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> A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website. Except that's not the proposed rule. The way this work

by khuey 2y ago

> A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website. Except that's not the proposed rule. The way this works in California (and the way the rule the FTC recently published works, I believe) is that a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed. That doesn't require anyone to start running a website. The rest of your post is just arguing against something that's not even happening.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
[flagged]
- BytesAndGears 2y ago
  As-is, it works very well in California. I had never experienced the resistance you imagined during the 3-4 years I lived in California, and regularly cancelled subscriptions that were notoriously hard in other states
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    California passed the click to cancel law this year. They passed a different law trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions in 2018. The need for them to revisit it implies that the original one wasn't working. Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again. If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  No timers, no human interaction. And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > No timers, no human interaction. Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction? > And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.) The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.

by khuey 2y ago

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

[flagged]

BytesAndGears 2y ago
As-is, it works very well in California. I had never experienced the resistance you imagined during the 3-4 years I lived in California, and regularly cancelled subscriptions that were notoriously hard in other states
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  California passed the click to cancel law this year. They passed a different law trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions in 2018. The need for them to revisit it implies that the original one wasn't working. Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again. If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
No timers, no human interaction. And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > No timers, no human interaction. Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction? > And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.) The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.