individual arbitration. You also give up your right to a jury trial.
THIS AGREEMENT REQUIRES THE USE OF ARBITRATION ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS TO RESOLVE DISPUTES, RATHER THAN COURTS OR JURY TRIALS, AND LIMITS THE REMEDIES AVAILABLE IN THE EVENT OF A DISPUTE.
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Even if Max harms millions of users the same way, you must fight them alone — no class actions, no group cases, no representative claims.
YOU AND WE AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN YOUR OR OUR INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, REPRESENTATIVE, OR PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL PROCEEDING.
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Cancel a day late and you're charged for the whole next cycle — and you get no refund, credit, or partial refund even if you cancel minutes into it.
YOU MUST CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION BEFORE IT RENEWS IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING CHARGED FOR THE NEXT CYCLE'S SUBSCRIPTION FEE. ... UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WE DO NOT PROVIDE REFUNDS FOR ANY SUBSCRIPTION; NOR DO WE PROVIDE CREDIT, REFUNDS, OR PRORATED BILLING FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS THAT ARE CANCELLED.
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A free trial silently converts into a paid subscription — Max openly says it won't tell you the trial is ending unless the law forces it to.
UNLESS YOU DULY TIMELY CANCEL YOUR TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION BEFORE THE RENEWAL DATE, UPON THE EXPIRATION OF YOUR TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION, YOUR SUBSCRIPTION WILL CONTINUE AS A CHARGEABLE SUBSCRIPTION AND THE SUBSCRIPTION FEE FOR THE PLATFORM WILL BE CHARGED TO YOUR PAYMENT METHOD. ... We will not notify you that your Trial Subscription or promotional pricing offer is about to end unless we are required to do so by applicable law.
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Max explicitly admits it has 'sold or shared' your identifiers, viewing/activity data, location, and ad-targeting profiles with advertisers, analytics firms, affiliates, and social media platforms in the last year.
Applying these definitions, we may have sold or shared the following categories of personal information in the past 12 months: Online identifiers; Demographic information; Commercial and transactions information; Internet or other electronic network activity information; Coarse geolocation data; and Inferences, such as audience segmentation. In the past 12 months, we have sold or shared each of the categories of personal information listed above to: Our affiliates; Promotional partners; Advertising partners; Analytics partners; and Social media platforms.
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Max feeds your info (hashed) into the ad-tech ecosystem — including real-time bidding auctions — and hands custom audience segments to third parties for marketing.
AdTech Providers. We share certain Information with third parties (e.g. other companies, retailers, research organisations, advertisers, ad agencies, advertising networks and platforms, participatory databases, publishers, and non-profit organisations) for processing generally in a hashed or de-identified form, to provide advertising to you based on your interests, including where applicable, through real-time bidding. In some instances, we may also share segments or custom audience data with third parties for marketing purposes.
HBO Max Privacy Policy (verbatim copy of www.hbomax.com/privacy/en-us)
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Max can raise your subscription price without telling you first — the only limit is whatever notice the law happens to require in your state.
The pricing and offers for Subscriptions to the Platform may vary by Service Area (or within a Service Area) and we may change them over time without notice (except as may be required by applicable law).
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Even the ad-free tiers can get ads inserted at any time, with no advance warning — the terms reserve that right outright.
Certain Content within the Platform may be ad-financed and that Content may change from time to time. As of the Effective Date of these Terms, Content on the HBO service and certain other Content does not contain advertising, but that may change at any time and without advance notice.
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There is no fixed deletion timeline: Max keeps your data as long as it deems 'reasonably needed' — including to 'enforce' its terms — and cancelling doesn't trigger deletion.
We retain personal information we collect only for so long as reasonably needed to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it. ... if you register on our Services, we will store your personal information for as long as needed to maintain your account, fulfill your requests, enforce any applicable terms that govern your use of the Services, maintain appropriate records of the above, or as otherwise required by law.
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If many users file the same complaint at once, Max slows them down with staged arbitration waves (50, then 100, then 200 claims at a time) instead of letting claims proceed normally — a 'mass filing' dragnet built into the terms.
If, at any time, 25 or more claimants (including you) submit Notices or seek to file demands for arbitration raising similar claims ... Stage One: Counsel for the claimants and counsel for TNT shall each select 25 claims per side (50 claims total) to be filed and to proceed in individual arbitrations as part of a staged process. ... If your claim is not resolved as part of the staged process ... Stage Two ... Stage Three ...
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Even with an expired card, your subscription renews and you owe the money — plus any collection, bank, and legal costs if they chase you for it.
If your Payment Method expires and you do not update your Payment Method or cancel your Subscription before it automatically renews, you authorise us and/or our Payment Service to continue billing, and you will remain responsible for any uncollected amounts. ... you will remain liable for all amounts and all costs incurred to collect these amounts, such as bank overdraft fees, collection agency fees, reasonable attorneys' fees, and arbitration costs.
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Max monitors your usage and device data to police the terms, and blocking that data collection is itself a breach that can get your account killed.
We may gather data on Platform usage and other information to ensure that the Platform is being used in accordance with these Terms. You agree not to block this transmission of data. If you do so, it will be considered a violation of these Terms and may result in immediate termination of your Subscription.
How these were found
The current US Max subscriber agreement (play.max.com/max.com) is JavaScript-gated and could not be fetched directly; the billing/auto-renew/pricing clauses come from the official WarnerMedia Direct 'HBO Max Terms of Use' PDF (a verbatim copy hosted on telia.fi, crawled ~153 days ago; ~2021 vintage — service rebranded back to HBO Max in 2025–2026, so current wording may have changed). The WBD consumer Terms of Use at http://www.tntdrama.com/terms (updated May 21, 2024) was read in full directly. The HBO Max Privacy Policy main page is also JS-gated; data-sharing quotes come from a verbatim text mirror of www.hbomax.com/privacy/en-us (github ruevaughn/privacy-terms-observatory) and from live search snippets of the official hbomax.com/privacy/usrights/en-us page (crawled 8 days ago). The wbd.com/apex Terms of Use and Privacy Notice are supplier-portal documents, not consumer docs — not relied on for scoring. VPPA claims about Max sharing viewing histories with Meta/Facebook are allegations in filed lawsuits reported by Bloomberg Law (2024–2025), not adjudicated findings.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.