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The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

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Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#171
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen the results of these A/B tests closely on a major consumer site and I can tell you it definitely hurts the business to make cancelation really easy.

How do you A/B test your company's reputation as being difficult to cancel? You can't exactly serve up different word-of-mouth to different users.

Believing that "reputation" actually matters for American businesses is laughable.

Craftsman tools are STILL riding the reputation they had half a century ago, despite being made out of the cheapest chinesium and losing their impressive warranty stance.

The American consumer has demonstrated an absurd inability to consider past events as useful information to predict future results.

Things continue to enshittify because the 3 consumers who recognize that quality is going down are vastly outweighed by the increase in consumption by the rest of your market.

Kitchenaid still sells plenty of mixers that die after a year. Hell, American car brands are still successful businesses even though they have made only a few reasonably competitive vehicles since the 50s.

Disney and Netflix are still making plenty of money despite making it difficult to share accounts.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#172

How about 'click-to-bill'. If I don't touch your service you can't charge me.

Kagi's policy is in the direction of that: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html#fair-pricin...

Kagi is doing it the right way...

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#173

I'm listening to hold music right now, 30 minutes into my attempt at cancelling 3mbps home DSL service (not a typo), for which the price has crept up to $71 USD/mo. I first spoke with a customer service agent whose accent I couldn't understand very well. I have him ALL my account information. He mumbled something about being unable to forward me to the actual customer service agent (then what is your role, dude?), th…

Can you do a fraude dispute on your CC?

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not send a registered letter?

Because without any form of regulation, the ISP has no requirement to honor that letter? The whole point of "click to cancel" was to deal with the fact that a business, by contract law, can make it almost entirely impossible to stop owing them money through entirely legal means. The courts do not consider being on hold for 18 hours onerous enough to void a contract, so it's perfectly legal to require you to follow th…

>Because without any form of regulation, the ISP has no requirement to honor that letter?

Is this your personal exerience, or are you making assumptions?

I would love to hear how this process possibly fails to unsubscribe anyone:

1. Go to your state's corporate website and get/buy the name and address of the corporate registered agent for your ISP or whatever. In Texas that costs $1.

2. Write or ask ChatGPT to write a demand letter that they cancel your service as of the date of your letter. If they don't, threaten to sue them in small claims court. In Texas, threaten triple damages under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. (ChatGPT will help you write demands using the "laundry list" of deceptive acts.)

3. Send letter return receipt requested.

4. A lawyer on their side is now involved. They will never ever show up in any small claims court for this. And if they do, the judge is so on your side for this!

Heck, this works for a bunch of things, once you assert your rights. For example, I made a Coinbase account when they first existed and played with $10 of bitcoin. There it sat for six years or so, and then I tried to log in again. Their identity bullshit was demanding to use a phone number from an older phone and they stonewalled. So I sent a demand letter as above and, surprise!, my account was magically re-enabled for my $3 of bitcoin.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#175
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part all that those things accomplished was lots of paper.

Paper as in money? I can point to how multiple of these have saved me money directly. Cash dollars. Overdraft savings alone have numbered in billions back in the consumers' pockets... and that's just one piece of legislation that is easy to measure. A lot of people don't realize how many current credit card regulations didn't exist 20 years ago. For example: you'd have to manually figure out how much interest was cos…

I don't feel like going through each one specifically, and I'm sure some of them actually reined in some practices, but the vast majority are just disclosures, i.e. some paper for the consumer to sign without reading.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#176
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not think the Trump administration is more authoritarian?

The Trump administration can arguably be seen as less authoritarian, given its efforts to reduce the size of the federal government and its agencies. His style is certainly authoritarian, but that’s not the same as the actual impact on me, my family, and my community.

[dead]

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#177
Most, if not all of these service are billed before you get access. Ergo, if they cannot bill you, they can immediately revoke access.

The system is built in such a way that they get a lot of information about you (e.g. SSN for internet access) subsequently used to ensure cancellation is extremely painful.

If they didn't have this information, failure to bill would be immediate service pausing/termination, so it's not even that non-payment results in money lost for the company.

For email accounts I create burners. I wish I could do the same in real life.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#179

I'm listening to hold music right now, 30 minutes into my attempt at cancelling 3mbps home DSL service (not a typo), for which the price has crept up to $71 USD/mo. I first spoke with a customer service agent whose accent I couldn't understand very well. I have him ALL my account information. He mumbled something about being unable to forward me to the actual customer service agent (then what is your role, dude?), th…

I wonder what would happen if one sent a cancellation letter via certified mail, then just stopped paying. If they come after you, well - you canceled.

>If they come after you, well - you canceled.

Then you have to go court to decide which of you is right, much easier to sit on the phone for a couple hours.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the letter alone would be adequate. But frustratingly, the AT&T website appeared to allow you to replace your current (auto-pay) billing method with some other billing method, but I didn't see any way to remove all current billing methods, which makes just stopping paying nigh impossible. :-(

most credit cards allow you to create a temporary card number. Create one, set it to be the billing method, and then revoke it. crazy that we need to resort to that sort of thing, but it does work!

Canceling your credit card doesn't magically get you out of owing money that you're contractually obligated to pay. It might get them to eventually cancel your service for non-payment, but it's not a guarantee. They might just keep billing you until it's worth thousands and then mess up your credit or pursue you in court for payment.
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