‘Click to Cancel’ legislation introduced in Pennsylvania

Fully in favor of this. I recently had to cancel a subscription that had no "cancel subscription" button and instead forced you to contact customer service so they could try to sell you on discounts and etc. No, just let me cancel and get on with my day. Unfortunately, it seems health clubs(and I assume gyms?) are exempt from this when they are like 80% of the problem.

Surprisingly, the proposed bill exempts gyms and health clubs, which have some of the worst cancellation policies.

Not to excuse companies that make you jump through hoops to unsubscribe, but is there any reason you can't just call your credit card/bank and cut off transactions to a company that's giving you a hard time? I've heard horror stories about people trying to cancel gym memberships, and wondered why they don't just stop paying, and let the gym figure it out.

There are lots of variants of this kind of unnecessary “friction” and I wish that legislation would be able to ban all of these awful behaviors instead of just specific examples of them.<p>For example, my cable company peppers its web site with ways to “upgrade” your plan easily online. Great, guess what’s missing: an easy way to <i>downgrade</i> anything, e.g. to fewer channels or slower Internet. Obviously they do this for exactly the same reason as the call-us-to-cancel crap but it is just different enough that they could probably keep doing it and still be in compliance with a poorly-written law.<p>And on the off chance something actually requires talking to a human, it is well past time to end this wait-hours-on-hold crap. Why can’t I log into my profile on the company web site, type in my phone number, describe my issue and then say CALL ME whenever the hell you manage to find an employee who is free to discuss? Furthermore, such calls could be punctuated with texts, e.g. “thank you for contacting us, please expect a call in about 10 minutes” or whatever. That stuff would have been straightforward to implement 10 years ago, much less now.

Needs to be nationwide and have real teeth in it. Before I subscribe to anything I check out the cancel procedures. If I can&#x27;t cancel online or have to &quot;chat&quot; with a retention specialist 20 times before I can finally be shut of a company (looking at you SirusXM) I&#x27;m not subscribing.

Interesting - a decade later - we are just starting to see some legislation that replicates what Apple has been doing on their app store (that they are being sued over with claims that their policies are anti-consumer). Long long overdue. People chose apple because regulation and developer practices on the broader web are so horrible (despite claims that there is no fraud and the focus of the DOJ on apple, billions are literally stolen outside of apple with crickets from law enforcement).<p>The Apple model (if followed) would be as follows:<p>Subscription terms in exact same font as trial terms (ie, no newspaper $1&#x2F;week offers with the silly super fine print) right next to trial terms.<p>Required notice in advance of subscription renewals, particularly annual or other long term renewals.<p>Click to cancel (after login &#x2F; authentication etc)<p>Alert to cancel on disuse &#x2F; uninstall - Apple will actually suggest cancelling a subscription if you do things like delete an app.<p>Clear subscription terms indicating auto-renewal or one time purchase.<p>Cancel anytime and use through end of current term, with end of term disclosed (you can still use through XXX).<p>No requirement to cancel within some days of end of term or 30 days before end of term (some do no earlier than 90 days, no later than 30 days before end of term).

I can&#x27;t advocate privacy.com enough for these shenanigans! Issuing a credit card for each vendor - with spend caps or close the card whenever.<p>If I can&#x27;t find your cancel service page within five minutes of searching; I just close the card and am done.

Full text of the proposed bill: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;legiscan.com&#x2F;PA&#x2F;text&#x2F;HB2511&#x2F;id&#x2F;2569740&#x2F;Pennsylvania-2021-HB2511-Introduced.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;legiscan.com&#x2F;PA&#x2F;text&#x2F;HB2511&#x2F;id&#x2F;2569740&#x2F;Pennsylvania-...</a>

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220418022008&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pahouse.com&#x2F;InTheNews&#x2F;NewsRelease&#x2F;?id=124404" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220418022008&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pahouse.co...</a>

I&#x27;ve done a lot of work with gym owners (mostly boutique gyms 1 maybe 2 locations).<p>It&#x27;s an interesting industry for certain.<p>I can say that making it hard to cancel for most small gyms isn&#x27;t because they want to engage in shady business practices, it&#x27;s just making it easy to cancel takes work, and it&#x27;s a very low priority for a gym owner.<p>The easiest solution for an owner to implement is to &quot;contact for cancellation.&quot;

The issue with cancelling magazine subscriptions has been discussed here before: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22426102" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22426102</a><p>The FTC issued a statement about ramping up enforcement against consumer entrapment last year: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;news-events&#x2F;news&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;ftc-ramp-enforcement-against-illegal-dark-patterns-trick-or-trap-consumers-subscriptions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;news-events&#x2F;news&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;...</a><p>From the FTC statement, they require companies to:<p><pre><code> * Disclose clearly and conspicuously all material terms of the product or service, including how much it costs, deadlines by which the consumer must act to stop further charges, the amount and frequency of such charges, how to cancel, and information about the product or service itself that is needed to stop consumers from being deceived about the characteristics of the product or service. The statement provides detail on what clear and conspicuous means, particularly noting that the information must be provided upfront when the consumer first sees the offer and generally as prominent as the deal offer itself. * Obtain the consumer’s express informed consent before charging them for a product or services. This includes obtaining the consumer’s acceptance of the negative option feature separately from other portions of the entire transaction, not including information that interferes with, detracts from, contradicts, or otherwise undermines the consumer’s ability to provide their express informed consent. * Provide easy and simple cancellation to the consumer. Marketers should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to buy the product or service in the first place. </code></pre> This was issued Oct. 28, 2021. Has anyone who has tried to (e.g.) cancel a magazine subscription noticed any difference?

This is one of those things that sounds really good on the surface, and hopefully it is so, but I&#x27;m always wary of unintended consequences when it comes to legislation.<p>Are there any loopholes or bad behavior this might enable? Just something to keep in mind and consider, but on the surface I&#x27;d have to say that this does sound pretty good.

In Sweden you’re allowed to cancel by phone call, email, letter, etc. Point is they don’t get to stipulate how you cancel the service. The US needs a similar consumer protection. Click to cancel is a good step, but really just providing multiple simple methods that legally work for all services is the correct approach.

Companies will just make cancellation online possible but very hard.<p>Eg. You have to click the &quot;learn more&quot; link and then log in separately to a support forum where you will be DM&#x27;ed the one time use link for cancellation, which will only be valid for 5 minutes and require verifying your email and SMS number

This sounds great.<p>Devil&#x27;s advocate: Would this (or existing states&#x27; legislation, like California&#x27;s) have any means of protecting against e.g. a non-CA user just changing their location to CA and immediately canceling? It sounds like an easy loophole for non-CA folks.

there&#x27;s already something like this (no surprise) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;legal-library&#x2F;browse&#x2F;statutes&#x2F;restore-online-shoppers-confidence-act" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;legal-library&#x2F;browse&#x2F;statutes&#x2F;restore-on...</a><p>i&#x27;m guessing pretty much only CA enforces it and generally to make $ the way police do from ticketing.<p>credit cards are the market solution here. they work. virtual cards are even better. more effective and efficient legislation would be to simply enforce processors to accept and not differentiate virtual mastercard &#x2F; visa &#x2F; amex cards!

Absolutely necessary. Looking at you NYtimes and economist

I wish this was more commonplace in Germany, here its not uncommon to have to send a physical letter to cancel a service

Didn&#x27;t the FTC require &quot;click to cancel&quot; if you clicked to buy?

I usually just block them from the credit card if there are too many hoops to cancel

I wish gyms had similar legislation.

We all need this!!

The effect of this bill is probably that it will either never be enforced or companies will terminate business in Pennsylvania, at least until more jurisdictions adopt compatible rules. At best companies would only offer these rights for Pennsylvania residents. Local legislation seems incompatible with the economies of scale of internet commerce. I wish that rather than creating laws like this that only govern a tiny percentage of people, local jurisdictions would enter a pact to do so in unison before making an actual law. In the mean time, global companies are getting more brazen about ignoring compliance when there are literally hundreds of authorities they must in theory obey.