Absolutely necessary. Looking at you NYtimes and economist
‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
101–110 of 253 posts
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The result of lobbying, maybe?
Maybe the result of lobbying, and undeniably the result of the politicians putting forth the bill.
Sounds like the kind of thing ALEC would push through for someone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#103Not to excuse companies that make you jump through hoops to unsubscribe, but is there any reason you can't just call your credit card/bank and cut off transactions to a company that's giving you a hard time? I've heard horror stories about people trying to cancel gym memberships, and wondered why they don't just stop paying, and let the gym figure it out.
As far as I know, this generally doesn't work. A few years ago I attempted to cancel a gym membership, and after 15 minutes on hold on the phone I hung up and tried looking into banning a certain transaction or vendor from making another transaction. As best I could tell with my bank at the time (Bank of America), there is absolutely no mechanism to do this. The only similar thing they provide is contesting transacti…
I was able to get out of a similar situation by threatening to contest the transaction. Basically told them “alright, have fun duking it out with my credit card company” and they immediately backed down.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#104Fully in favor of this. I recently had to cancel a subscription that had no "cancel subscription" button and instead forced you to contact customer service so they could try to sell you on discounts and etc. No, just let me cancel and get on with my day. Unfortunately, it seems health clubs(and I assume gyms?) are exempt from this when they are like 80% of the problem.
During the pandemic, I built a home gym in a spare space at home for a couple hundred dollars. I'm never paying for a gym again.
Cost me $1000 for a rack and weights, but I’ve already saved it back in gym fees.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#105Fully in favor of this. I recently had to cancel a subscription that had no "cancel subscription" button and instead forced you to contact customer service so they could try to sell you on discounts and etc. No, just let me cancel and get on with my day. Unfortunately, it seems health clubs(and I assume gyms?) are exempt from this when they are like 80% of the problem.
Geico insurance is like this. You have to call to cancel the policy.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you can just say if you don't cancel by email you'll issue charge backs.
Unfortunately some of the nastier vendors (gyms are notorious for doing this) will then send the charge to collections, resulting in a worse outcome. Further, credit card companies will likely reject your chargeback before it even gets to this stage since they require evidence that one tried a good faith attempt to cancel.
For which you'll have a paper trail in email where they outright refused to cancel upon clear instructions to do so.
Sending the charge to collections and having you incur more stress and undue charges would be incredibly foolish on their end.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unintended consequences What do you think might happen?
One thing I can think of immediately is that smaller companies may have to implement something now that wasn't there - whereas larger can easily absorb the cost. I've seen "subscription forms" that don't actually process anything, they just save the info in a database for someone to manually do stuff with later. These companies will now have to work out how to do a cancel button. Arguably, they should have to anyway,…
Despite the title all the bill actually requires is that the company allow cancellation over the internet if the subscription was bought over the internet. No actual clickable cancel button is required. In particular handling it by email is fine under the bill.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#108Not to excuse companies that make you jump through hoops to unsubscribe, but is there any reason you can't just call your credit card/bank and cut off transactions to a company that's giving you a hard time? I've heard horror stories about people trying to cancel gym memberships, and wondered why they don't just stop paying, and let the gym figure it out.
The American personal banking experience feels so shady and insecure. Afaict companies often have the ability to pull money out of my bank account or credit card, that's just the way subscriptions work here. I just have to trust they don't abuse it. In my home country we've had a national system for electronic invoices for ~10 years which allows you to receive invoices to your bank account. You can remove any such en…
Same here in my country. It feels so weird that the service provider has the ability to just charge a card in the US if you enter the three things printed on the card. That would cause a lot of frauds if it happened here. Fortunately, the central bank has strict regulations here and we need to authorize a payment by using a password or an OTP.
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to have a gym membership that I only discovered later on could be canceled by mailing a letter to their HQ four states away. Not an email. Not a phone call to some retention agent in a call center. A signed letter via postage. From the tales I've read in my local city sub, I got lucky in that the billings did in fact stop quickly; others have had resort to threats of legal action after numerous letters, some e…
> Not an email. Not a phone call to some retention agent in a call center. A signed letter via postage. Like in the civil war! Did you go acquire stamps and paper so your children and grandchildren could also cancel their gym subscriptions? (For anyone who can watch content from Netflix and likes comedy, do yourself a favor and watch Happy Face).
/pan in: grainy black and white pics of a gym
/play: soft bluegrass music
/narrate by Peter Coyote:
My Dearest Abigail,
For so long now, I have not seen your sweet face, nor any other at the gymnasium. I have tried mightily to dissolve the union of my membership, but to no avail. My biceps grow skinnier by the day from our long estrangement. Please, I pray for the day I can be released from this torment, this contract.
Most Sincerely Yours, Ephraim Hill
Re: ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US this is implemented on a per card issuer basis (i.e. Citi, Chase) and it's up to the issuer to provide the service, which most of them don't. The only way to do it is as a chargeback but chargebacks are after the charge and come with a whole mess of pre-requirements as well as if you do it too often your provider will kick you off.
In addition, gyms in particular often make you give them your bank account instead of a credit card.
I end up paying a year in advance, cash, to avoid giving gyms anything to work with