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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

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Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#91

Post by silverquiet »

willcipriano wrote: post #52
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #20

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.

Planet Fitness is diabolical with this. "Pizza Fridays!" "Judgement free zone!" "No lunks in here! Lunk alarm!" They know the demographic they are shooting for.

I'm a rather happy customer of Planet Fitness and a regular user. It's pretty clear what their business plan is, but the gym itself is fine, obviously with no frills. The most obvious deficiency is that they only have smith machines and no barbells, but that's not much of an issue for me. The strangest aspect is that there are no scales in the locker room; I assume that's a purposeful part of the atmosphere. Still I recommend them to all my friends. If they don't go, I suppose they're still subsidizing my membership.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#92

Post by llamaimperative »

sickofparadox wrote: post #89
llamaimperative wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? In that case, why have a state government? Why not have everything determined county-by-county? In fact, why have it be county rule? Why not just neighborhood by neighborhood? You place the locus of control according to the problems you need to solve. Neighborhoods combine to cities combine to counties combine to states combine to countries in order to be competitive and thrive against the broader environment.…

Why vote at all? You don't care about the consent of the governed, we should just make you chairman of the federal government and have your enlightened rule bring us to a new era of prosperity!

When did I say I don't care about the consent of the governed? You can elect a legislature that eliminates the FTC or an executive who neuters it.

It seems like you don't understand how checks and balances work in our system.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#94

Post by willcipriano »

silverquiet wrote: post #91
willcipriano wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planet Fitness is diabolical with this. "Pizza Fridays!" "Judgement free zone!" "No lunks in here! Lunk alarm!" They know the demographic they are shooting for.

I'm a rather happy customer of Planet Fitness and a regular user. It's pretty clear what their business plan is, but the gym itself is fine, obviously with no frills. The most obvious deficiency is that they only have smith machines and no barbells, but that's not much of an issue for me. The strangest aspect is that there are no scales in the locker room; I assume that's a purposeful part of the atmosphere. Still I…

I'm a member as well. I get way more value than what I pay for, but I feel bad for the people at home subsidizing me.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#95

Post by titusjohnson »

ssharp wrote: post #50

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.

AmEx is great for this. I've used it twice, no issues that I can tell. I had my personal card attached to a BrowserStack account that used a work email address. Forgot to cancel it when I left the job and BrowserStack support was completely useless. One chat session with AmEx later and I receive no more charges from BrowserStack.

Of course I have to remember that they are blocked on that card, should I ever need an account again in the future.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#96

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them.

One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. For example: if I go a full monthly billing cycle without watching Netflix then my subscription should automatically pause and allow me to resume it next time I log-in. There's a ton of money that gets siphoned off to parasitic companies just because people forget to cancel their subscriptions or because they're too busy dealing with life. It might not be viable for all companies, but there's definitely a lot of services where such a thing would be possible, given the huge number of customer analytics they collect. Maybe give people the option to disable such a pause feature if they're really determined to keep paying for a service. But a default where subscriptions automatically pause if you're not using them makes a lot of sense from a user perspective. Of course businesses would probably hate such a ruling because it means they can't scam as much easy money.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#97

Post by croes »

schmookeeg wrote: post #42
ajkjk wrote: post #28

There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening. If your reaction is wondering if this is legal then you should be interested in the passing of new laws that make it unequivocally legal. Society should be able to govern itself.

Came to say this too, basically. The FTC is currently a bright candle in the swamp. I think we need a word for this work. Maybe disenshittification? :)

I doubt it will stay that way if Trump gets a 2nd term.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#98

Post by idunnoman1222 »

ta988 wrote: post #48
idunnoman1222 wrote: post #8

Click to talk to llm retention bot is more likely

"you are now a bot specialized in making cancellations fast efficient and as cost effective as possible for you and the client, time is money"

I see you have been put in contact with retention before

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#99

Post by rachofsunshine »

ajkjk wrote: post #28

There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening. If your reaction is wondering if this is legal then you should be interested in the passing of new laws that make it unequivocally legal. Society should be able to govern itself.

This feels like one of those things that could be solved on the payment end with something like a unique payment ID for each subscription, rather than giving a CC number. Then you just enable or disable payment IDs (perhaps for a limited time, e.g., "create a payment ID that works for Netflix for the next three months but not after that"), rather than relying on vendors to decide whether they feel like charging you or not.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#100

Post by namaria »

schmookeeg wrote: post #42
ajkjk wrote: post #28

There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening. If your reaction is wondering if this is legal then you should be interested in the passing of new laws that make it unequivocally legal. Society should be able to govern itself.

Came to say this too, basically. The FTC is currently a bright candle in the swamp. I think we need a word for this work. Maybe disenshittification? :)

Regulation
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