Cable companies, advertising firms, and newspapers are asking courts to block a federal “click-to-cancel” rule that would force businesses to make it easier for consumers to cancel services. Lawsuits were filed yesterday, about a week after the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that “requires sellers to provide consumers with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurring charges.”
The 5th Circuit is generally regarded as the nation’s most conservative, but the 6th Circuit also has a majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents. When identical lawsuits are filed in multiple circuits, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation randomly selects a court to handle the case.
The NCTA cable lobby group, which represents companies like Comcast and Charter, have complained about the rule’s impact on their ability to talk customers out of canceling. NCTA CEO Michael Powell claimed during a January 2024 hearing that “a consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options” and that the rule’s disclosure and consent requirements raise “First Amendment issues.”
“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. “The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”
It’s your internet. Who cancels that without already moving to another ISP? I work from home so not having internet even for short durations is a non-starter. Forcing me to talk to someone is an absolute waste of everyone’s time. They have a zero percent chance of keeping me because I already left. I just want the bills to stop for a service I disconnected from.
I understand the whole ‘game’ for pricing/discounts but when you legitimately are leaving then this is just dumb. I think the whole game around discounts is dumb too but that’s capitalism.
Lol!!! This is fantastic! They shouldn’t be trying to talk them out of cancelling to begin with!
They made their own bed here by making it so ridiculously hard.
I was going to a gym and I moved to get out of that $20 a month contract I had to write a letter and deliver it to them by hand.
When I canceled my DirecTV service I was on the phone for over an hour. Half of that was spent waiting for someone.
If you want me to have to talk to somebody before exiting a contract I’m okay with that but I need to talk to them right then and I need them to take no for an answer.
Also the whole raising the rates until people terminate and then offering them lower rates is absolute bullshit
I think waiting on the phone for an hour just to argue with someone to cancel a subscription is reasonable, as long as the signup process also involved waiting on the phone for an hour before an agent tried to talk you out of buying the service.
But if I signed up on a website in 30 seconds, it should take tine or less to unsubscribe on the same website.
I guess they prefer getting customer chargebacks which will cost them bank fees than just letting people cancel.
Well, no shit, that’s what the rule is SUPPOSED to do! No more impossible-to-cancel subscriptions, please.
But how will we force you to listen to some agent in the Philippines ramble on about how great the service is, and offer you a 6 month promo rate that you will forget about??
I learned something the last time I had to deal with phony charges. If you tell Visa to not pay for a service or product that you never got, then they won’t pay.
Not that visa is great. They steal your money too. But at least it’s a mechanism to help yourself.
if im cancelling, you trying to talk me out of it is not only a waste of my time it is a fruitless endeavor. just cut it and move on,leeches
But usually the retention departments have the most leeway to give you discounts 😀
Just call and threaten to cancel and suddenly you get 50% off for 6 months or something.
(Works very well with Audible, the further you go in the cancel flow on the website, the bigger discounts you get - you can repeat the “I quit” threat about once a year.)
doesnt matter. shoddy service isnt worth any kind of discount.
I have great service. I just hate that I have to play the game of “pretending to cancel”.
my current service is also pretty good. the one i got when i moved here 4 years ago was trash though. not for anything they did other than advertise availability here which was sketchy about a week after i signed up. held on for a year hoping it would improve since the area was seeing more people locating in the area but nope. same crappy service. so cancelled and went back to a previous vendor as they had been making acquisitions nearby.
I have been very fortunate to have good service for essentially the entirety of my life of broadband. Only going back to when optimum first showed up, they were the only game in town, and it would have issues during times of day when there was too much traffic at the node. Since FiOS showed up (not to shill), it’s honestly been phenomenal, when you put aside the typical bullshit the providers pull. The actual service of packets in packets out, or whatever the Internet is, has been great.
Maybe if their retention rate drops they’ll just lower their costs to those rates, or better their services.
I’m so sick of the 5th Circuit. We need legislation to end judge shopping. Every damn article about some terrible decision seems to come out of the Fifth Circuit.
“We live in the United States of Texas, Louisiana & Mississippi.” —The American Prospect
a consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options
See, if it’s easy to cancel, then a consumer can leave your service, try something else, and then cancel that and come back if they don’t like the alternative.
Also, imperative for who? Your bottom line?
Won’t someone please think of the shareholders!!!
Also wouldn’t the argument apply to subscribing as well? Consumers may not understand the consequences of subscribing to said service. Therefore, “click to subscribe” should also be banned.
I read this as: “the customer has contract terms with us, where if they cancel they must pay termination fees and other fees where applicable and if they cancel they might financially harm themselves”
To which the obvious response would be, well you would list those on the page that you click. (But also… why your business model rely on cancelation fees?)
Definitely then the issue lies with click to subscribe, and not with click to cancel.
If the customer is insufficiently informed of any penalties for cancelling, then he shouldn’t have been allowed to subscribe in the first place.
Just for reference: in my State (somewhere in Latin America), since 2007, we have a law that TL;DRs to “if you offer a service through a certain mean, you must offer the cancellation method through the same mean; plus by phone, or internet, or snail mail”.
It works like a charm because, contrariwise to what Michael Powell is claiming, customers aren’t such disgustingly stupid trash that will “accidentally” hit the cancel button, nor they deserve to be punished by making cancellation a fucking pain in the arse. (There’s probably similar laws elsewhere.)
But, Calling and threatening “I want to cancel” is the only way to get them to lower the $120 fuck-you price back to the market accurate $40 I signed up for.
You can still threaten to cancel. It will be even more effective when the power of cancelling is in your hands instead of theirs, and as easy as one click. Not sure if you were being sarcastic.
Careful with this though. They keep cancellation threats in a database so they can check if you’re serious
Is this like the super permanent record that your employer keeps?
No, they need to be careful. I keep a personal database of companies that raise prices and have poor customer service.
You dropped this 👑, king
I wish the FTC would tackle that next. Why should I pay twice as much for the exact same service my neighbor has because they signed up a month ago? I don’t mind rewards being given for signing up but the first bill (aside from installation fees) shouldn’t be any lower than mine.
Internet also needs to be regulated like a utility because it basically is one at this point.
My phone plan just dropped the $10/month discount for autopay because they’re price-gouging shit garglers. The second I clicked on the “port out number” option, they put up a banner offering $10/mo off for the next year. I do appreciate not waiting three hours on the phone just to turn down the offer anyway. MVNO it is!
That’s the whole point
When I want to cancel I want to cancel. I don’t want to be put in line for over half an hour and then have to have a painful argument with some poor employee who gets punished if I somehow figure out the secret code that makes them cancel the account. And then have to do it all over again one month later because the account didn’t cancel because of “technical problems”.
If they make it that hard to cancel, they should make it that hard to subscribe.
The fact that they are able to make these arguments and a judge takes it seriously… Is all you need to know who rules the peasants.
First Amendment now protects a corpos right to fuck you over.
But when private comapany blocks your speech on their platform for any reason is not 1a issue?
Hmmm, do these clowns have to be logically consistent or do they just win every time.
