2y ago

Cable firms to FTC: We shouldn’t have to let users cancel service with a click — Customers may “misunderstand the consequences of canceling,” say lobbyists

Cable firms to FTC: We shouldn’t have to let users cancel service with a click

Cable firms to FTC: We shouldn’t have to let users cancel service with a click — Customers may “misunderstand the consequences of canceling,” say lobbyists::Customers may "misunderstand the consequences of canceling," cable lobby says.

50 comments

"The proposed simple click-to-cancel mechanism may not be so simple when such practices are involved. A consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options," NCTA CEO Michael Powell said at the hearing. For example, a customer "may face difficulty and unintended consequences if they want to cancel only one service in the package," as "canceling part of a discounted bundle may increase the price for remaining services."
This sounds like a "you" problem. If your service were any good this wouldn't be a concern because nobody would have a reason to reach that page. Take those discounted bundles and fuck right off.
- Yep, it's a terrible argument but it's the only one they've got. They can't admit the easier it is to cancel service the more customers they'll lose. Nor can they say that the cable industry has spent a fortune researching how to make canceling service just frustrating enough that people will put it off long enough for the urge to eventually pass. And believe it or not, exploiting people's laziness has been a surprisingly effective customer retention strategy for decades.
  
  Consequences?
  Is the button an unsubscribe button or a button for a guillotine?
- "imperative"
- I'm sure these lobbyists are being paid millions to prevent buttons that would make them make more money. Makes total sense.
  
  🥾👅
  
  You can't just sarcastically say a statement that no one else was even implying to... I don't even know wtf you're trying to do here.
  No one is arguing that these buttons will benefit cable companies. All the arguments I've read so far in here boil down to "people should be able to cancel services they don't want even if it fucks the cable companies" sometimes combined with a dose of "and I hope it does fuck them".
That’s exactly the point. There should not be any consequences for cancelling a monthly subscription.
- There should be some consequences, like stopping monthly payment requests.
They can oligobble my balls
- Succinct. I concur.
If you cancel your subscription you're a subclass idiot, you might not even be competent... so sad... We need to fight these attempts to unsubscribe.
If you're subscribed you're among the genius class. Just keep paying and don't think about it, even if you haven't watched in months and forgot you are paying. You're not misunderstanding anything.
Sending a notification that a renewal is coming up? Impossible, will cost a fortune.
Sending mountains of junk mail offering bundles and limited time offers? Clearly much cheaper and easier.
Also, think of the labor costs, retraining the call center staff to not spend hours trying to talk people out of canceling and instead just having them hit a button. Why, that's got to force a price hike.
- Our profit margins are hurting due to young people not wanting to work and not fully understanding the gift, the boon, the euphoria of owning a TV and paying for services you don't use. This has nothing to do with our prices, lack of customer service, or our programming being flooded with repetitive drivel.
  
  Hey now, I own a TV and pay for services I don't use. Just not cable. I can't justify spending that much on something I don't use. $15 isn't bad, but a decent cable package is like $100 last I checked and it's still chock full of ads.
  Gamepass has no ads, plus the added benefit of every now and then opening it up to see it has some of the games I just bought on Steam, which is a sign that they have good taste.
Thank goodness those lobbyists are looking out for us and our easily confused little brains. Perhaps if we're so easily confused, they should lobby to get rid of the fine print and simplify those contracts while they're at it. Oh... Wait... Not that.
- The writing is tiny to not confuse us with the big words.
so, just a thought, make it illegal for there to be consequences of cancelling
This crap is why I haven't had cable in over a decade.
- And the FTC is about 30 years late on considering these regulations.
  
  The Biden admin appointed a serious badass to head it, Lina Khan. While at Yale she made waves by vivisecting Amazons buisness practices, basically redefining how America should handle antitrust laws with digital platforms.
  Shes basically a rabble rousing anti-monopolist who has blocked a record number of mergers. It's why the FTC is hitting hard at all of these industries at once.
  
  About 20. Belgium has had these laws for around 18 years now because switching mobile provider was shit and it was found to not support competition within the mobile market ( no shit ! ).
  At the same time they forced mobile providers to allow other providers to use their network infrastructure so new providers could be made without needing to make their own network infrastructure
Easy solution.. Make it clear, write a prompt "are you sure you want to cancel your cable service? Please don't? 🫣"
'We shouldn't have to let users sign up with a click'.
They are going to offer your a discount to keep their service. Maybe if they had offered you a better price in the first place you wouldn't be trying to cancel. Making it hard to cancel so that they can offer you discounts to stay is a way to keep prices high for everyone else. It's a way to maximize profits. Why not simply put a one click, "cut my bill in half" button on the website?
- Because then they would have to cut it in half for everyone.
  By making this a calling requirement the bar to access is higher in comparison.
  AND: They are likely increasing customer satiafaction because they saved 50% of the bill with a simple negotiation call and maybe get new features on top.
  The satisfaction wouldnt be high by clicking a button that may be just buried.
Where they see consequence I see benefit.
- And where they see benefit, we see consequences.
And then they will pay the FTC and they will say this is acceptable.
The End.
- Pay?
  The lobbyists and politicians are all part of it.
  Regulatory Capture
  
  Part of what, the FTC?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Lobbyists for cable companies and advertisers yesterday expressed their displeasure with a proposed "click-to-cancel" regulation that aims to make it easier for consumers to cancel services.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has said that changes are needed because "some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn't sign up for in the first place."
NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, the primary trade group for cable companies like Comcast and Charter, said the rule would make it harder to offer deals to customers who are trying to cancel.
The FTC also proposes that sellers be required to "provide an annual reminder to consumers enrolled in negative option programs involving anything other than physical goods, before they are automatically renewed."
"The proposed rule would disrupt the current regime by adding specific requirements dictating what auto-renewal disclosures must say and how they must be presented," said Lartease Tiffith, the IAB's executive VP for public policy.
Tiffith defended auto-renewals generally, saying the practice of automatically renewing services brings "significant benefits to both businesses and consumers in the form of cost savings, convenience, and heightened value."
The original article contains 613 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That's like the dairy lobbyists not wanting the vegetable milk products to feature the word "milk" because people might buy them by accident.
- I agree with them. I don't want to buy
  _Vegetable Milk only to find out it's not a dairy product.
  
  It's clearly written on them in big caps "soy" or "oat". If you buy it by "accident", it's your fault.
  
  We should aim for the middle and call it "cow nipple juice" soy can be "soy white water"
I agree with the one click for elderly folks... Sometimes they just press things out of nervousness
- My God, how could they ever have it reactivated? Such a dearth of companies selling media these days, they would be absolutely stranded.
  
  But maw-maw will miss the latest episode of NCIS: Des Moines.
  
  Sometimes they are on an older package. Which means they have a much lower monthly bill. If they cancel and then sign back up, they now have a much higher monthly bill. So yeah, a single click actually is bad. But that doesn’t mean the button shouldn’t exist. That just means there should be a couple of prompts. For example, the first one is canceled. The second one is a a screen that shows what they are paying per month, With a section next to it, that shows what they would pay if they signed back up. Then that screen there are two buttons that says no I did not mean to cancel, and the other button that says yes, go ahead and drop the service. That actually makes sense. but I actually agree with the statement that a single button that says cancel and allows you to drop the service in one button is actually very bad.
- Why does this not work the other way round?
- Ok then how about... TWO clicks? That is an increment of 100%.

50 comments