FTC Delays 'Click To Cancel' Rule Implementation To July

The Federal Trade Commission has postponed enforcement of its consumer-friendly "click to cancel" rule from May 14 to July 14, giving businesses two additional months to comply. The regulation requires companies to make subscription cancellations as straightforward as the sign-up process, prohibiting practices like forcing customers who subscribed online to navigate through chatbots or call centers to cancel.

The rule, established under former Democratic Chair Lina Khan, unsurprisingly has garnered support from consumer advocates while facing legal opposition from industry groups. A coalition including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organizations representing major telecom and media companies -- Charter Communications, Comcast, Disney Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Discovery -- has sued to block implementation, claiming the agency exceeded its authority.

Does this apply to Gyms?

[aicrules]

Because they are about to lose everything if so lol

Re:Does this apply to Gyms?

[jacks smirking reven]

It does! So much so that the gym industry trade group lobbied for some concessions:

FTC Passes ‘Click-to-Cancel’ Rule for Gyms; HFA Points to Key Concessions [athletechnews.com]

Re: Does this apply to Gyms?

[samwichse]

"Consumers who enter into subscription agreements online must be able to cancel them online in the same number of clicks."

New sign up web form age box only lets you click up and down arrows to set the year, starting with 1900.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

And yet that still would be an improvement over today which says a lot about the industry.

Re:

[ihavesaxwithcollies]

the gym industry trade group lobbied for some concessions

You mean bribing government officials with the money it got from ripping off its customer, to be able to continue ripping off its customers?

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

American's voted for the "let companies rip them off" party so if this rule ends up going into effect at all it'd be a win.

I'm not about to gift horse the details, that's happening over in the better timeline.

"Delay"? Riiight.. It will be cancelled..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, it should be clear by now who the government serves, not that anything will be done about it. Just wanna say you have been warned, for a very long time now

Re:"Delay"? Riiight.. It will be cancelled..

[tlhIngan]

The delay is simply to get those industries who would be most affected by it pouring millions in donations to Trump.

You know, maybe to help fix up that new shiny plane Qatar is giving him. It's speculated to cost easily $500M to outfit and it's going to be retired after Trump's term in office is over to serve as his presidential library.

If those guys and such want to get rid of the rule, they better open their wallets and share.

That's the real reason. It'll survive if those companies fail to donate enough money, But if they pay enough, then *poof*, it disappears.

Re:

[Moryath]

If Republicans REALLY gave a crap about the First Amendment and rights of citizens in the USA? Here's a few thoughts.

#1 - Make it illegal for social media companies to permaban or "shadow ban" a US citizen, something they've done constantly to both the left and the right.

#2, related - Make it illegal for social media companies to force people through automated AI-chatbot forms and other bullshit to resolve issues with bad moderation or crap systems misfiring. Mandatory availability of phone support where

Re:"Delay"? Riiight.. It will be cancelled..

[fahrbot-bot]

With regard to your #1 and #2, you do know that the First Amendment only applies to government not regulating free speech -- not corporations, on their own platforms - right? I get your sentiment, but the 1st Amendment doesn't apply here. What you're proposing is that if Republicans care about the 1st Amendment, they should ignore it and/or try to bypass it.

Re: "Delay"? Riiight.. It will be cancelled..

[drinkypoo]

Oh look, you are against freedom of association. What a surprise.

Re:

[goldspider]

The First Amendment is what allows companies to regulate content and anything else that happens on their property however the hell they want.

Re:

[Bert64]

I also avoid most subscriptions for the exact same reason - avoiding the unnecessary hassle when i have to cancel.
Now i make sure there is an easy cancellation route, or the subscription is a fixed term which requires manual intervention to renew.

Re: those bastards

[drinkypoo]

Amen.

Weirdly a lot of sites only allow subscriptions, no one time payments. So I just don't use them.

So much winning!

[TheMiddleRoad]

I can't contain how much winning we're doing. It's overwhelming! We're drowning in winning!

Not enough

[DrXym]

Being able to cancel is a start but think of the other shitty practices subscription services engage in:

1. Setting auto renew to true without obtaining an affirmative yes or no. It should be very simple question "Do you want to autorenew at the end of this period, answer yes or no".
2. Billing people who cancelled during a "free trial" and ignoring their efforts to obtain a refund. e.g. Whoop is notorious for doing this shit.
3. Not cancelling people even after they ask to be cancelled.
4. Misleading consumers with "month by month" subscriptions that have minimum contract periods like 12 months..
5. Hiding unsubscribe options with dark patterns even if the option to unsubscribe exists somewhere.
6. Making unsubscribers run a gauntlet of BS to unsubscribe - "hey you'll be missing out on all this cool shit if you leave" x 5 dark screens that have been a/b tested to maximize retention.
7. Punishing users who cancel early by forfeiting features. e.g. cancel a Spotify free trial and it stops that very second even if the offer was for a full 30 days.
8. Hassling subscribers with upselling to higher tiers.
9. Not reminding people when a subscription is coming to an end especially when autorenew is on, nor giving them a link to immediately stop it autorenewing.
10. Deliberately burying help pages that explain how to unsubscribe so they redirect to some kind of custom retention service. e.g. type "cancel" and it says "to discuss your level of service ring this number".
11. Not giving affirmative notifications in email when cancellation has occurred and what date service will cease.
12. Not providing a human contact who can fix issues with cancellation.
13. Retention teams cold calling people who cancel to strongarm them into changing their minds.
14. Leaving hardware products broken or crippled by cancellation.
15. Punitive early exit fees.
16. Demanding excessive cancellation notice "you must give us 30 days notice" etc.
17. Not providing a cooling off period after a new subscription is made.
18. Jacking up the price of the subscription, justifying it by bundling it with something they never asked for. e.g. Office 365 slapping in Co-Pilot to justify a massive price hike.

I am sure there are many more. Consumer law needs to look at all the way companies are assholes to their own customers and anticipate those things in law in a way which is unambiguous with heavy fines for abuses.

Re:

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... Misleading consumers with "month by month" subscriptions that have minimum contract periods like 12 months.

If it's advertized as a pay-as-you-use, then this is bait and switch (Most of the behaviours listed, are fraud.) : The warning bell will be the requirement to 'sign' some document.

In most countries, a legal contract is an important detail. If the business hides the existence of a contract, the courts might assume it's written to abuse the customer. Most countries have truth-in-advertizing laws demanding legal obligations (Eg. significant costs) are specified in the blurb, before the small-print.

It's already overdue

[weeboo0104]

For the first time in my life, earlier this year, I had to file an FCC complaint when I tried to cancel my Spectrum Internet.
We had them for over 4 years and decided to switch to Verizon Home 5G because Spectrum had been ratcheting up our bill in $5 increments for the last few years. There were also a number of outages and the we NEVER came close to the advertised speed.

I reached out to the online chat support and asked if we could cancel and they said not a problem. After 45 minutes of them pushing for answers why we wanted to leave and one offer after another to stay, I was informed that they couldn't cancel the account over chat and needed to do it through the cancellation number which they gave me. I called the cancellation number and between being on hold and again having the rep offer several incentives over the next hour to stay, was informed they couldn't cancel and we had to call the main number. My wife called a 3rd person the next day and after an hour was told they would cancel, but since we were cancelling a day into the new billing cycle, would still have to pay the full month unless we just stayed for the rest of the month. That's when I opened the FCC enforcement complaint.

I got a call from FCC enforcement the next day and confirmed my grievances from the report and was informed someone from Spectrum's main office would be calling. The next day I got a call from Spectrum and they confirmed the account was closed and credited our account the amount due since we were only 3 days into the billing cycle. The amount of time it took for my wife and I to try and cancel Spectrum service? Over 3 hours. The amount of time I spent on the phone with the FCC and Spectrum to resolve the complaint? About 15 minutes.

To Hell with subscription services and their cancellations. They drag things out until you either give up or get pushed into a new billing cycle. They need to pay dearly when they pull stuff like this.