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There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening. If your r
by ajkjk 2y ago
There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening.
If your reaction is wondering if this is legal then you should be interested in the passing of new laws that make it unequivocally legal. Society should be able to govern itself.
- fooqux 2y agoAgreed. The fact that multiple companies are springing up with the main selling point being "help you cancel subscriptions you thought you already cancelled" should be a wake up call to the legislature that this problem has gotten out of hand.
- pc86 2y agoI think a great function of elected representatives would be keeping an eye out for these types of businesses that are societal "code smells" indicating something is wrong, and looking at the regulatory and legislative environment to see what would be changed to make those businesses obsolete.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chrismarlow9 2y agoThey do keep an eye out, but for lobbying money. The tax system is a good example.
- NegativeLatency 2y agoFor anyone missing context: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
- bunderbunder 2y agoIt's not just Intuit. I doubt that there would be tax breaks specifically for owners of private jets if not for lobbying from companies like Cessna.
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoThose who are pro-market probably consider the companies cropping up to be evidence that legislation is not needed (as the market is addressing the issue). I'm not such a person, fwiw.
- tantalor 2y agoBroken window fallacy
- pc86 2y agoI would definitely consider myself pro-market, and "market > government" has proven itself a pretty good default time and time again. That doesn't mean nothing should ever be regulated.
- choilive 2y agoI don't think any free market capitalist outside of the most extreme libertarians think that markets should be completely unregulated. It is well known that free markets have areas where they are market failures or can never be Pareto efficient. Basically any "tragedy of the commons" type scenario is such a case. Unfortunately governments like to get their grubby fingers into everything and try to regulate their way out of problems.
- floatrock 2y agoyeah, it's a failure mode of the open market. "We've allowed services to exist that unnecessarily cost you money so the solution is more services that will take more money." If we're being honest, at some point the golden cow of Efficiency is undermined. The societal ethics of Ozempic are an example of this. We've created policies and subsidies that flood the food market with unhealthy processed food to the point that the cheapest option is an unnatural amount of calories (compare US obesity rates to the rest of the world), so the solution is a pharma product that takes an additional cut of your wallet. It's an expensive solution to an expensive problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. The software analogy is it's always easier to slap on one more piece of duct tape tech debt than to do the difficult thing and refactor the whole thing (acknowledging that part of the refactoring difficulty is you're not guaranteed to end up in a better state than you started from...)
- Pigo 2y agoStill waiting on anything to be done about rent to own businesses. The businesses that rely solely on exploiting the people in a bad position bother me so much, they should at least have some kind of limits on their usury.
- bluGill 2y agoUnfortunately the people they "serve" would get nothing as nobody can afford to lend to a bad credit risk at reasonable rates. Of course a lot of what they are selling are luxuries that people with bad credit shouldn't have, but then we have to ask what the alternative is. (most places have terrible public transit so you have to get such people in a car. You don't need a TV for movies but you can't really live life without internet anymore as many forms assume online and the alternatives don't work well)
- datavirtue 2y agoA lot of companies, most, will leave marginalized people behind explicitly to avoid developing solutions for their edge cases. "We don't want those customers." It's come to the point where they try to exclude them up front by requiring 2FA via SMS to establish accounts.
- Pigo 2y agoIt's hard to argue against that. I suppose it's not that they even exist, it's just the unreasonable amount they profit on the items. If it's purely because they cannot attain items another way, they markup should be more apparent maybe? It just hurts seeing young and disadvantaged people being taken advantage of.
- amarcheschi 2y agoI like the term "societal code smells"
- cptaj 2y agoFor sure. I hate excessive regulation, but if companies keep poisoning the well, action has to be taken
- patrickmcnamara 2y agoThis isn't excessive at all. Making it easy to unsubscribe from things is totally reasonable to regulate in any world.
- jfengel 2y agoThe problem is that "excessive regulation" often means "regulations that inconvenience me". Often regulations are put in place to help somebody else, and they are met with wailing and gnashing of teeth.
- bluGill 2y agoSome regulations help me. I'm glad I don't have to sort through all the pipes to find lead free ones. However some hurt me - I know very well how to do electric work and so having to hire an electrician costs me money I don't have (as opposed to an inspector who is much cheaper since they only verify I did the work right).
- pests 2y agoIn my area the homeowner can do all electrical work. Still needs inspected. Are you sure you need to hire an electrician in your jurisdiction?
- FireBeyond 2y agoOne that stung me the other day, Amazon, a $152 charge showing up on my card. Realized that it was an annual renewal of Prime. No email notification or anything. Dig around, there is an option to get a reminder email, but it defaults to off. This is a growing trend too, reduced or no notification of renewal, even on annual subscriptions, so you get hit with a three digit charge out of nowhere (not that it's not our responsibility to track these things, but many of us do so less than we'd like).
- bluGill 2y agoI refuse to sign up for subscriptions in many cases for that reason. Same reason I won't sign up for 6 months no payments or interest for things I'm buying - by paying cash I ensure I won't forget to pay in 6 months and then just get the minimum payment withdrawn. Large parts of the world are built to scam you and they know how to make scams seem like a good deal.
- datavirtue 2y agoWhy, when it was already solved by the market!? /s
- schmookeeg 2y agoCame to say this too, basically. The FTC is currently a bright candle in the swamp. I think we need a word for this work. Maybe disenshittification? :)
- croes 2y agoI doubt it will stay that way if Trump gets a 2nd term.
- kibwen 2y agoEven if he doesn't, the supreme court justices that he installed will just say, ackshually, we interpret the constitution to say that this is the purview of the judicial branch, natch.
- invaderzirp 2y agoNot sure why you're getting downvoted (jk I know exactly why). HN will have an entire goddamn Bollywood dance number around the fact that big corporations screw people over, and government has to come in and fix it. "Omg wow, this is great! Why didn't we do this sooner?" Well, tech has a spasming tantrum every time anyone even hints at maybe not letting companies do whatever they want all the time, including most of the people here, and Congress has long since been captured by business interests and people who think the government makes hurricanes. The solutions are not at all technically challenging, our political system just isn't effective anymore. That's why regulatory bodies do what they can to make rules while Congress and tech companies sit around counting their money.
- alwayslikethis 2y agofwiw JD Vance has voiced support a few times for keeping Lina Khan who is pushing a lot of this agenda.
- smt88 2y agoThere is absolutely no chance Trump's donors, which include the A16Z clowns, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and a lot of anti-regulation people in Silicon Valley, are going to allow Lina Khan to stick around. Vice presidents have no power, and Vance is not on the ticket because Trump is interested in his opinion on the FTC. He's on the ticket because he said he wouldn't have peacefully transferred power like Pence did, and that's the only reason.
- rachofsunshine 2y agoThis feels like one of those things that could be solved on the payment end with something like a unique payment ID for each subscription, rather than giving a CC number. Then you just enable or disable payment IDs (perhaps for a limited time, e.g., "create a payment ID that works for Netflix for the next three months but not after that"), rather than relying on vendors to decide whether they feel like charging you or not.
- AdamJacobMuller 2y agoprivacy.com
- ajkjk 2y agoMy understanding is that under the hood this does happen, but in the company's favor-some memberships will survive your credit card changing? There was a patio11 article about it which I can't find at the moment. (edit: maybe not. maybe it was a tweet? in any case I remember it being a thing)
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoI have never(?) updated my Netflix billing information, but I know it has survived many new cards/numbers. Which feels like it defeats the purpose of getting a new generated card.
- ajkjk 2y agowell, the idea is that you have a contract with them and that determines the money you owe, not the actual card. There's some mechanism under the hood to update the recurring subscription to use your new card when it changes.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoWell then they can go after me to get their money were I to fall behind. Not that they get a permanent linkage to my account.
- thefourthchime 2y agoNow, let's institute an actual price rule. I can't rent an Airbnb or book a plane ticket without being lied to about what the actual prices is.
- staringback 2y ago> book a plane ticket without being lied to about what the actual prices is This hasn't been true for at minimum 10 years. Paying for extra leg room is not a "junk fee"
- arlcode 2y agoThat really depends. Me and everybody else in my close family doesn't really need that. And we short but not to that far from the average height.
- luddit3 2y agoBiden admin did add upfront fee declarations to show the consumer the actual price.
- cogman10 2y ago"Fees" on top of the top line price should be illegal. It's just a way to smuggle in a 100% increase in the purchase price to get an initial buy in for a product. It is super scammy. Heck, I would even take this a step further and say that taxes as well should always be fully included in the topline price. If a company wants to add a breakdown of how much went to taxes, I'm ok with that. The sticker price should always be the full price.
- VBprogrammer 2y agoAs a British person this is always so alien when traveling in the US. You could go one step further and suggest that perhaps tips which are practically mandatory should be included in the headline price but that might be a step too far.
- 2y ago
- stronglikedan 2y ago> The fact that something is happening, even slowly Regulation like this, as necessary and obvious as this one is, should happen slowly. There are way too many short sighted, reactionary laws and regulations to begin with.
- ajkjk 2y agoNot this slowly. Not "this has been obviously stupid for my entire lifetime" slowly.
- idontwantthis 2y agoIf you like this kind of thing please vote for Democrats this November. Edit: Instead of downvoting how about you point me to the Republican platform that endorses consumer protections ?
- xnx 2y agoI much prefer this type of government intervention than picking winners (Apple) and losers (Google) with regard to app stores.