'Click-to-Cancel' Rule Would Penalize Companies That Make You Cancel By Phone (arstechnica.com) 101
Canceling a subscription should be just as easy as signing up for the service, the Federal Trade Commission said in a proposed "click-to-cancel" rule announced today. If approved, the plan "would put an end to companies requiring you to call customer service to cancel an account that you opened on their website," FTC commissioners said. From a report: The FTC said the click-to-cancel rule would require sellers "to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up," and "go a long way to rescuing consumers from seemingly never-ending struggles to cancel unwanted subscription payment plans for everything from cosmetics to newspapers to gym memberships."
The FTC said the proposed rule would be enforced with civil penalties and let the commission return money to harmed consumers. "The proposal states that if consumers can sign up for subscriptions online, they should be able to cancel online, with the same number of steps. If consumers can open an account over the phone, they should be able to cancel it over the phone, without endless delays," FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote. The FTC is seeking public comment on the proposal, which also includes other changes to the commission's 1973 Negative Option Rule. "Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn't sign up for in the first place," Khan said.
The FTC said the proposed rule would be enforced with civil penalties and let the commission return money to harmed consumers. "The proposal states that if consumers can sign up for subscriptions online, they should be able to cancel online, with the same number of steps. If consumers can open an account over the phone, they should be able to cancel it over the phone, without endless delays," FTC Chair Lina Khan wrote. The FTC is seeking public comment on the proposal, which also includes other changes to the commission's 1973 Negative Option Rule. "Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn't sign up for in the first place," Khan said.
LA Times (Score:2)
Looking at you LA Times.
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...and NY Times.
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"..and NY Times."
And the Catholic church.
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And PayPal.
Re:LA Times (Score:5, Funny)
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...and my red stapler...
Re:LA Times (Score:5, Informative)
...and Sirius XM satellite radio. Not only can't you do it online, the first line of people who answer the phone can't do it either. It needs to go a team that specializes in trying to stop you.
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I just let my temp subscription with the car expire. Then during one service visit it was re-enabled for a month or two. This lasted a bit longer than it was first claimed, but eventually it lapsed. However, I was getting spam email from then weekly after this second temp subscription started, when daily for awhile, often telling me the sub is "about to expire". After I let it lapse, and it seemed to be actually lapsed, I would still get email spam asking to subscribe, with _only_ $5 a month. I still ge
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The situation is that every vehicle containing a satellite-enabled device is a sunk cost. It costs them basically nothing to add a subscriber. So a subscription - even a very cheap one - is 100% profit. SO they'll go lower and lower - to a point. If it can be had for $20/year, then everybody will drive their negotiation to that. But I paid as low as $75 for a year.
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my dad and sister were paying less than 5$ a month for Sirius at one point because they kept talking them down
i have chat logs where the customer service rep kept me online for 45 minutes, despite several pleasant and very clear requests to be removed and not offered more options, eventually it turned ugly. luckily its easy for me to copy and paste FUCK YOU SCUMBAGS over and over again until you cancel my account.
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Speaking of spam, I get at least one letter a month from AAA asking if I want life insurance.
The amount of money they spend trying to get me to sign up for life insurance has got to at least cancel out the amount of money that I spend on their roadside assistance program.... I honestly don't get it.
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...and Sirius XM satellite radio. Not only can't you do it online, the first line of people who answer the phone can't do it either. It needs to go a team that specializes in trying to stop you.
I still remember having to cancel that back in the day. They kept offering me free months of service even after I told them I was cancelling because the overcompressed audio quality was absolutely intolerable. I ended up telling the representative I wouldn't even want to use the service even if you gave it to me for free for the rest of my life, there's just too many compression artifacts in the music.
Re:LA Times (Score:4, Funny)
You should try using Monster antennas. They're made of stretched oxygen-free copper. (The stretching helps counteract compression artifacts.) They're a little pricey, but totally worth it if you want to actually hear music through the distortions. I can get you a discount, but you gotta be cool.
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But not as bad as Bit.ly. Once you pay, the money is theirs. No matter if they lied about services. As part of this law any service must have at least some grace period, like 14-45 days.
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And XM Radio
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porn is written right there in between the lines. have you have never tried to cancel a porn subscription? at least legit businesses have someone to call no matter how long it takes. try argueing with a chatbot.
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have you have never tried to cancel a porn subscription?
You PAID for porn?? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
Oh my.
Re: porn (Score:2)
Someone has to. Instead of laughing at them be grateful that their money subsidized your viewing.
Don't forget gym memberships (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear you need a good lawyer to get out of those.
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So Friends was actually funny.
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Re: Don't forget gym memberships (Score:1, Troll)
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/adaen... [buzzfeed.com]
Also guessing you complain when they put a token black person in series.
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Yeah but if you want to be vengeful you could disrupt their business model and actually use the gym, get ripped and ruin their party at the same time.
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I think you meant I should go there, pretend to work out, remain repulsive, and scare off all of their younger users.
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Also avoid anyone recording themselves at the gym. Bring a tuke and pull it over your eyes to make sure you don't end up a tik tok creep, and always work out with your face at the wall.
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The FTC said the click-to-cancel rule would require sellers "to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up," and "go a long way to rescuing consumers from seemingly never-ending struggles to cancel unwanted subscription payment plans for everything from cosmetics to newspapers to gym memberships."
RTFS
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You're probably being sarcastic, but it's actually real.
Often for these you have to send a letter saying you intend to cancel your subscription and it will take place 30 days from the date of receipt of the letter. A real letter with a stamp, sent via the mail system.
Though, it wouldn't surprise me if the address was somewhere in Timbuktu and it requires hand delivery to someone who is only there for 5 minutes on a blue moon at some random conjunction of the
Can't believe this is not already the law (Score:2)
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Failing that, people could just start actually reading their membership agreements and follow the listed cancellation steps. They all have them.
Oh, and be sure to create a paper trail. Send the cancellation notice by certified mail, so they can't deny having received it. The membership will get cancelled.
Ton of corrupt companies (Score:2, Troll)
Basically any company where people sign up and do not actually use it. They claim you are paying for the right to use it, not actual use.
But no one ever uses them, like gym memberships.
Or credit monitoring
or Disney +
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Disney+ is a critical tool for babysitters of the 5-years-and-under type. It's a business expense.
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I'm sure your children are perfect angels at all times, but most occasionally have meltdowns, and watching a familiar story is very calming to them. Has nothing to do with not liking kids and everything to do with understanding that sometimes interacting with a stranger [even a regular babysitter] is just an added stressor.
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"Basically any company where people sign up and do not actually use it. They claim you are paying for the right to use it, not actual use.
How is this the company's fault? You could access your paid for service at anytime (within the guidelines provided), but if you have chosen not to do so, that is equally not the company's problem either. Or look at it from the reverse angle, you would expect to be able to use the service you paid for when you want (except for Timeshares, and there is a special place in
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I don't know if this is what they meant, but one of my bugbears is rolling contracts. You are automatically entered into another 30 day contract at the end of the previous one and so you have to pay for the month that you didn't use and give them 30 days cancellation notice so really you are 2x30days payments for a service you aren't using. And don't be surprised if an administrative "error" means they didn't actually cancel it. Twice I've had the "oh, you actually can only cancel a maximum of 7 days before
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And this is why I will not sign up to any online video subscription services, such as Netflix or Crave. It would only create a bottomless pit in my wallet that I would not be able to fill in or plug.
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Disney Plus was easy to cancel. All I had to do was go online and it took all of a minute to accomplish.
This is the way.
Cancelling your credit cards does wonders for them (Score:2)
It's a pain, sure, but cancelling my credit cards last year when my wallet was stolen finally ended several subscriptions. Can't get out of your gym membership? Contact your local mugger! (He probably works out at the gym.)
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Why do you need to do that to cancel your credit card? I've cancelled more than one without any major problems.
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I've had trouble canceling credit cards for the same reasons as cancelling anything else, and only reporting it stolen has gotten to at least change numbers. They stll send me a new one.
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Don't even need to get the numbers changed, which they usually do automatically for unauthorized purchases, since the new card's expiration date won't match the old one, which kills the subscriptions.
You'd think that, but you'd be wrong, at least for American Express. Processing a transaction with an expired card with a still value number, they will approve it. And refuse to reverse it.
I use to live on that card, but I haven't used it in years.
Re: Cancelling your credit cards does wonders for (Score:4, Informative)
Not just AmEx. Thereâ(TM)s a whole slew of businesses that qualify to get automated expiration date changes with all the major credit cards.
Virtual credit card? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can cancel shit whenever I want... I have a credit card that can generate new numbers specifically to use with subscriptions - and when I don't want the sub anymore, I can just switch it off on my side.
That only works for subscriptions which operate on a prepaid basis. If you're being billed for any sort of postpaid services, they'll continue to bill you, then tack on late fees, then finally send you to collections when you've run up a sizable enough debt. Not fun.
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outside of your electric or gas bill, wtf do you "subscribe" to that is post-paid?
Cable TV / internet service and postpaid cellular services are both billed in a way that cancelling the credit card will just leave you with unpaid bills rather than immediately cancelled service.
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Send them a letter (on paper) to their head office. Send it registered post. Tell them that you are cancelling the subscription from now - today, that you will not change your mind and that they no longer have any authority to take any payment from your bank-account/credit-card/... Then tell your bank. If they then try to take something report them to the police for fraud.
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I am a Brit - a registered letter is what we call a letter that has proof of delivery for a small cost by the sender. Cheaper is "proof of postage", it does not cost and under law is deemed delivered 2 working days later; this is usually good enough.
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Careful (Score:3)
Re:Careful (Score:4, Informative)
Very few collection agencies will buy debt in the same state as themselves. This is because very few are mentally capable of a single interaction with a debtor that does not violation the Fair Debt Collections Act, often in multiple ways, and you can sue them for $1,500 per violation. Doesn't take much before they owe you more than you owe them.
One of the side effects of this is that they can't use small claims court to sue you, so they have to hire a real lawyer and use a real court. If you show up for every court appearance, and admit to the debt, it will cost them five figures in legal fees (that they have zero chance of collecting). If the total amount is less than tens of thousands of dollars, they won't bother. They'll just try to bully you out of a few hundred bucks, then sell it off to another collection agency.
You can also, at that point, ask the court to supervise collection - on a payment schedule, not all at once - (or even act as an intermediary), so that the collection agency can't a) harass you to try to bully you into paying faster, or b) lie about the debt having been paid off in full after the fact, while they sell it off to another bunch of crooks.
The only collection agencies to take seriously are the ones in your state, and relatively local to you.
"Online" is not a cure-all (Score:2)
Because it could just send you to a waiting queue for a single chatbot instance.
Re:"Online" is not a cure-all (Score:4, Insightful)
If the rule is: It must be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, then that would close that particular loophole.
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And it's a lovely, easy-to-understand, simple-to-measure rule. If lawyers can agree that it will be similarly easy to compare in court should there be a dispute, it's pretty near perfect.
It should not take longer, it should not require greater effort, and it should not require you to give up anything you hadn't already - no additional contact information or anything. And no contract clauses where you sign away that right, because they'll try that, too.
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I think that part was only implied.
That's the actual proposal (Score:2)
If the rule is: It must be as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, then that would close that particular loophole.
From https://www.ftc.gov/system/fil... [ftc.gov]
"To construct these guardrails, the proposed Rule requires the mechanism to be at least as simple as the one used to initiate
the charge or series of charges."
This entire thread is full of people who don't know what the proposal is but are absolutely sure it is wrong.
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As described by the head of the FCC on NPR this morning, they could do that - but only if they do the same thing when you sign up.
Same number of steps.
Too sensible. (Score:2)
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Common law does not even need to be written down because it is common sense.
If it isn't written down, then it is some bullshit "unwritten" rule. Those always turn out for the best.
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"Common sense" is how we get redlining, racial profiling, wage discrimination, and a host of other problems that come from those in power saying things like, "Well, it's just common sense that women should get paid less since they ___>____."
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^ women, minorities, gays, other religions, whatever.
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soon, white straight males :)
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It can get worse (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure I called Comcast to cancel after moving out of their service area, and they kept billing me. Fortunately I was a short drive from the area where there's Comcast service. This was pre-Covid, so they had walk in service and when I showed up in person they finally got the message. I think I still lost a month or two though, because they know you're not going to go through the trouble of suing them.
Has Comcast gotten any better in the past 10 years?
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No they have gotten worse.
My office had a Comcast Business plan and needed faster upload (it was capped at 25 Mbps) but they wouldn't sell us anything faster, so we had to get a different service and cancel Comcast. Tried to cancel online, but you have to call.
Main call center wanted us to deal with a business sales rep, but he wouldn't help cancel, so I called the number on the bill and said cancel, that rep claimed the retention dept was closed for the day and call back tomorrow... called back the next d
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Comcast is the worst. It took a lot of effort and money to get out from under their contract service. I have been happily Comcast-free for 4 years now and hardly a week goes by where I don't take a deep breath and thank my lucky stars that I don't have to deal with Comcast anymore.
Bad business Practice (Score:2)
Starting with AOL free trail back in the 90's, I called them weekly to cancel my Sub. They kept charging my checking account every month. Bank told me they could not stop an auto-pay charge. Finally had to close the checking account to stop the auto-pay charges. Then they kept sending me bills for the service, I wrote Canceled and returned the bill. Finally I moved, no more bills.
Had a wireline phone service for two years, decided to cancel. Did everything they wanted to cancel without getting charged for m
Gym memberships (Score:2)
Go after banks instead (Score:3)
You should be able to deny future subscription charges through your bank. As it is, you have to cancel your account and get a new number. Which was the only way I could get rid of a gym membership I tried to cancel.
One advantage to Apple's walled garden (Score:2)
Apple provides a single place to manage subscriptions, including cancellations, for items bought/subscribed to on their app store. That's A Good Thing.
As a side note, mebbe there's a place for an automated "we'll work through the phone tree to handle your cancellation" service. Sounds like a good job for ChatGPT and its ilk.
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That is the way. Refuse to follow their script. Be very firm with them. Just keep repeating yourself. I've gotten many a thing cancelled this way.
NPR interviewed Lina Kahn this morning. (Score:2)
Something mentioned this morning in NPR's interview with the head of the FCC was that the intent is for it to have some teeth:
$50,000 fine per violation, per day. For a big company like Comcast, that could easily add up to enough millions to show up on a shareholder's report.
Of course, the odds of that surviving all the legal challenges intact are minimal.
Another one to add to the list (Score:2)
I recently tried equafax, they had a free trial but you have to phone in to quit.
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I recently tried equafax, they had a free trial but you have to phone in to quit.
And they leak your data for free!
How about ... ? (Score:2)
Next, do marriage!
Get two wittnesses, an official, sign something. Going in or going out.
Oh, right, our government never interferes with religion (except when they overtly endorse Christian 'values')
They should include time shares in this! (Score:3)
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Who the hell buys time share? It's shown to be be fraud, run by money launderers and other crims looking to shift cash. If you see "time share" automatically add "scam" and you'd be correct.
Those companies will just fight back. (Score:1)
They have many, *many* orders of magnitude more money and power then us working class folk, and will not tolerate *any* external attempts to reduce their profits.
What? (Score:2)
While I think it's the right thing... (Score:2)
Just because it's hard to get the outcome you want by following the rules does not mean you can ignore them.
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Section 6(g) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. Sec. 46, authorizes them "to make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this subchapter."
As a matter of authority; Congress could have given the FTC no rulemaking power and decided to either just is
Newsletter subscriptions (Score:2)
Irony (Score:1)