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US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

arstechnica.com

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Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#101

Post by sameermanek »

bpodgursky wrote: post #15

From a different article [1]: > But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said the FTC erred in its rulemaking process by failing to produce a preliminary regulatory analysis, a statutory requirement for rules whose annual effect on the national economy would exceed $100 million. > The FTC had argued that it was not required to prepare the preliminary analysis because its initial estimate of the rule’s imp…

Devil is in the details, they said each company would have to pay for less than 23 hrs to a low level engineer to avoid the $100 mil impact.

How much time do you think an intern would need to render a button on screen that says "cancel" in red mapped to an already implemented function in the code base. Especially with trillions poured into the AI?

This is non sense and horse shit, and these bench full of idiots know it

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#102

Post by [deleted] »

unethical_ban wrote: post #87
dalemhurley wrote: post #30

Here is an idea, make your service value for money and people will not want to cancel. If your product is so poor that the only way you can retain customers is to make it too hard for them to cancel then your product needs to be improved.

If your product is so poor that the only way you can retain customers is to make it too hard for them to cancel, then your business model should be illegal.

[deleted]

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#104

Post by eleveriven »

postalrat wrote: post #47

I should be able to go into my bank or card service online. View a list of all my subscriptions. Click on a subscription (or select all). And cancel. If there is a card that offers this let me know because I'll be switching immediately.

Feels like a killer feature just waiting for someone to nail it properly

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#105

Post by oblio »

eleveriven wrote: post #103

Honestly, it's wild that something as common-sense as "make canceling as easy as signing up" is this hard to implement

It's not hard to implement, in the sense of "hard to implement software feature".

It's hard because businesses don't want cancellation to be easy, as they lose money. A lot of people forget to cancel or just can't be bothered for a long time, especially if cancellation is hard.

And yes, it's as predatory as it sounds.

It's basically the financialization of business, as some point one of the few ways towards "growth" is nickel-and-diming everyone you can.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#106

Post by db48x »

eviks wrote: post #96
db48x wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that laughable? Congress decided that all rules changes need additional scrutiny if they impose large costs. After all, those costs are eventually going to be passed down to consumers so making overly–complicated rules just ends up hurting consumers. And there has to be _some_ threshold number; they couldn’t just leave that one undefined or nobody would ever bother with the extra steps.

> After all, those costs are eventually going to be passed down to consumers No they aren't. The ease with which you can continue to charge consumers without providing value to them directly affects the total amount of those charges (also, profits is a variable)

Suppose I am selling magazine subscriptions. I basically already follow all of the FTC’s new rules, because I’m not trying to cheat. But the new rules are pages and pages of amendments to pages and pages of existing rules. Those rules are complicated and detailed. How can I be _sure_ that _all_ of my marketing materials are compliant with these new rules, which detail exactly what information I must disclose to my customers and potential customers. I have to first understand the new rules, then review all my existing marketing materials, possibly with the aid of legal advice. Maybe I have to reword some things so that I’m using exactly the language specified by the FTC. Changing a website is cheap, but what about my printed materials? I’ve got 6 editions in various stages of completion for each of my dozen different brands.

Those costs are definitely going to be passed along to the consumer in some form or another. Fewer sales, fewer discounts, higher subscription prices, higher advertising prices, thinner magazines, it doesn’t matter. It all flows down to the consumers in the end. I don’t see how you can argue that these costs _can’t_ be passed down to the consumers.

And it’s definitely going to cost more than $1,000. The FTC estimates that there are over a hundred thousands entities offering subscriptions of some kind to customers in the US. 100,000 × $1,000 = $100,000,000. That’s the threshold beyond which rules changes need additional review.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#107

Post by oblio »

Towaway69 wrote: post #48
MengerSponge wrote: post #37

My favorite underappreciated aspect of the iOS app store is its absolutely friction-free cancellation. It makes me much more willing to trial a subscription service because I know I won't have to spend an hour of my life on the phone with a lovely Filipino man to stop that service.

This. My iPhone is still a pleasure to use, everyday. But perhaps I can only appreciate this because I was an android user for years. The killer app for me on iPhone? Files. I literally switched from iPhone 3 to android because it didn’t have a file manager! Thankfully I came back.

Apparently Google Play has the same cancellation mechanism.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#108

Post by colechristensen »

postalrat wrote: post #47

I should be able to go into my bank or card service online. View a list of all my subscriptions. Click on a subscription (or select all). And cancel. If there is a card that offers this let me know because I'll be switching immediately.

Any subscriptions that are paid through Apple Pay are like this. Apple also takes about a third of the money for the trouble.

This is _not_ the same as using the Apple credit card for a subscription.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#109

Post by colechristensen »

dalemhurley wrote: post #30

Here is an idea, make your service value for money and people will not want to cancel. If your product is so poor that the only way you can retain customers is to make it too hard for them to cancel then your product needs to be improved.

Ok, but also, I just want to stop paying for things sometimes.

Subscribing to a services isn't a vow of "until death do us part" and I don't want businesses trying to act like it is or make it so.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#110

Post by [deleted] »

sebbadk wrote: post #73
postalrat wrote: post #47

I should be able to go into my bank or card service online. View a list of all my subscriptions. Click on a subscription (or select all). And cancel. If there is a card that offers this let me know because I'll be switching immediately.

I work for a company called Subaio that does exactly that, but it only works because EU (and some other countries) consumer protection laws requires that companies have to let us cancel subscriptions. So we're mostly working with european banks for now. The protection specifically requires that cancelling is at least as easy as signing up.

[deleted]
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