If a bunch of elected officials wrote letters to execs and a couple of NYT articles were written about the issue, Visa/Mastercard might be motivated to help.
It's maybe comforting to think "oh, people just don't want to call, they'd rather eat the fees" when this is way over simplifying the problem and giving way too much credit to sites that operate this way.
Try to call comcast and actually speak to a customer service representative. Try it. I dare you. I bought a new modem last year and simply needed to provision it on the service. I got caught in bot limbo so long my only recourse was to scream 'cancel my account!' over and over until I actually got a human on the line. I'm sure that will be automated away at some point too.
It isn't fear of the call or the human being (though for some that can be part of the problem.
It is that some or all of these, and other irritations, will be true:
* The call has to be in their working hours, which is possibly your working hours too. I can get away with sitting on hold for a personal matter in work time, but many can't.
* The call will not be short…
* You will need to interact with irritating menu systems to get onto the relevant queues, and if you hit the wrong thing or an issue causes a disconnect, you will be right back where you started.
* The interminable hold muzak and/or staticy silence…
* When you finally get to that human they will have a long script, and it can be hard to divert them from it to just let you cancel. They will try to dissuade you from cancelling with various offers, and occasionally lies, no matter how much you insist that you just want to cancel.
* If you call at the start of a period they'll tell you that if you cancel now, you'll lose the remaining X weeks and try get you to call back later to not lose that “investment”. If you do call back a couple of weeks later you'll be told there is a notice period and you'll be billed for another period. There are other underhand tricks similar to this.
* After all the upsell/resell the first person you get won't be able to process the cancellation. You'll be put back into the queuing system for some more lovely muzak/static.
* The second person might not be able to either. Lather, rinse, repeat.
* All this time, any technical issue that causes a disconnect puts you right back at the start.
* If you get exasperated by all of this and start sounding to aggressive in your irritation, they will sometimes state that you are being rude (maybe I am, but not as rude as them wasting my time and trying to con me…) and hang up, meaning you have to call back and restart at a later time.
Some years ago I cancelled a magazine subscription, that I signed up for in seconds online, in a call that lasted nearly an hour. I've been very wary of subscribing to anything that needs payment details ever since, a stance that has done me well. The only way they will stop doing this sort of crap is if enough people simply stop subscribing to things because of it, or if relevant legislation without easy loopholes is passed.
They could do so much more. We still don't even have chip and pin in the US. They seem to think that the current levels of fraud loss are cheaper than the business lost from stopping it.
How exactly are they suffering?
Now if a bank or card came along and provided the same (and maybe easy subscription management in general) they can have all my subscription revenue.
No consumer business can operate without access to those card networks.
These companies provide an utility that is essential for participation in the economy. There needs to be some due process if you want to exclude people or corporations from that.
If you take that past into account, and consider the fact that they aren't using that power the way you want, it becomes immediately clear that they never will.
With no consideration given to how consumers may be harmed by non-enforcement meanwhile.
Disable the easy sign-up button and force customers to call to sign up.
Seems like no burden at all to implement.
Of course, like everybody else, I block ads. Although, when I didn’t I didn’t click on the things anyway.
I dunno. For a while I felt bad consuming stuff without paying. But in the end, the internet has become so hostile and manipulative, I guess… I’m just going to wait it out. Eventually hopefully it will all collapse and a viable business model will be discovered.
Any request for your own private data will then come with datetime stamps and source origins for every piece of data they have of you.
Thereby allowing you to cut off at the source and request deletion, which they must then propagate upstream or risk a fine per data point.
But they're not required to give it to you, and they won't.
That leaves a lot of room for the "Cancel" option to be buried in an obscure hard to find part of the website. I'd have hoped there was a requirement for it to be as prominent and as easy to find as the "Subscribe" option (and maybe there is, just not mentioned in this piece?)
I personally don't want that. Click to cancel? Sure. But perfectly symmetrical is not something I need and in many cases not something I want.
Yes, since the alternative is what you have now: impossible to find and if you find it highly annoying. Even if you have the law which says "canceling must be as easy as subscribing" like where I live it still isn't even close due to efforts of government creating a law but failing (by design) to fund the agency tasked with keeping the companies in check.
ABSOLUTELY YES
[Cancel] [USD 12.99/mo billed on the 20th]I'm going off my experience with cookie banners, and how that whole thing seemed like a great idea at the time but turned out to mostly be an incredible annoyance.
In the same way, I don't think I'd enjoy a cancel button being front-and-center and cluttering up an interface at all times, given that I don't want to perform a cancellation action the vast, vast majority of the time when I am using a subscription service.
95% of the services I use already stick a cancellation button in either a "billing" section or a "user" section, which is generally quite easy to find and use in the rare instances I need it.
I wouldn't, I would like some form of confirmation before buying a subscription. I don't see the problem in a unsubscribe function having a symmetrical confirmation in any service that doesn't try to trick me into a subscription. And actually, even more so for services that try to trick me...
Click to settings Click to cancel Click to confirm cancel
Usually signing up takes more effort than that! I didn't even have to type anything.
Yes.
1. Login
2. Go to your account page.
3. That should have a link to billing management.
4. Somewhere on the billing management screen there should be some easy to figure out way to cancel.
Details will vary but in general cancelling logically makes the most sense as part of payment management, so it belongs where other payment management goes such as adding or updating a credit card.
If the site wants to it would be fine to have a separate subscription management section that is linked to on the account page parallel to billing management. That might make sense if it is a service where there are options users can add to or remove from subscriptions.
For example a streaming service might have separate paid options such as higher video resolution, more simultaneous streams allowed, removing ads, and adding specialized content (e.g., porn, foreign language videos).
That wouldn't really belong under billing so putting it in a separate subscription management section would be better, and then cancelling would best fit there too. Billing management would then just be managing your payment methods.
What if the subscription was just as difficult as your ideal cancellation UX flow? I would like that, too. Let the homepage just describe your product, and maybe some pricing.
https://www.swlaw.com/publication/ftc-click-to-cancel-rule/#...
I’ve put off joining a gym for years because I don’t want the hassle of I want to cancel.
Also I never do free trials assuming they’ll be hard to cancel.
I'm definitely in the newer-touch-something-if-it-seems-hard-to-cancel camp. How do you measure that I didn't sign up?
Craftsman tools are STILL riding the reputation they had half a century ago, despite being made out of the cheapest chinesium and losing their impressive warranty stance.
The American consumer has demonstrated an absurd inability to consider past events as useful information to predict future results.
Things continue to enshittify because the 3 consumers who recognize that quality is going down are vastly outweighed by the increase in consumption by the rest of your market.
Kitchenaid still sells plenty of mixers that die after a year. Hell, American car brands are still successful businesses even though they have made only a few reasonably competitive vehicles since the 50s.
Disney and Netflix are still making plenty of money despite making it difficult to share accounts.
You can only gather a very, very small subset of all data. So now you're basing your decisions off of a tiny picture, so you end up with sometimes strange conclusions. Conclusions that, intuitively, make no sense. But the data says so, so I guess that's what we do.
Typically the decision is already made, usually based on a combination of experience, ego, and emotions. Then you have to find and structure data to justify it to other people. You can find data to justify almost any decision.
It seems (to me) as if such behaviors were stamped out more rapidly not only would fewer customers be affected, there would be less incentive to try the scam(ish) behaviors in the first place.
But I get it now: when Biden directs the FTC to act, it's considered legitimate use of executive power. When Trump directs an agency not to act, it's authoritarian overreach.
His style is certainly authoritarian, but that’s not the same as the actual impact on me, my family, and my community.
I first spoke with a customer service agent whose accent I couldn't understand very well. I have him ALL my account information. He mumbled something about being unable to forward me to the actual customer service agent (then what is your role, dude?), then came back on and said he couldn't forward me and so I would have to call them myself.
He gave me the same number I had already called. I pointed this out to him and he gave me some other number, which is where I'm listening to on-hold music now.
Right now the on-hold music is interrupted to sell me shit.
But frustratingly, the AT&T website appeared to allow you to replace your current (auto-pay) billing method with some other billing method, but I didn't see any way to remove all current billing methods, which makes just stopping paying nigh impossible. :-(
Freedom to pay is very fundamental for free speech, I think courts and legislatures made this very very clear multiple times.
There are whole countries where you don't need Apple as intermediary to cancel any subscription without notice. In these countries it is up to companies to sue you if they think you are in wrong, and "they made it hard to cancel subscription" is basically all defence consumer ever needs.
So they never win.
So they never sue.
My naive take - it's because we give corporations just as much freedom if not more than the average person.
Then you have to go court to decide which of you is right, much easier to sit on the phone for a couple hours.
The transfer process impacts the metrics of the agent. You know, like call length, customer survey, customer callbacks, etc
Well transfers are also a metric. That specific agent might prefer a "callback" over a "transfer" that month.
W/e Your best strategy is to open the call with: "hi, I want to cancel my service" And don't give details about any problem, you just want to cancel. Period.
If the agen't "can't transfer" ask for a supervisor. Could be 5 - 15 more minutes but at least you don't have to call again.
If you ask for "an American" or "someone who can speak english", depending on the call center company, you can get a call drop, a soft retention, a transfer to the agent beside, or a transfer to a call center in the US. YMMV
my two cents
The whole point of "click to cancel" was to deal with the fact that a business, by contract law, can make it almost entirely impossible to stop owing them money through entirely legal means. The courts do not consider being on hold for 18 hours onerous enough to void a contract, so it's perfectly legal to require you to follow the "cancellation process", whatever that is.
Welcome to a world without consumer protections beyond basic contract law! American courts have long held the position that, if you agree to a contract, it really doesn't matter how onerous it is. Fuck you, caveat emptor and all that.
If you want to improve the situation without new regulation, we should push for courts to take a more reasonable stance: That contract law does not protect absurd contracts. This is supposed to be the current situation, but what it takes to get your contract declared null because it's unfair or onerous is just insane right now, because our courts have spent at least 50 years praying at the alter of "let businesses do literally anything they want under contract law"
Is this your personal exerience, or are you making assumptions?
I would love to hear how this process possibly fails to unsubscribe anyone:
1. Go to your state's corporate website and get/buy the name and address of the corporate registered agent for your ISP or whatever. In Texas that costs $1.
2. Write or ask ChatGPT to write a demand letter that they cancel your service as of the date of your letter. If they don't, threaten to sue them in small claims court. In Texas, threaten triple damages under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. (ChatGPT will help you write demands using the "laundry list" of deceptive acts.)
3. Send letter return receipt requested.
4. A lawyer on their side is now involved. They will never ever show up in any small claims court for this. And if they do, the judge is so on your side for this!
Heck, this works for a bunch of things, once you assert your rights. For example, I made a Coinbase account when they first existed and played with $10 of bitcoin. There it sat for six years or so, and then I tried to log in again. Their identity bullshit was demanding to use a phone number from an older phone and they stonewalled. So I sent a demand letter as above and, surprise!, my account was magically re-enabled for my $3 of bitcoin.
All the company has to do in that court room is show that you mailed the form to someone whose job has nothing to do with account services, or who doesn't even have access or authorization to access people's private account information, or that they tried and failed to reach you in order to verify your identify since they sure as hell won't cancel the account of someone and shut off their service all because an anonymous letter showed up somewhere nobody was expecting to get it. What a great way to DoS an enemy or competitor if that worked. Just mail off some letters to a few store's webhosts right before Christmas or black friday.
Jesus Christ, this is like those gasoline pumps that blare ads at you while you pump. On that little screen right above the plaque that says "you better not go in your car or this whole place will fucking explode or something".
Since when is it chill to hold people hostage for ads, let alone LOUD ads? I don't want to hear this!
PS: little tip for gasoline pump ads: one button always mutes them. Think it's a compliance thing. Almost never labeled, so just try all the buttons.
I don't think this is true anymore. I've pushed all 8 buttons on a pump near me, and it didn't mute. Almost purchased a car wash though. Thankfully my primary car is electric.
To hear these horror stories how hard it is to cancel a service in the US makes me wonder how the Americans put up with this.
We all know that there are other countries where far, far worse abuses of power take place, but I've wondered if the U.S. might be at some really unfortunate nexus of strong contract law enforcement + particularly poor consumer protections that leads to these particularly madding subscription cancellation-type services discussed in this thread.
Add in the random percentage increase in price when you try to buy something in a store from hidden taxes.
Also add the culture of tipping, rather than paying staff.
It's not random.
Those of us with a state tax are familiar with the rules and the rates. Those with a modicum of arithmetic ability have a pretty good idea what the total is coming to.
Not saying "this is better" just that it is not as bad as you apparently think.
There's people who like this who will never benefit at all, does anyone know why?
I don't get it. Then again I don't get the appeal of tearing the wings off of flies either.
Could you explain what you’re referring to? Isn’t the FTC trying to make it better (with key staff getting fired as they try)?
Some people like this, where companies get to effectively scam people by deliberately not enforcing rules preventing it. I don't know why people like this. I speculated that it was due to some dumb new bigotry of some sort, as a wild guess as to why people like it when the gov't harms people for no reason.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html#fair-pricin...
Now every service will be spamming you notifications and emails even more desperately to bait you into "using" the service so they can bill you. More clickbait and scare tactics on news subscriptions. Also goodbye monthly subscriptions.
It only works for Kagi because they're pretty decent folk.
The system is built in such a way that they get a lot of information about you (e.g. SSN for internet access) subsequently used to ensure cancellation is extremely painful.
If they didn't have this information, failure to bill would be immediate service pausing/termination, so it's not even that non-payment results in money lost for the company.
For email accounts I create burners. I wish I could do the same in real life.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/11/trump-accept...
RankingMember•9mo ago
lenerdenator•9mo ago
If you see government as a way to enhance the ability of the owner class to enrich themselves, it makes perfect sense.
sorcerer-mar•9mo ago
mjcl•9mo ago
sorcerer-mar•9mo ago
collingreen•9mo ago
It seems like you're looking to fight on the internet - would you consider a different activity instead?
sorcerer-mar•9mo ago
No I actually think it's important for people to square views like "government is a way to enrich the owner class" with actual reality, such as the fact that the government when administered by a different party did the exact opposite.
rapind•9mo ago
coldpie•9mo ago
ryandrake•9mo ago
airstrike•9mo ago
It's better to think about it in terms of "people who choose to pursue positions of power to benefit themselves financially while cosplaying as wanting to help the average person".
flatline•9mo ago
Retric•9mo ago
Further having 100m at 40 doesn’t suddenly bring the kind of social connections that going to the right schools and the right parties would. At the extremes, the average lottery winner is surrounded by people asking for help, the average Fortune 500 CEO’s social circle aren’t. So if they suddenly fall on hard times the lottery winner is stuck but that CEO may very well claw their way back.
It’s still possible for poor people to succeed and 3rd+ generation wealth to fail, but the odds are wildly different.
buran77•9mo ago
This is not so when it comes to the poor. Once in power they are no longer poor so the incentive to fix any issue related to this almost entirely evaporates.
MadcapJake•9mo ago
whynoTBolth•9mo ago
There now it’s both. They want to own agency if the idea of owning stuff is too gauche for modern audiences.
smallmancontrov•9mo ago
A $200k NW individual gets 2x cost and $2k gain.
A $3M NW individual gets 2x cost and $30k gain.
A $6B NW individual gets 1x cost and $60M gain.
A $400B NW individual gets 1x cost and $4B gain.
If it wasn't obvious, these numbers correspond to the Median American, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk. People whining about focus on ownership and complaining that all politicians are bad are drawing this equivalence across 3-6 orders of magnitude of incentive to do evil.
In contrast, I argue that incentives matter and that high NW individuals in politics have uniquely misaligned incentives. The focus on ownership doesn't just matter, it matters more than it ever did before.
Angostura•9mo ago
I guess you get the government you vote for.
NewJazz•9mo ago
nrclark•9mo ago
delecti•9mo ago
manishsharan•9mo ago
It also explains why blue collar Americans vote for tax breaks for billionaires and union busting legislation.
kevin_thibedeau•9mo ago
insane_dreamer•9mo ago
We did not have an almost daily turmoil of shit happening in 2021-2024.
Spivak•9mo ago
soulofmischief•8mo ago
insane_dreamer•8mo ago
that's all terrible stuff but the reality is all that has been happening almost non-stop since the 50s. US foreign policy has always been a shit-show.
what we're seeing today is an extra thick layer of daily bshit on top of the usual layer
> a threat to the American public that if we didn't allow business as usual to continue unabated, we would experience domestic hardship through Trump
which turned out to be even more true than anyone thought was possible
soulofmischief•8mo ago
Yes, that's why I said as usual and typical.
> what we're seeing today is an extra thick layer of daily bshit on top of the usual layer
No, as far as foreign politics it's really same shit different day, we're siding with dictators and meddling with other countries' affairs, economically bullying other countries... Just more out in the open now, and with a somewhat different set of dictators. The only material difference is that Trump's mission is to weaken our global supremacy, which is a mixed bag, as some of that supremacy should indeed go away, but tariffs etc are not the fucking answer.
> which turned out to be even more true than anyone thought was possible
I thought it was going to be even worse. We still have 4 years to find out how bad it gets.
autoexec•8mo ago
reissbaker•9mo ago
coldpie•9mo ago
reissbaker•9mo ago
1: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/10/ftc-delays-enforcement-of-...
gosub100•8mo ago
oblio•9mo ago
fooblaster•9mo ago
squigz•9mo ago
tobr•9mo ago
andrewflnr•9mo ago
fuzzer371•9mo ago
andrewflnr•9mo ago
rixed•9mo ago
oblio•8mo ago
Those economic theories are not proper economic theories. As in, mainstream economists don't support them. That theory is propaganda in service of some specific political parties.
> I don't see the contradiction between the two propositions "government is for the ruling class" and "there have been some progress".
"There has been some progress" is a gross understatement considering the age we're living in. There has been tremendous progress and the lifestyle difference between the poorest members of a developed country and the richest ones is much, much smaller than that between the poorest and richest members of a country 200+ years ago.
shlomo_z•9mo ago
Services have been making it hard to cancel subscriptions for many years, under many parties and administrations. Many things are Trump's fault, this is not one of them.
arunabha•9mo ago
shlomo_z•9mo ago
It seems like this was pushed off to give businesses more time to comply.
Many kinds of businesses have subscriptions, each with a different situation. Some small businesses don't even have a programmer.
Requiring a phone call is not always (although often is) to make it difficult to cancel. Often it's because a company doesn't have the proper infrastructure for the frontend.
So I think it's reasonable that they are giving companies some time.
In the end, I hope that on July 14th this goes through, it will be a big win for consumers.
EDIT: My answer didn't fully address the question, so let me add: I don't think is the result of Trump trying to be friends with billionaires for their money. I understand why it seems that way - because he literally does that. But this doesn't seem special or extraordinary. Enforcement of laws gets pushed off all the time.
arp242•9mo ago
But we're not.
So maybe you're right. I don't know. But I sure as hell wouldn't assume as much based on the words of these people. We'll see in July I guess.
prasadjoglekar•9mo ago
The Biden admin had put the May 14 deadline for certain things even though the rule as a whole went into effect in Jan 2025. Trump's commish is defending that by another 60 days.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/negative-option...