Not discriminating

Can I buy a single bag without signing up for a recurring subscription?

ALS-COFFEE-1.1-TERMS-001

This question is executable, but nearly every page answers it the same way — so the answer carries almost no information, and it is published rather than run.

Assertion

one_time_purchase_available no_blocking_condition true

Applicability

applies when
any purchasable coffee product
signal
product text is readable

Accepted evidence

  • product_description — the absence of any statement that a subscription is required, which the engine reports as an inference rather than as proof

Explicitly insufficient evidence

What does not count, and why. Published because the omission is where a check quietly becomes a claim.

  • "cancel anytime", "no commitment", "pause, skip or cancel"
    Every one of these is a statement about exiting a subscription and is fully compatible with there being no one-time option at all, so treating them as reassurance inverts their meaning.
  • a bare price with no billing period
    Subscription-only pages routinely display a price whose recurrence lives in a preselected radio label or a client-side widget, so a price is not evidence a one-time purchase exists.
  • a "subscribe and save" badge
    It implies a comparison price without establishing that the comparison price is purchasable on its own.
  • "add to cart" button text
    It is identical on subscription-only pages, so it carries no information about the purchase mode.
  • the absence of the word subscription in the page source
    Subscription selectors are commonly injected client-side, so absence from server-rendered text is not evidence of absence from the page.

Conflict rules

  • When a one-time option is present but disabled or out of stock — then the absence-based inference cannot see this at all, which is a limit of the assertion rather than a finding about the store

Discrimination

Predicted fail rate: 0-10% (predicted, not yet measured)

The engine searches only for explicit requirement phrasings such as "subscription required", which almost no page contains, and its own source records that this row therefore returns a passing state for very nearly everyone and would read as a guard that never fires. It is also the only requirement kind that can never produce evidenced proof, only an absence-based inference. Both facts point the same way and the row is published rather than run.

For a shopper

Subscription-first selling is common in coffee and the phrase to distrust is "cancel anytime", which describes leaving a subscription rather than avoiding one. The check that works is whether a one-time option is selectable and priced before you enter payment details.

For a merchant

State plainly that a one-time purchase is available and make it selectable without preselecting the recurring option, so a buyer does not have to infer the purchase mode from a radio button.

Grounding

  • US Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, 15 USC 8403 (legal_instrument)
    that a negative-option feature requires clear and conspicuous disclosure of all material terms before obtaining billing information, which makes default enrolment and undisclosed recurrence a regulated web-page failure rather than a design choice
  • Internal measurement recorded in src/server/productTest.ts (internal_measurement)
    that the engine's own source records this row as returning a passing state unless a hard blocker is found, so its failure count is very nearly never non-zero and it would read as a guard that never fires