51–60 of 793 posts
meh, it is just an executive regulation that will go away the next time the party in power changes if it isn't shot down in court first. it doesn't help my skepticism that these sort of people/consumer first policies don't come out of these administrations until it is election time. They could have done this years ago but why if they couldn't benefit as well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did it even evolve into such a mess? Cannot you just go to random gym, pay for enterance and do ya thing without signing stuff?
Gyms largely make money from people having memberships but never actually going. There's only a few types of gyms where most of the members actually use the gym, and although they're still subscription based, they have entirely different business models.
"Pizza Fridays!"
"Judgement free zone!"
"No lunks in here! Lunk alarm!"
They know the demographic they are shooting for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. The fact that multiple companies are springing up with the main selling point being "help you cancel subscriptions you thought you already cancelled" should be a wake up call to the legislature that this problem has gotten out of hand.
I think a great function of elected representatives would be keeping an eye out for these types of businesses that are societal "code smells" indicating something is wrong, and looking at the regulatory and legislative environment to see what would be changed to make those businesses obsolete.
Does the FTC actually have the power to set rules like this effectively now that Chevron deference isn't a thing? I'd imagine e.g. the New York Times, among others, will quickly sue to stop this, no?
It's like asking whether Congress has the power to enact laws now that judicial review is a thing
I am very curious what exactly this means? Is it the number of pages or forms you had to fill out? People you had to talk too?
So if for my internet I had to have someone come out to install it before service would start could they argue that they require someone to physically come out to turn off service? Or a call since a call would be "easier" than someone coming out?
Could they make the signup and cancel process worse at the same time at certain times of the year if there is a certain time of the year where cancelations are high to justify a worse process? Or does this require knowing what the process was like when each customer signed up?
It feels like this could be fairly easily manipulated. Throw in an extra page during sign up just so they can add in an extra "please stay" page when you try to cancel.
> most notably dropping a requirement that sellers provide annual reminders to consumers of the negative option feature of their subscription.
I assume this means sending yearly reminders that a subscription is about to charge and how to cancel? This is fairly disappointing if so.
I really wish they just required what Apple requires on the App Store. It requires 2 clicks, clicking cancel and then confirm. No upselling since it all happens within Apple's Settings.
Then any yearly apps I always get an email about a week or so (not 100% sure of the timing) that it is going to renew soon with instructions on how to cancel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gyms largely make money from people having memberships but never actually going. There's only a few types of gyms where most of the members actually use the gym, and although they're still subscription based, they have entirely different business models.
There are plenty of subscription based gyms that have high utilization and also make it easy to cancel. They’re just usually more expensive (e.g. $200 per month instead of $20 like 24 Hour Fitness).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NYTimes already allows cancelling online for most subscriptions, so I imagine this won't be a big issue for them.
That depends on what state you're in right? (i.e. California customers can cancel online, but Wisconsin ones need to talk to an agent)
My workaround to this has been to email the company telling them I want to cancel. Once I either don't get a reply, or get a reply saying "just call us and we'll cancel!", I dispute the next charge with American Express and have the email record of trying to cancel. I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature that cuts off future charges.
If they have this it's another reason to use them for automatic billing. I have tried to do this with a VISA card and they said they cannot do it; the only way to prevent future charges would be to close that account entirely and even then I might still get billed for some period of time.