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I don't think this concept will fly broadly in America, it violates the way the American constitution sets up private vs public. Forcing private businesses to d

I don't think this concept will fly broadly in America, it violates the way the American constitution sets up private vs public. Forcing private businesses to do businesses with the public without discrimination is only allowed in certain cases. Are you open to the public, providing an important service? (Like taxi, hotel, etc?) Then you cannot discriminate. Are you not-essential, with limited rules based membership? Then you can discriminate. In this case, telling a private business they are forced to entertain customers who have robbed them, it's outrageous. And while I understand that chargebacks CAN be legitimate, they also CAN and often are illegitimate. When I worked in small business computer repair, we literally got out of the business of selling expensive machines because more than half of all orders were fraudulent and were charge backed with zero recourse -- we lose the machine, we lose the money. We lost an incredible sum of money to thieves this way, and so being told we are forced to do business with them would have destroyed our business. If you wanted to create a new class of online public service like Twitter and Google and increase regulation on them as one might do hotels, that's one thing. But a blanket requirement that all businesses must entertain customers who chargeback is a nonstarter, imo.

SkyBelow 4y ago
The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account. If, when closing the account, the business paid back full value for everything they were removing access to, the ruling might be different. But they aren't doing that. If you are a business doing more normal business, selling something with no sort of required subscription, something the customer does not depend upon you for, then you are still free to stop doing business with them (minus a few cases related to protected classes).
- lancesells 4y ago
  It might be even easier than being paid back full value (which is difficult). How about you still have your account but you can no longer purchase anything else?
  - indymike 4y ago
    This would be a just way to do it. Making a dispute over $20 cost the complainer $2000 in digital goods seems like a good way to create hate and discontent... and lawsuits.
- criley2 4y ago
  > The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account That's not a problem really. Think of country clubs. Your investment is completely lost the second you stop paying. I understand that folks may dislike the subscription model, but it's not illegal.
  - Sodman 4y ago
    I don't think the problem is the subscription model exactly. If I'm paying $15 / mo for netflix, it's very clear that my $15 gets me one month of access, to whatever's available in their library at the time. Similarly, if I pay $10/mo for Gym access and the Gym decides it no longer wants to do business with me, that's fine because A) there's more Gyms for me to go to, and B) I never had any expectation that anything from that Gym would be 'mine' forever, it was always an ephemeral access to the service conditional on my recurring payments. The problem is for services where I pay a la carte to build a "personal" library of things, like steam games, Google Play movies, Amazon Kindle books, etc. I've paid a one-off price for the digital content with the expectation that I will have access to that content indefinitely. If I am abusing the platform, causing issues for others, or generally and blatantly violating ToS in a major way, then I think that's a different story. But if I need to dispute one transaction, then the ability to immediately remove all access to previously purchased content immediately, indefinitely, and frequently without review or appeals - is very anti-consumer. It effectively nullifies existing consumer protection laws. I will never issue a chargeback or complaint against Valve (Steam) or Google, even if I have a perfectly legitimate reason to do so - as loss of those accounts after all of these years would likely be more costly to me than most erroneous charges I'm likely to see.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Think of country clubs. Your investment is completely lost the second you stop paying By steam sells games for $60 a piece, they are not a subscribtion service. You can't have it both ways.

SkyBelow 4y ago

The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account. If, when closing the account, the business paid back full value for everything they were removing access to, the ruling might be different. But they aren't doing that. If you are a business doing more normal business, selling something with no sort of required subscription, something the customer does not depend upon you for, then you are still free to stop doing business with them (minus a few cases related to protected classes).

lancesells 4y ago
It might be even easier than being paid back full value (which is difficult). How about you still have your account but you can no longer purchase anything else?
- indymike 4y ago
  This would be a just way to do it. Making a dispute over $20 cost the complainer $2000 in digital goods seems like a good way to create hate and discontent... and lawsuits.
criley2 4y ago
> The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account That's not a problem really. Think of country clubs. Your investment is completely lost the second you stop paying. I understand that folks may dislike the subscription model, but it's not illegal.
- Sodman 4y ago
  I don't think the problem is the subscription model exactly. If I'm paying $15 / mo for netflix, it's very clear that my $15 gets me one month of access, to whatever's available in their library at the time. Similarly, if I pay $10/mo for Gym access and the Gym decides it no longer wants to do business with me, that's fine because A) there's more Gyms for me to go to, and B) I never had any expectation that anything from that Gym would be 'mine' forever, it was always an ephemeral access to the service conditional on my recurring payments. The problem is for services where I pay a la carte to build a "personal" library of things, like steam games, Google Play movies, Amazon Kindle books, etc. I've paid a one-off price for the digital content with the expectation that I will have access to that content indefinitely. If I am abusing the platform, causing issues for others, or generally and blatantly violating ToS in a major way, then I think that's a different story. But if I need to dispute one transaction, then the ability to immediately remove all access to previously purchased content immediately, indefinitely, and frequently without review or appeals - is very anti-consumer. It effectively nullifies existing consumer protection laws. I will never issue a chargeback or complaint against Valve (Steam) or Google, even if I have a perfectly legitimate reason to do so - as loss of those accounts after all of these years would likely be more costly to me than most erroneous charges I'm likely to see.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Think of country clubs. Your investment is completely lost the second you stop paying By steam sells games for $60 a piece, they are not a subscribtion service. You can't have it both ways.