Posted by LorenDB 10/24/2024
If the FTC got nothing done but this and it stood up in court it’d be a huge win for society.
I remember the relentless and annoying and capricious and arcane process I had to go through to cancel Comcast for my elderly mother.
Gyms do this, too! Super easy to sign up almost impossible to cancel.
Just scraping a bit of money out of each transaction, no doubt.
When you want to cancel, tell them you are moving to Canada and have to cancel. they stop trying to sell you on keeping the service. Settle up and cancel your Virtual CC.
No virtual CC or similar tricks: the companies get the money from your account and you never see the bills .
One major point which may not exist in the US is that you have a button on your bank web site which you click to suspend or delete the DD authorization. From there on the bank will refuse to pay and the discussion is between you and the company.
When I want yo cancel something it is either straightforward on their site, or I send an email requesting the account to be removed and block DD
Anyone with knowledge who can expand this or explain what exactly is "arbitrary", "capricious" or "abuse of discretion"?
As far as I can tell, the best argument the cable companies have is "a consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options" but that feels contrived at best. Anyone have any better arguments against the new FTC rule?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/lina-khan-vs-planet-fitne...
And, if a judge does rule that this change did not follow the law, then no matter how much you like it, it's far better that legal requirements get met than to weaken them over something like this.
It's a reference to a specific level of evidentiary standard that the Act prescribes. Basically, the APA is generally deferential to the agencies deciding how to implement regulations, so challengers have to demonstrate that the implementation in question represents an unreasonable abuse of power.
What it really boils down to, though, is that they're complaining that the FTC didn't make a strong enough case that the burdens this rule imposes on service providers are proportional to the consumer protection benefit.
If you follow SCOTUS opinions, like half of them are about these words. That isn’t an answer so much as an admission that the APA is one of the more jargon-heavy areas of law. Importantly, however: these standards are not overturned by the junking of Chevron deterrence.
Arbitrary-and-capricious focuses “on the process of decision-making rather than the outcome itself. Courts applying this standard do not substitute their judgment for that of the agency but instead examine whether the agency’s decision-making process was rational and based on consideration of relevant factors” [1]. Courts will look at if the agency “relied on factors that Congress did not intend it to consider…failed to consider an important aspect of the problem,” or “offered an explanation that runs counter to the evidence before the agency.” So if an agency doesn’t consider reasonable alternatives to its rule or doesn’t provide evidence for each step in its thinking, its rule can be struck down [2].
Note that these concepts trace from judicial standards, i.e. appellate courts will overturn lower courts if they acted arbitrarily, capriciously or abused their discretion. If a lower court “does not apply the correct law or rests its decision on a clearly erroneous finding of a material fact.…rules in an irrational manner” or “makes an error of law,” its ruling can be overturned on the basis of abuse of discretion [3]. So if an agency facing a statute of limitations gets stonewalled by a defendant running out the clock, and a court dismisses (versus stays) the case on the basis of the statute of limitations having run out, that is abuse of discretion [4].
[1] https://attorneys.media/arbitrary-capricious-legal-standard-...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicles_Manufacturers....
[3] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/uploads/guides/stand_...
[4] https://casetext.com/case/pension-ben-guar-v-carter-tillery-...
That way consumers will understand the consequences of signing up and cancelling.
The obviously ideal case for the cable companies is "easy to signup - borderline impossible to cancel", as that'd lead to the highest short-term profits.
(I had nothing to do with it!)
It's good that these cases happen. The agencies should be kept in check, they can't just make stuff up as they go. There is a reasonable position that some folks take - that the agencies were never intended to have such broad powers and have vastly overstepped their bounds.
> Additionally, the FTC has rulemaking power to address concerns regarding industry-wide practices. Rules promulgated under this authority are known as Trade Rules.
But of course, that specific sentence is labeled "citation needed" so can't really dig deeper there. But taking it at face-value, isn't that one of the points of the FTC at least today, that they can setup these "Trade Rules"?
In part. They’re also claiming the Commission didn’t consider some material facts. (What they are is so far unstated.)
Much better to maintain the status quo. Wouldn’t want to upset a corpo now would we?
When the criminal says "hey, that's not fair, the legislature didn't make this thing illegal that should be illegal"... well, let's pass it as a law. Anyone not a criminal should be on board with that, including the complainants.
Make no mistake. This is fraud by any sane standard, fraud of the criminal sort. These companies should be fined tens of billions of dollars, if not more. Those who cannot afford such fines (Planet Fitness, etc), should be bankrupted, their assets sold at auction, and their executives and directors prohibited from ever holding such jobs again. Make the shareholders of these companies destitute.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose new laws and rules than your own guilt.
No reason to oppose such a one as I hinted at. Other than your own guilt.
A service has all your source code. Click to cancel is super easy. Privacy laws mean that data must be destroyed almost instantly. You accidentally click and POOF all your stuff is gone. So... to avoid that the service implements something like github - now you have to enter details of the repo, maybe 2fa in because security, and so on. An overzealous Lina Khan type now comes after a service doing the right thing making it hard to shoot yourself in the foot.
every new rule has lots of cases like this. At any given point a good number of the agency heads are ambitious folks trying to build a career of note, not actually protect society.
There is a good reason why Harris doesn't use the FTC (under Lina Kahn) to gain political capital. This is the sort of stuff that actually matters, so naturally barely anyone ever talks about it.
A class action lawsuit could likely work. This doesn't need to be a rule per se. These companies are behaving poorly and it should cost them billions - but we don't need to create red tape every time this happens.
Not one person fighting this is a surprise
No, only the ones who suck. I don't mean this in a jokey way. If I'm UpstartISP, Inc. and I believe that my product is actually better than Comcast offers, I want people to be able to cancel services without being jerked around, waiting on hold, and hassled, so that they can sign up with me.
It's only companies that know they suck, and that their whole business is full of scams and deception, that want this. Yes, that's entire major industries, such as the "home security" lobbying group and cablecos mentioned in the article. As well as gym memberships.
Sooner or later, some SeniorLeader inside UpstartISP, whose bonus is driven by profit or loss, will do the math and note that making it harder to cancel will cause quarterly profits to increase by 0.N%, and then the company will surely make the change. The tendency for all companies to profit-maximize guarantees it.
Which is why they should be restricted from engaging in any easily-definable instances of that behavior (ideally by actual legislation instead of this silly executive branch stuff).
Banning the mature, craven companies from building moats of anticompetitive, anti-consumer behavior is a way to help the next generation of new entrants to either kill them or to force them to compete, either of which is a win for consumers and better startups trying to dethrone them.
Companies need people empowered to say "that will probably increase short-term profits, and damage our reputation in the long term, so no, we're not doing it; we're in this for the long haul".
A really good example is https://www.verizon.com/plans/free-trial/ I was testing between verizon and mint for my physical location. For whatever reason, VZ was underperforming, so when the trial expired, I left a happy temporary customer. I have since recommended it to others, knowing that they aren't going to get locked in.
Being able to cancel actually make more happy customers, not less. It is only the enshitified mba run companies that trap customers that exhibit the parasitic practice of trapping customers into long contracts, confusing bills and impossible to cancel w/o burning your payment account number.
I actually would sign up for the local gym that just went under in my neighborhood, but I knew I would never be able to cancel, so I skipped it.
There's what, like 10k hours in a year, half a million hours in a lifetime? So rather than "make it easy to cancel" laws what we really need is some general recognition of the fact that deliberately stealing 1 hour of time from half a million people is roughly equivalent to murdering 1 person. Everyone knows that class actions for a $2 dollar check are a joke. If your business is practically essential so that you're basically guaranteed customers, and your business practices deliberately add friction that cost people time+money, then you're guilty of violence as well as theft.
Agreed!
That is for whatever reason they have for not wanting to do it. Except, maybe for not doing it for publicity reasons and exploiting that fact with a large campaign.
Not only would many people in the US be against this on principle ("the feds should stop meddling", "the free market will sort it out"), but the companies in question would invest lots of money into propaganda that many, many people would fall for.
These people would be against maintaining their own lives if the Dems were for it.
Case in point: you're using it here to describe people who are not particularly wise to propaganda, which has nothing to do with the word at all. You're probably referring to social conservatives, but it's always hard to tell if comments like these are meant to be a strawman on purpose or not.
But it's typical of big industry groups to try to block any kind of regulatory- or legislative action that inhibits them from doing what they want.
It goes from big issues, like cannabis, reproductive rights, gun control, all the way down to common sense consumer protections like this. That's why I'm weary about about politicians who thump "states' rights" & "self determination", but never seem to put forward any big ticket ballot propositions.
A lot of people seem to forget but the maximum amount of democracy isn't the best. Mob rule is not a good system of government.
When did Mitch McConnell say “the American people should decide,” aka the “mob”? When he wanted to block a SCOTUS appointment for almost a year. Suddenly the mob was wrong when the shoe was on the other foot and the window of time was barely over a month.
Good faith “mob rule” arguments are rare. It’s mostly just an easy appeal to shut down otherwise valid arguments.
Secondly, the electoral college does not give the GOP disproportionate political power. That's a misunderstanding of how it works.
As to your second point, see: the senate. Democrats have 1 more seat which basically translates to 52% of the country to the GOP’s 48%, yet they actually represent 36% more of the country (204mill vs. 150mill) than Republicans do when looking at the populations they represent. It doesn’t have to be one-to-one, but surely you can see that the difference here is striking? This is a consequence of all states getting the exact same number of senators.
So which are you talking about exactly? Maybe you're just quoting things you heard by rumor?
But seeing as you changed the argument to the Senate, I'll respond to that.
The Senate was never and is not supposed to be representative of the population. It's supposed to be representative of the states. This is a good thing to keep. That's also why things like Governors being able to simply pick replacement senators without having an election is allowed.
Until the most recent census was finished and electoral map updated (which has been years of work due to unpacking the census plus several states fighting over redistricting) the democrats had to overcome an ~5pt disadvantage to even begin winning due to how the maps are drawn and the FPTP system. Republicans had a distinct advantage which is now a smaller advantage (~1.3-1.7 IIRC). Still, if I was running for president I’d rather be on the side that starts with the weight slightly in their favor. Especially given the razor thin margins elections are seeing now.
You can’t lose the popular vote and win the presidency that many times without raising eyebrows. They clearly have electoral and other structural advantages that are well documented at this point. They have won the popular vote I believe 1 time in the last 8 elections. They haven’t won it since 2004. I guarantee you they’ll lose it again this year no matter the electoral outcome. No one even debates it anymore in predicting the outcome, it’s just assumed.
The demcorats consistently govern/represent far more Americans and have to overcome an electoral college disadvantage that is now just a slight disadvantage. We can argue all day about whether or not you agree that’s how things should be, but the math is clear here. There really isn’t a whole lot to debate.
Gerrymandering can absolutely causes biases, but gerrymandering is performed by both sides.
Saying it's "consistent" when we're only talking about the past 20 years I think is a bit much.
FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions
Cancelling the service was easy.
Cancelling the recurring payments has turned out to be an entirely different matter.
That’s literally the fucking point.
I'd love to have a convenient way to transfer a phonecall to a message playing on loop, continuously without gaps for the other end to respond. e.g. "take me off your spam list immediately".
Translation: "WTF, how dare you suggest that we have to stop deceiving and ripping off our customers? We aren't prepared to do business honestly! This is an outrage!"
Note: California has this same type of law scheduled to go into effect in July. Can't wait!
As near as I can tell, that's the real rub here - this is not a law,, nor was it directly enacted by legislation. It's a regulation written independent of lawmakers, and the question is whether the FTC has the authority to write this specific set of regulations.
I'm hoping the cable companies lose but we should be aware of the consequences of allowing uncheck regulatory rule making outside the scope of congress.
Edit: I know in general it's the left who "likes to regulate things" but a relevant example on the right would include regulating things like immigration.
IMO that problem can be traced back to issues like:
1. The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which prevented adding more Representatives as population grew.
2. The game-theoretic outcomes of continuing to use plurality/first-past-the-post voting.
3. How most officeholders end up spending most of their time raising money for re-election rather than the job itself.
With a magic wand I’d massively increase both the house and senate, publicly fund elections, and switch to 3 member mixed districts to increase the chances every citizen of a district has someone they feel reasonably represents their major views.
I’m not saying it’s worse than what we have now, I’m actually more curious how the people who would like to see that reform would want it to look in practice so I can know whether I could support it and how I’d argue for it.
When I’ve pictured this it’s with member counts in the low to mid thousands, not tens of thousands.
Floor debates are already mainly performative, with little bearing on changes to bills. All the real work happens in committee and by the Speaker’s office. I’d think about embracing this with more different caucuses of various members who come together on specific issues and bring versions of bills and amendments for committees to adopt or reject, maybe even a few levels of committees to build consensus slowly so the final floor vote is more formality than debate.
Here's the Congressional passed statutes regarding the FTC [1].
In particular note that 15 U.S.C 41-58 includes that the FTC "is empowered... to .. prescribe rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive, and establishing requirements designed to prevent such acts or practices" among many other similar things.
The phrase "unfair or deceptive" occurs 56 times in the FTC charter. Go read it.