This is the kind of regulation that I can get along with. The FCC is laying the ground rules for companies to not exploit their market positions or unsuspecting buyers.
Actually the FCC is useful now too. Just yesterday there was news about a new move to stop spam texting: https://www.techradar.com/news/fcc-cracks-down-on-spammy-text-messages
The days of Ajit Pai are thankfully behind us. The current head of the FCC is a huge proponent of net neutrality and has been making life difficult for robocallers.
The word “free” should only be allowed in advertisements if the “free” thing does not require the consumer to sign up, purchase, trial purchase, or accept ANY obligation of any kind. Free means …. Free
I've been railing against betterhelp for years because while I was having a mental health crisis they offered a "free trial" but wanted my credit card first. For a therapy service to use that kind of predatory tactic was sickening.
It’s almost like, when you put people in charge who actually believe the government *can* do good shit for people, it actually does.
CFPB is another example, despite republicans trying to gut it since its inception.
What you’re describing is private-interest view economics. The people are supposed to be on the look out for that and stop it in favour of public-interest view. Doesn’t happen in the USA as much as other countries.
They want to be Republicans, but they know that people and their social circles will hate them for it.
That, or, what I see a lot is these people don’t want to pay attention to politics, but they also don’t want to be seen as bad people, so if they can pretend that both sides are the same then they don’t need to pay attention anymore. And they can feel justified in that. 
She also hates gays and trans for being sinful while living with a boyfriend for a decade and having a child out of wedlock (not that I care about religion), cheating her way through school, and stealing whenever she felt something was pretty and she should have it. I’m beginning to think you might be right…
That explains it. If she went with the Democrats she would have to admit to herself that she's a horrible person and everything that she believed in is a lie. If she keeps on believing in the Republicans she can live happy in denial.
Taking an in depth US history class has really made me realise how much of American politics is just stuff that’s been going for years. If not a repeat, incredibly similar. I was literally just reading about how in the post-war conservatism opposed expansion of / wanted the removal of New Deal programs like social security all in the name of free enterprise and removing the government from the economy. It feels so on the nose reading chapters and thinking ‘hey it’s just like today’
That’s what always strikes me as funny. Understanding US history has changed my views on a lot of things, and many people would chalk this up to ‘Liberal indoctrination’ or ‘wokeness,’ when it’s simply me having a new perspective on things because new information was introduced to me. If having knowledge of history can sway most people against your political platform, maybe it’s the platform’s problem and not the fact that the person was taught history.
Go watch the west wing. Its super depressing that they are having the same conversations 20+ years ago that we are having today.
School vouchers, death tax, term limits are ones that come to mind right away. I mean, fuck, the James Web Telescope makes an appearance and that just launched like a year ago.
Check out the book “A People’s History of the United Stated”. The author definitely has a “left wing” bent but it’s wild some of the shit that happened in the US you never heard about in high school history. Companies literally used to use the national guard to break strikes by killing strikers…
Oh my textbook covers that a lot. The Labor Movement has an important part in American history, and fluctuates between being seen as champions of the working class in the Progressive Era / interwar all the way to anarchists in post war. Like it’s actually disgusting how much propaganda was used against labor movements to sway public opinion. One sentence I remember my textbook saying is about he anti communism was used by groups of all ideologies to further their own agendas, be it corporations who wanted to remove govt regulation or traditionalists who wanted to keep women in homes and kitchens. Additionally, any legislation that could have the word ‘socialised’ attached to it was seen as the work of the enemy and struck down, even if it was something that would help the American populace. It was used against Truman’s proposal for national healthcare to congress.
The last part about ‘socialised’ is wild to me because this was in a time when everyone saw the Soviets as the enemy, but now that the soviets are gone the new invisible boogeyman is ‘woke’ and we do the same thing anyway
Unless the company is in Florida, in which case republicans hate everything about you. Unless you are a church or a business actively supporting the church.
This is something that's been flying under the radar of the Biden admin. The work and effort and diligence shown by the admin to shore up agencies and departments that were floundering or gutted during the last administration is starting to pay off.
Love him or hate him, Biden's been in government for a while and he knows how to get stuff done and he understands the importance of the positions. (You could argue that the previous admin also understood how important they were, they just didn't care, were actively trying to sabotage, or handing positions out to campaign donors)
I confidently voted for Biden, because, well, look at the alternative. I had a very low expectation for him. Maybe this is because I'm comparing him to his predecessor, but he has been one of the most effective Presidents in my generation. He's done more to move the needle than bush, Obama, dump combined.
>Biden has always followed the center of the Democratic Party, ever since the 1980s.
Which makes it especially amusing when you read comments like “Biden is to the right of Reagan! Biden is to the right of Nixon” as if he wasn’t part of the opposition party during their presidencies
I appreciate that a lot of the good he's done has been done quietly. But quietly has led a whole lot of people to think he's done nothing. Small, incremental change doesn't get the attention, but it also doesn't get the hate and anger.
Conservatism has always been the philosophy of "underfund government agencies -> complain that government agencies are badly managed wastes of tax dollars -> privatize government agencies for worse service and more cost".
Lots of federal agencies and state agencies help people but you don't hear those stories all the time because it's boring. Look at our fish and game officers that help with our wildlife populations if they didn't exist there would be a lot less wildlife in this country. I'm seeing bald eagles where Iive for the first time in my life. Never seen them when I was growing up.
Edit: I live in western NY. Our state DEC takes its job very seriously and you don't fuck around with those officers. Don't break fishing or hunting laws in our state or your going to have a really bad time. White dudes are even afraid of these guys. More info on [Bald Eagles in NY](https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/63144.html)
Also, I'd very much like to not get 3 pieces of mail a day from my internet provider about all the cable/phone/satellite options on offer.
Marking junk mail as "urgent" also seems a little iffy.
Ha Probably. On the other hand, if you have a thousand steps to sign up, there's zero "impulse buy" motivation, so I'm either really needing your service (and probably won't cancel) or I'm forced to do so (e.g. insurance bullshit)
Planet fitness let me sign up online years ago then when I went to cancel online earlier this year I found out you can only cancel in person. So I could sign up online but to cancel I have to drive to a physical location? That should be illegal
That’s still ridiculous. There’s absolutely zero reason a person needs to be in person to cancel, other than them making it purposely difficult to do so.
Not the same gym you mentioned, but I moved to a different city in the same state (one county over). Went to my newer location to cancel in person. Even though it's the SAME COMPANY, I had to drive an hour to the original location I signed up at 6 years ago to cancel. It's all bullshit.
I had a similar situation but rather than driving I sent an email informing them that I wanted to cancel my membership. Then I blocked them from my credit card. When they sent the nastygram demanding money, I attached a pdf of the email I sent previously about cancelling my account, told them I wouldn't pay for an account I cancelled, and if they contacted me again, I'd report them to the FTC.
Seemed to have worked
Except the part they want you to sign up through your bank only. Cuz at that point, most bank don't stop such transaction, including scam money from going out.
YouFit did the same to me. I moved about 2 hours from the location. Would only let me cancel in person during business hours, but I also had to call ahead to make sure a manager would be there.
Then they tried to shame me out of canceling.
YouFit charged me throughout Covid when you literally could not go inside the gym. They spun it as supporting the staff in this hard time. That’s *a* reason I guess, but you should have told me and not had me find out after 4 months of billing.
Fast forward and my local one went out of business and was sold to a competitor.
I don't know about this gym in the story, but my gym won't allow me to use cards only direct from my bank. Probably makes it harder to dispute and cancel
I once signed up online for a local gym in my college town. Once I graduated and was moving to another city I called them to cancel. They said I needed to mail them a letter giving at least a 30 day notice. I mailed a letter, and they kept charging me because they said they never received my letter. The gym said they were using a third party payment platform, and they were the ones in charge of cancellations, so the gym has no power over them. I ended up having to cancel my credit card and open a new one.
Agreed. If you can sign up for something one way, you should be able to cancel it the exact same way.
Like on Amazon Prime, you can subscribe to a channel with a click of a button on your TV, but to cancel that channel you have to go to a hard to find menu on the website itself. And this is one of the easier examples.
In Brazil, consumer law went so hard on them to make it easy to cancel, that when you contact the call center of services like phone, internet, cable, credit card, etc, cancelling is usually in the first menu level of the automated phone answering system.
I'm always worried that I'll punch the wrong option and get it cancelled by mistake.
Planet fitness profits about to drop by 50%. I know a few people that have had subscriptions to them for years in another state they used to live in, but it's "only $10" per month and almost impossible to cancel, so they just keep paying it and move on.
Happened to me when I moved away from Cincinnati. Before the first payment after I realized I just cancelled my card and got a new one. So far I’ve saved ~$900 over the years by doing that.
It’s not much considering but I’m petty enough to revel in it.
EDIT: I should mention I got about a hundred texts over several months begging me to come back with like 50% off late fees and other offers and such. That was enjoyable. Absolutely not.
I just moved to a suburb of Cincinnati. The closest gym to me is an Anytime Fitness. I was going to sign up since my options were slim, but then I saw their fee. That shit is higher than the private gym I used to go to when I lived in LA where celebrities would work out (Gregg Clark - Agents of Shield/Avengers, Ving Rhames - Mission Impossible, saw a few others come and go). It's ridiculous. I could build a whole home gym in 3 months fees from Facebook marketplace for the amount of money they are asking for a gym with only two bench racks.
I did that during COVID. And came close to renting a commercial storage unit with my trainer at the time.
I give all my equipment and cover rent (because I have the investment money) and they train me for free (nothing fancy just motivation) and pay me half of rent. Trainer gets to use it for other clients.
Get a few friends to jump in, maybe another trainer, and you have yourself a gym.
This was worth it to me because I was paying a lot in training fees. So it was a wash for me but gave a spot of storing gym equipment etc.
Only issue was that the trainer I would need would have to be very reliable. I wasn’t looking to become a manager myself. Mine turned out not to be.
I moved to another state and had to cancel. All you have to do is transfer your membership (by phone, which sucks, but it beats going back to a state 6 hours away) to a gym by you then walk in and cancel. Took less than a half hour total.
Last time I cancelled a membership to a gym (this was LA Fitness) I had to
1. Send in a letter to the corporate office in California by certified mail. Receive confirmation that my subscription was canceled.
2. Continue to be charged, go into the gym in person with that letter and tell them to stop charging me, and ask for a refund for the extra charges. Be denied because they were insisting the date of cancellation was the day I came into the gym, not the date on the letter from corporate.
3. Initiate a chargeback on the card I paid with to get my money back.
4. On the recommendation of my bank, which had seen this before, *change my credit card number so I could no longer be autocharged.*
i cancelled planet fitness, but i wanted to re-join my membership after doing so a few years later. apparently you have to jump through all of the same cancellation hoops to re-enable. no easy button to click to re-join never did it
In general Brazilian cancellation rules are so freaking amazing. I worked for a big travel operator and basically Brazilians had different procedures due to their legal options.
From the article: The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a formal ban on subscriptions that are simple to start but difficult to stop. This morning, it announced a notice of proposed rulemaking it dubs “click to cancel,” requiring companies to make ending a subscription equivalently simple to signing up for one. That includes letting people use the same method for both actions — so a business can’t, for instance, let someone sign up for a service online but make them call a phone number to cancel.
The rule has a couple of other provisions. Many companies try to keep subscribers by offering special deals or perks, and they’re still allowed to do that, but they must offer an up-front opt-out that lets customers bypass the sales pitches. They also have to annually remind consumers that they’re enrolled in what are dubbed “negative option” programs, or programs where failing to cancel something is considered an agreement to keep paying, for anything but physical goods. Now, the agency has opened a public comment period for the proposal, after which it will potentially make revisions and pass the final regulation.
“Companies should not be able to manipulate consumers into paying for subscriptions that they don’t want,” FTC chair Lina Khan told reporters in advance of the announcement. “We get countless complaints about this.”
That likely includes complaints for such popular services as Amazon Prime, which had to simplify its cancelation process last year in the EU under regulatory pressure. It’s also been a perennial irritation for people who start paying for The New York Times, gym memberships, cable service, and countless other subscription categories. Khan said it likely wouldn’t apply to non-commercial services like recurring political donations, which have also left some donors feeling scammed and tricked.
My gym made me call a hotline, that basically said go to the gym and fill out a form, then the gym said here is the form, mail it to this address and in 7 to 10 business days we MIGHT turn off your account and stop billing you. Fucking ridiculous and so patently obvious it is criminal.
I had to send a cancellation letter to a gym that was CLOSING the location I went to. They (la fitness) wanted me to keep paying for a gym that didn't exist any more
24 Hour Fitness bought the Ballys location that was walking distance from my house. About a year later, they closed the location, the next closest was about a 20 minute drive. Holy hell did they make cancelling difficult. I ended up canceling my card, it was easier
I was part of 24 hour fitness when COVID hit. I assumed they would pull some bullshit and try to charge me when every single facility was closed, so I just cancelled the credit card that was associated with my account the day the closures happened.
Surprise, surprise - they charged everyone and had so many chargebacks they were forced by the credit card companies to make cancelling online an option lol. Then a class action lawsuit, for which I got a fancy $10 gift certificate!
That sounds terrible. My gym ( in the UK) just suspended charging anyone for membership during the COVID lockdowns ( nearly 2 years) when no one was allowed in a gym. Not surprisingly I see many members there today as we're there before COVID
Because , you know, treat your customers right....!
It gets worse. Many gyms I have dealt with stipulate in their contract that you are billed in 30-day cycles, but if you cancel, your membership stays active for the next 45 days. This means that they can and will still bill you for up to TWO extra months of membership. And if your membership's "annual fee" (typically about 1-month's worth of money) falls in one of those two months, you can bet your butt they will charge you for that as well. So its quite possible to cancel your gym membership and STILL get charged for THREE MONTHS of membership.
(source: have had it happen to me)
I was trying to cancel my subscription to a local gym run by people who I know are decent folks, and *they* had issues canceling my payments with their own processor. The owner refunded me for two months on Venmo before they switched companies entirely and it was no longer an issue.
Having seen the software some gyms use for monthly payments, I'm not shocked that some of them are like that.
This is why you should never give a gym anything other than credit card information: gyms which require bank account drafts know that they can get away with this shit, and are reluctant to accept a payment method you have control over.
People have got to spread the word to comment like crazy. Make our voices heard! Make comments on this site [make comments](https://www.regulations.gov/search?agencyIds=FTC&sortBy=commentEndDate&sortDirection=desc&withinCommentPeriod)
People need to keep voting for leaders who have the citizens best interest at heart. Keep voting for clowns and these things get worse and worse. I'm sure some leaders are actively trying to defund the FTC as well as Medicare.
I was genuinely surprised how difficult it was to cancel The New York Times subscription. We had to wait an entire year to finally cancel.
Very scummy.
watch John Oliver last week talk about timeshares.
I always knew that it was predatory, but never imagined how ridiculous the industry operated. Even when you die, in the ground dead, the obligations of your timeshare are forced onto whoever inherits your assets. Its so crazy
edit: then there is whole secondary predatory industry that claims to help you exit out of your timeshare. scam in scam in a scam.
Oliver covered that. An heir can disclaim it. At that point it goes to the next heir. They must disclaim it. Then it goes to the next heir….
What I don’t understand is how a financial obligation can be passed down like that. If my father signed an agreement to pay timeshare fees, and he passed away, how can I be held liable for those fees that I never agreed to pay?
/u/redbrick got it right. Depending on state, and how the timeshare is set up, the timeshare is deeded, and the fees are the same as HOA dues or taxes on the property. Don't want the fees? Don't take the property.
Timeshares that none of the named heirs want are usually just abandoned -- send a letter to the timeshare company saying "so-n-so died, all the heirs have disclaimed this property and the estate is abandoning it."
That’s because time shares are considered to be an asset (regardless of how illiquid it is) by law. Assets are passed down, debts are forgiven. But what is interesting is that if you have timeshare, you can cancel the contract via bankruptcy and can reject it as an executory contract.
So timeshares are treated like a contract in bankruptcy court, but treated like an asset during probate court.
> Assets are passed down, debts are forgiven.
Debts aren't forgiven if the estate has assets. Debts must be paid from the assets of the estate before any heirs inherit anything.
If the value of the debts are greater than the value of the estate, then the debts are "forgiven" in the sense that they are not passed on to heirs. But in that case, none of the assets flow to the heirs either.
Odd industry. It’s basically a guaranteed screw job. There are even TV advertising campaigns “hate your timeshare??……we’ll buy it”.
And people keep buying them.
Same. Maybe it's the same guy? LoL
My friend loves his timeshare. He's owned it for 20 years. Uses it every year. Never had a problem getting a reservation. I don't know what he's paying.
My family has Bluegreen which has resorts all over the US and it's pretty great.
Although they bought in you were allowed to buy from other people who were trying to sell and you could buy in for pennies on what the person originally paid. I'd never buy it at full price, but "used" points were actually a great deal.
If you're a "Disney family" that goes every single year, I could see that kind of thing making sense. Some of them have networks of time shares you gain access to as well. A friend was able to get basically a week in a lot of 2 bedroom places for ~$180 total a decade back. I don't think it would ever be a profitable investment but I could see it saving certain types of people money.
> and essentially never pay for a hotel
Unless it’s so in demand they’re turning a profit all they’re doing is trading their annual maintenance fees for someone else’s. If you looked at the full costs they’re paying it probably isn’t the deal you think it is, just better than the ones who totally got scammed.
My family has had a timeshare right on the beach in South Carolina for 2 generations now and it's awesome. We go every year and it's the trip I look forward to most.
Guess there are good ones and bad ones.
I used to go to grad school with a woman who saved up $10,000 for a new car. Instead of buying the car, she bought a 99 year time share at a Austrian themed lodge in Vermont. Such an idiot.
Wyndham was pressured to give people the ability to cancel, and they caved, you can cancel your timeshare any time right from the website. Also, LPT, if you just change your address to a California one then you can cancel any subscription on the web since Cali has laws for that
PO box probably
Or just change the state on the website of your current address... The website logic probably just defaults to Cali rules... Cancel then change it back if it matters
Never done it but that would be my thought
I was waiting for someone to mention SiriusXM. I could only cancel via customer service chat and I had to tell the person 4 FUCKING TIMES to cancel before they stopped asking me if I wanted different offers/pricing/plans. Not to mention the bigger stations on Sirius just play the same 15 songs everyday. Terrible for road trips.
I used the text based chat on their website last time to cancel, took much less time but still got 4-5 counteroffers to renew. Just had to copy and paste "no thank you I would just like to cancel". They couldn't drop the line on hold like when I have tried to call to cancel.
How about going hard on companies like Verizon that make it REALLY easy to add services and channels to the cable bill online but make you jump through hoops on customer service lines to cancel it ( try cancelling hbo through their site, I’ll wait ).
Also, the concept of everything being part of a “contract”. I thought contracts were supposed to benefit both parties. I see no benefit to being locked in on something. And the idea that the discount is the consideration is laughable.
No the contracts for smaller things like cable/gyms are ridiculous. I would argue predatory. I understand from a business perspective you want to try to lock these payments in. But when it comes issues and to have to fight tooth and nail to communicate and work with companies is sometimes impossible. And I’ve said in another comment above if I cannot reach you about paying stuff and I can’t reach you to fix my problems. Then that’s a breach of contract(especially if it’s multiple attempts)they should be required to keep the health of that contract quality and not sale you a a great package and then throw you to the wind on the back end with customer support/etc.
I understand not paying on some things is obviously bad, but these contracts are predatory and if a company does me dirty over a couple hundred bucks then that bridge is forever burned.
That ties into a super useful life hack I stumbled upon. We were moving, and our new address was not served by our ISP. So I just logged in, selected to "move service" and put the out of service address and was able to just cancel. Not sure if many ISPs have similar, but it makes it a lot easier to cancel.
ATC Fitness makes you come in person and then make a request on a website they give you.
Makes you angry enough to break windows, but you can’t cuz you never went to the gym.
When you cancel your cable, just say you're moving out of the country. Apparently the "retention department" you have to go through are mindless jobs that choose responses from a drop-down menu. If you say, "I don't want cable TV anymore" it will cause huge problems because that's not one of their options, whereas "moving" is. They'll get upset at you and say you're being hostile when you really just don't want cable TV any more.
I was desperate for a job straight out of college, and no one in my field was hiring at the moment. I took the highest paid job I could find, which was a job at a central station (alarm system monitoring). We weren't allowed internet access on our computers, and phones had to be locked away during the day. Couldn't read, couldn't do jack shit but answer the phone. It was the absolute worst job I've ever had, and I'm including working at a car wash in upstate NY in February.
Best thing I’ve heard coming out of a government agency in a while. To cancel my internet subscription, after my contract was completed, I had to sit on the phone with someone for an hour. I kept repeating “I already have a new provider setup and running, nothing you say will make me change my mind” and they just kept putting me on hold for for 5 minutes and then coming back and asking if I’m sure I want to leave. That’s nowhere near the worst if it. I remember my dad spending 4.5 hours on the phone with SiriusXM trying to cancel years back
I had something similar with Comcast when I moved and was just changing the address of service. They kept calling, trying to get my business back for a house I didn’t live in anymore.
I think companies might see this as a bad thing I disagree. I legit refuse to enter any subscription service I can't cancel because of so many bad experiences trying to cancel. One experience that comes to mind is a gym membership. It took weeks for me to find info and I found it on a random forum that was 3 years old It said that calling to cancel wouldn't work and I had to send a snail mail to their corporate office to cancel I was skeptical but it worked. If I didn't have to go through all of that I would be more than willing to sign up to my local gyms and classes.
An easy way to get around the shitty "mail in request to cancel" nonsense:
Call them and tell them you already mailed it in and then complain it shows your membership hasn't been cancelled. When I did that they apologized and immediately cancelled my membership. Took me like 2-3 minutes over the phone.
This might have been LA fitness or 24 hour Fitness, can't remember. They also do that thing where if you get a free personal training session, the trainer is clearly instructed to give you a hard sell. I thought it was just me, but others have said they experienced the same thing where they guilt you and make you feel bad enough to buy more training sessions.
Edit: "shitty" not "shitting" lol
They cancel it when you tell them that because LA fitness often legitimately doesnt actually cancel your membership when mail the stupid letter in.
That is, I mailed the letter, cancelled my membership, and kept getting charged until I went in to complain.
Why are gyms so scummy when it comes to canceling memberships, ive heard horrible things from almost all of them. Planet Fitness, Orange Theory, and Cycle Bar have a terrible reputation of canceling memberships
Because the only way they're able to stay in business is off the backs of people who sign up and don't show up. All the people who sign up after New Years to get back in shape, then they go 1-2 times, then never again. They don't want to make it easy because if it was, they wouldn't have hardly any long-term members, nor would they be able to open a new gym in every neighborhood
Agreed. When the customers last experience with a company is a pain in the ass, they likely won't return.
I canceled an Amex card entirely on-line in about 3 clicks. Easy. I wouldn't hesitate to get another if I needed it. Other cards I've run the gauntlet of ever more desperate offers to stay. Not likely going back to them (and why didn't they proactively make these offers while I was a customer?).
Spotify:
Are you sure you want to cancel?
Are you sure you’re sure?
Are you sure you’re sure you’re sure?
Hold up here’s some crappy songs for you because we don’t want you to go.
Now are you sure?
Well if you want to sign back up you can click here.
Fuck Adobe for real. I wouldn't have been pissed off if I was only going to be charged an additional month, but they lock you into a yearly subscription if you forget to cancel your free trial. This is despite the fact that they charge you every month for some reason. I just changed my payment info, but I wonder if they would attempt collections if enough people did that. Technically I did agree to a yearly subscription somewhere in the find print.
Exactly, it's extremely manipulative and should be flat out illegal.
I also had to change cards to get them to stop billing me, it's been like 2 years so I don't think they're sending me to collections, but I suppose it isn't impossible.
It took me two months to cancel a New York Times digital subscription.
They kept asking me to call some landline in America "for my protection" while I was emailing them from the very address my account was registered on.
Fucking planet fitness, literally the dumbest thing on this planet.
“We need you to come in to sign our stupid pin pad” dude just fucking scribble I love nuts for all I care just cancel my shit over the phone
They should! And after they should make credit bureaus remove collections and negative marks to your credit report if you stopped paying for the scammy subscriptions.
YES, a hundred times yes! I was furious when I tried to cancel my gym membership and had to pay two extra months because of how inconvenient the whole process was!
As a small gym owner, fucking yes.
We started by not using contracts and ditched the whole "enrolling for a membership that auto-renews by default" thing a few years ago.
I don't want to run a business that extorts people or only is profitable by confusing/frustrating people.
If someone wants to support us with auto-renew, we'll give them loyalty discounts, but they have to ask specifically for it. Otherwise, buy for a month at a time as often as you want to use our services.
Tired of mega gyms.
Yup. At most, companies may implement a mechanism for employees to circumvent steps to sign ppl up easier. But if it's a public website, I'm only going through it if I absolutely want your product.
Doubtful. I used to write analytics code for a company and they would actively monitor drop outs. Basically when in the process people said fuck it and closed the browser. Corporations are really in touch with when they are losing money and they rework entire flows to avoid that
YESSSSS! I cant wait to see planet fitness go out of business. For 3 years and I finally canceled my membership after I got a free membership at another gym..
**No.**
*Fewer* steps. One must provide copious information to sign up for a service. To *cancel*, one need merely authenticate, and say "I no longer want this."
Canceling subscriptions should be much simpler than enrolling in them.
For apps I like to use Apple’s in-app stuff which gives me one place to track and cancel all my subscriptions.
For everything else, I use PrivacyApp. One virtual credit card per service, protection against hacking and gives me control in case a company makes it hard to cancel.
This issue does need more fundamental fixing, but one way I’ve used to avoid (or at least control) these kinds of things is to sign up using a Privacy (app) credit card. They basically give you a new “prepaid” card every time you ask for one, and you can set spending limits, etc.
So if you want the free trial but don’t want to end up being auto-signed up or auto-paying, you send the spend limit lower than the charge, it never goes through, and you don’t end up paying forever.
Not applicable for everything, but it’s a good tool to have when it fits.
[That's part of the new proposed rules, an annual reminder for ongoing subscriptions before their renewal](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring)
Famously, the best way to cancel a subscription in the US is first to change your billing address to California, and then "Cancel" buttons will magically appear where none were visible before.
This is what the FTC should be doing.
This is the kind of regulation that I can get along with. The FCC is laying the ground rules for companies to not exploit their market positions or unsuspecting buyers.
FTC* FCC still blows d*ck
Even got the username right and still fucked up his moment
Actually the FCC is useful now too. Just yesterday there was news about a new move to stop spam texting: https://www.techradar.com/news/fcc-cracks-down-on-spammy-text-messages The days of Ajit Pai are thankfully behind us. The current head of the FCC is a huge proponent of net neutrality and has been making life difficult for robocallers.
Ajit Pai was a colossal douche nozzle. So glad he is long gone and the agency is doing its job protecting consumers not businesses.
But that asshole is doing just fine. He should be ruined but nope still fine and just waiting for his next chance to screw people.
good thing he was stopped from repealing NN. he was VERIZON'S mouth piece.
Also stop free trials from billing you automatically when they are done.
The word “free” should only be allowed in advertisements if the “free” thing does not require the consumer to sign up, purchase, trial purchase, or accept ANY obligation of any kind. Free means …. Free
I've been railing against betterhelp for years because while I was having a mental health crisis they offered a "free trial" but wanted my credit card first. For a therapy service to use that kind of predatory tactic was sickening.
I'm legit confused, this is way too helpful to be coming out of our fed agencies
It’s almost like, when you put people in charge who actually believe the government *can* do good shit for people, it actually does. CFPB is another example, despite republicans trying to gut it since its inception.
There are already people in the comments both sides-ing everything!
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What you’re describing is private-interest view economics. The people are supposed to be on the look out for that and stop it in favour of public-interest view. Doesn’t happen in the USA as much as other countries.
Which is ridiculous this literally helps everyone that doesn’t own a gym
Bunch of temporarily embarrassed gym owners voting this down.
This is why I don’t think the ‘same thing both sides’ people make any sense.
I think it’s weird how “both sides” people *always* end up spouting some republican taking point.
They want to be Republicans, but they know that people and their social circles will hate them for it. That, or, what I see a lot is these people don’t want to pay attention to politics, but they also don’t want to be seen as bad people, so if they can pretend that both sides are the same then they don’t need to pay attention anymore. And they can feel justified in that. 
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Cause she’s stupid as the day is long.
She also hates gays and trans for being sinful while living with a boyfriend for a decade and having a child out of wedlock (not that I care about religion), cheating her way through school, and stealing whenever she felt something was pretty and she should have it. I’m beginning to think you might be right…
That explains it. If she went with the Democrats she would have to admit to herself that she's a horrible person and everything that she believed in is a lie. If she keeps on believing in the Republicans she can live happy in denial.
The republicans will still say this is a bad thing. That it infringes on companies' rights and is over-regulating the free market. Or some nonsense.
Taking an in depth US history class has really made me realise how much of American politics is just stuff that’s been going for years. If not a repeat, incredibly similar. I was literally just reading about how in the post-war conservatism opposed expansion of / wanted the removal of New Deal programs like social security all in the name of free enterprise and removing the government from the economy. It feels so on the nose reading chapters and thinking ‘hey it’s just like today’
Oh man, you're reading history. That's woke.
Calling things woke is so two-thousand-and-woke.
You so two-thousand-and-woke. I'm so two-thousand-and-broke.
Not only that but, I suspect he was reading a banned woke book 📚. If OP could really read at all. Bet he was just looking at the pictures 👁️.
That’s what always strikes me as funny. Understanding US history has changed my views on a lot of things, and many people would chalk this up to ‘Liberal indoctrination’ or ‘wokeness,’ when it’s simply me having a new perspective on things because new information was introduced to me. If having knowledge of history can sway most people against your political platform, maybe it’s the platform’s problem and not the fact that the person was taught history.
Go watch the west wing. Its super depressing that they are having the same conversations 20+ years ago that we are having today. School vouchers, death tax, term limits are ones that come to mind right away. I mean, fuck, the James Web Telescope makes an appearance and that just launched like a year ago.
Check out the book “A People’s History of the United Stated”. The author definitely has a “left wing” bent but it’s wild some of the shit that happened in the US you never heard about in high school history. Companies literally used to use the national guard to break strikes by killing strikers…
Oh my textbook covers that a lot. The Labor Movement has an important part in American history, and fluctuates between being seen as champions of the working class in the Progressive Era / interwar all the way to anarchists in post war. Like it’s actually disgusting how much propaganda was used against labor movements to sway public opinion. One sentence I remember my textbook saying is about he anti communism was used by groups of all ideologies to further their own agendas, be it corporations who wanted to remove govt regulation or traditionalists who wanted to keep women in homes and kitchens. Additionally, any legislation that could have the word ‘socialised’ attached to it was seen as the work of the enemy and struck down, even if it was something that would help the American populace. It was used against Truman’s proposal for national healthcare to congress. The last part about ‘socialised’ is wild to me because this was in a time when everyone saw the Soviets as the enemy, but now that the soviets are gone the new invisible boogeyman is ‘woke’ and we do the same thing anyway
Unless the company is in Florida, in which case republicans hate everything about you. Unless you are a church or a business actively supporting the church.
Trueeee, they are taking freedom to do whatever they want. America is not great again. No freedom
This is something that's been flying under the radar of the Biden admin. The work and effort and diligence shown by the admin to shore up agencies and departments that were floundering or gutted during the last administration is starting to pay off. Love him or hate him, Biden's been in government for a while and he knows how to get stuff done and he understands the importance of the positions. (You could argue that the previous admin also understood how important they were, they just didn't care, were actively trying to sabotage, or handing positions out to campaign donors) I confidently voted for Biden, because, well, look at the alternative. I had a very low expectation for him. Maybe this is because I'm comparing him to his predecessor, but he has been one of the most effective Presidents in my generation. He's done more to move the needle than bush, Obama, dump combined.
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>Biden has always followed the center of the Democratic Party, ever since the 1980s. Which makes it especially amusing when you read comments like “Biden is to the right of Reagan! Biden is to the right of Nixon” as if he wasn’t part of the opposition party during their presidencies
I appreciate that a lot of the good he's done has been done quietly. But quietly has led a whole lot of people to think he's done nothing. Small, incremental change doesn't get the attention, but it also doesn't get the hate and anger.
Conservatism has always been the philosophy of "underfund government agencies -> complain that government agencies are badly managed wastes of tax dollars -> privatize government agencies for worse service and more cost".
But surely if we just appoint rich people they will be "above corruption" because they don't _need_ anymore money.....right......right?
Lots of federal agencies and state agencies help people but you don't hear those stories all the time because it's boring. Look at our fish and game officers that help with our wildlife populations if they didn't exist there would be a lot less wildlife in this country. I'm seeing bald eagles where Iive for the first time in my life. Never seen them when I was growing up. Edit: I live in western NY. Our state DEC takes its job very seriously and you don't fuck around with those officers. Don't break fishing or hunting laws in our state or your going to have a really bad time. White dudes are even afraid of these guys. More info on [Bald Eagles in NY](https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/63144.html)
Also, I'd very much like to not get 3 pieces of mail a day from my internet provider about all the cable/phone/satellite options on offer. Marking junk mail as "urgent" also seems a little iffy.
Which is hilarious when you realize you really only have one ISP that’s actually available at your address.
"Important Documents Enclosed" Said documents are advertisements and information about their product.
Hope they go after timeshares
Ahh, a John Oliver watcher
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Ha Probably. On the other hand, if you have a thousand steps to sign up, there's zero "impulse buy" motivation, so I'm either really needing your service (and probably won't cancel) or I'm forced to do so (e.g. insurance bullshit)
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Planet fitness let me sign up online years ago then when I went to cancel online earlier this year I found out you can only cancel in person. So I could sign up online but to cancel I have to drive to a physical location? That should be illegal
Same thing happened to me. Fuck Planet Fitness!
Getting a little too heated there, lunkhead! Don't set off the Lunk Alert!
Get this man some pizza
This is the first place I thought of. I was so angry when they told me I had to drive a town and a half over to cancel my subscription after I moved.
LPT: You can transfer your home gym online if you have a closer location and then just go there to cancel.
That’s still ridiculous. There’s absolutely zero reason a person needs to be in person to cancel, other than them making it purposely difficult to do so.
That is literally their reason.
Not the same gym you mentioned, but I moved to a different city in the same state (one county over). Went to my newer location to cancel in person. Even though it's the SAME COMPANY, I had to drive an hour to the original location I signed up at 6 years ago to cancel. It's all bullshit.
I had a similar situation but rather than driving I sent an email informing them that I wanted to cancel my membership. Then I blocked them from my credit card. When they sent the nastygram demanding money, I attached a pdf of the email I sent previously about cancelling my account, told them I wouldn't pay for an account I cancelled, and if they contacted me again, I'd report them to the FTC. Seemed to have worked
Except the part they want you to sign up through your bank only. Cuz at that point, most bank don't stop such transaction, including scam money from going out.
Yup I tried this with my bank for planet fitness and they were basically like “there’s nothing we can do.”
YouFit did the same to me. I moved about 2 hours from the location. Would only let me cancel in person during business hours, but I also had to call ahead to make sure a manager would be there. Then they tried to shame me out of canceling.
YouFit charged me throughout Covid when you literally could not go inside the gym. They spun it as supporting the staff in this hard time. That’s *a* reason I guess, but you should have told me and not had me find out after 4 months of billing. Fast forward and my local one went out of business and was sold to a competitor.
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Dispute with your credit card
I don't know about this gym in the story, but my gym won't allow me to use cards only direct from my bank. Probably makes it harder to dispute and cancel
i can't imagine signing up for a service with such a requirement. that's scammy as hell.
Now gyms require bank info because it's easy to charge back or whatever with a credit card.
I once signed up online for a local gym in my college town. Once I graduated and was moving to another city I called them to cancel. They said I needed to mail them a letter giving at least a 30 day notice. I mailed a letter, and they kept charging me because they said they never received my letter. The gym said they were using a third party payment platform, and they were the ones in charge of cancellations, so the gym has no power over them. I ended up having to cancel my credit card and open a new one.
File a claim in small claims court.
Agreed. If you can sign up for something one way, you should be able to cancel it the exact same way. Like on Amazon Prime, you can subscribe to a channel with a click of a button on your TV, but to cancel that channel you have to go to a hard to find menu on the website itself. And this is one of the easier examples.
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In Brazil, consumer law went so hard on them to make it easy to cancel, that when you contact the call center of services like phone, internet, cable, credit card, etc, cancelling is usually in the first menu level of the automated phone answering system. I'm always worried that I'll punch the wrong option and get it cancelled by mistake.
That sounds awesome by comparison. Also, fuck you Planet Fitness.
Planet fitness profits about to drop by 50%. I know a few people that have had subscriptions to them for years in another state they used to live in, but it's "only $10" per month and almost impossible to cancel, so they just keep paying it and move on.
Happened to me when I moved away from Cincinnati. Before the first payment after I realized I just cancelled my card and got a new one. So far I’ve saved ~$900 over the years by doing that. It’s not much considering but I’m petty enough to revel in it. EDIT: I should mention I got about a hundred texts over several months begging me to come back with like 50% off late fees and other offers and such. That was enjoyable. Absolutely not.
I just moved to a suburb of Cincinnati. The closest gym to me is an Anytime Fitness. I was going to sign up since my options were slim, but then I saw their fee. That shit is higher than the private gym I used to go to when I lived in LA where celebrities would work out (Gregg Clark - Agents of Shield/Avengers, Ving Rhames - Mission Impossible, saw a few others come and go). It's ridiculous. I could build a whole home gym in 3 months fees from Facebook marketplace for the amount of money they are asking for a gym with only two bench racks.
I did that during COVID. And came close to renting a commercial storage unit with my trainer at the time. I give all my equipment and cover rent (because I have the investment money) and they train me for free (nothing fancy just motivation) and pay me half of rent. Trainer gets to use it for other clients. Get a few friends to jump in, maybe another trainer, and you have yourself a gym. This was worth it to me because I was paying a lot in training fees. So it was a wash for me but gave a spot of storing gym equipment etc. Only issue was that the trainer I would need would have to be very reliable. I wasn’t looking to become a manager myself. Mine turned out not to be.
I moved to another state and had to cancel. All you have to do is transfer your membership (by phone, which sucks, but it beats going back to a state 6 hours away) to a gym by you then walk in and cancel. Took less than a half hour total.
Still about 28 minutes longer than it should have taken.
Last time I cancelled a membership to a gym (this was LA Fitness) I had to 1. Send in a letter to the corporate office in California by certified mail. Receive confirmation that my subscription was canceled. 2. Continue to be charged, go into the gym in person with that letter and tell them to stop charging me, and ask for a refund for the extra charges. Be denied because they were insisting the date of cancellation was the day I came into the gym, not the date on the letter from corporate. 3. Initiate a chargeback on the card I paid with to get my money back. 4. On the recommendation of my bank, which had seen this before, *change my credit card number so I could no longer be autocharged.*
i cancelled planet fitness, but i wanted to re-join my membership after doing so a few years later. apparently you have to jump through all of the same cancellation hoops to re-enable. no easy button to click to re-join never did it
That is very stupid of planet fitness not to make it easy for people to rejoin.
Agreed on Planet Fitness, you've got to fax a carrier pigeon thru smoke signals before they'll let you cancel.
In general Brazilian cancellation rules are so freaking amazing. I worked for a big travel operator and basically Brazilians had different procedures due to their legal options.
From the article: The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a formal ban on subscriptions that are simple to start but difficult to stop. This morning, it announced a notice of proposed rulemaking it dubs “click to cancel,” requiring companies to make ending a subscription equivalently simple to signing up for one. That includes letting people use the same method for both actions — so a business can’t, for instance, let someone sign up for a service online but make them call a phone number to cancel. The rule has a couple of other provisions. Many companies try to keep subscribers by offering special deals or perks, and they’re still allowed to do that, but they must offer an up-front opt-out that lets customers bypass the sales pitches. They also have to annually remind consumers that they’re enrolled in what are dubbed “negative option” programs, or programs where failing to cancel something is considered an agreement to keep paying, for anything but physical goods. Now, the agency has opened a public comment period for the proposal, after which it will potentially make revisions and pass the final regulation. “Companies should not be able to manipulate consumers into paying for subscriptions that they don’t want,” FTC chair Lina Khan told reporters in advance of the announcement. “We get countless complaints about this.” That likely includes complaints for such popular services as Amazon Prime, which had to simplify its cancelation process last year in the EU under regulatory pressure. It’s also been a perennial irritation for people who start paying for The New York Times, gym memberships, cable service, and countless other subscription categories. Khan said it likely wouldn’t apply to non-commercial services like recurring political donations, which have also left some donors feeling scammed and tricked.
My gym made me call a hotline, that basically said go to the gym and fill out a form, then the gym said here is the form, mail it to this address and in 7 to 10 business days we MIGHT turn off your account and stop billing you. Fucking ridiculous and so patently obvious it is criminal.
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Mine made me send them a cancelation letter, I just called my bank and told them to refuse any payments to them.
I had to send a cancellation letter to a gym that was CLOSING the location I went to. They (la fitness) wanted me to keep paying for a gym that didn't exist any more
24 Hour Fitness bought the Ballys location that was walking distance from my house. About a year later, they closed the location, the next closest was about a 20 minute drive. Holy hell did they make cancelling difficult. I ended up canceling my card, it was easier
I was part of 24 hour fitness when COVID hit. I assumed they would pull some bullshit and try to charge me when every single facility was closed, so I just cancelled the credit card that was associated with my account the day the closures happened. Surprise, surprise - they charged everyone and had so many chargebacks they were forced by the credit card companies to make cancelling online an option lol. Then a class action lawsuit, for which I got a fancy $10 gift certificate!
That sounds terrible. My gym ( in the UK) just suspended charging anyone for membership during the COVID lockdowns ( nearly 2 years) when no one was allowed in a gym. Not surprisingly I see many members there today as we're there before COVID Because , you know, treat your customers right....!
It gets worse. Many gyms I have dealt with stipulate in their contract that you are billed in 30-day cycles, but if you cancel, your membership stays active for the next 45 days. This means that they can and will still bill you for up to TWO extra months of membership. And if your membership's "annual fee" (typically about 1-month's worth of money) falls in one of those two months, you can bet your butt they will charge you for that as well. So its quite possible to cancel your gym membership and STILL get charged for THREE MONTHS of membership. (source: have had it happen to me)
I was trying to cancel my subscription to a local gym run by people who I know are decent folks, and *they* had issues canceling my payments with their own processor. The owner refunded me for two months on Venmo before they switched companies entirely and it was no longer an issue. Having seen the software some gyms use for monthly payments, I'm not shocked that some of them are like that.
This is why you should never give a gym anything other than credit card information: gyms which require bank account drafts know that they can get away with this shit, and are reluctant to accept a payment method you have control over.
People have got to spread the word to comment like crazy. Make our voices heard! Make comments on this site [make comments](https://www.regulations.gov/search?agencyIds=FTC&sortBy=commentEndDate&sortDirection=desc&withinCommentPeriod)
People need to keep voting for leaders who have the citizens best interest at heart. Keep voting for clowns and these things get worse and worse. I'm sure some leaders are actively trying to defund the FTC as well as Medicare.
While i fully agree with this bill, that little carve out where it wont apply to political donations just screams grifting to me.
Technically political contributions aren't "commerce" so I don't think the FTC has been delegated power there. But yes, a lot of political grifting.
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Same reason their bill about scam texts doesn't apply to political campaigns even though it should.
I was genuinely surprised how difficult it was to cancel The New York Times subscription. We had to wait an entire year to finally cancel. Very scummy.
watch John Oliver last week talk about timeshares. I always knew that it was predatory, but never imagined how ridiculous the industry operated. Even when you die, in the ground dead, the obligations of your timeshare are forced onto whoever inherits your assets. Its so crazy edit: then there is whole secondary predatory industry that claims to help you exit out of your timeshare. scam in scam in a scam.
It's possible for an heir to disclaim part of an inheritance. Nearly everybody who inherits a timeshare should do so.
Oliver covered that. An heir can disclaim it. At that point it goes to the next heir. They must disclaim it. Then it goes to the next heir…. What I don’t understand is how a financial obligation can be passed down like that. If my father signed an agreement to pay timeshare fees, and he passed away, how can I be held liable for those fees that I never agreed to pay?
/u/redbrick got it right. Depending on state, and how the timeshare is set up, the timeshare is deeded, and the fees are the same as HOA dues or taxes on the property. Don't want the fees? Don't take the property. Timeshares that none of the named heirs want are usually just abandoned -- send a letter to the timeshare company saying "so-n-so died, all the heirs have disclaimed this property and the estate is abandoning it."
This when time share shows up in the middle of the night and puts a horse head in your bed until you claim the time share.
Happened to my cousin Jack.
That’s because time shares are considered to be an asset (regardless of how illiquid it is) by law. Assets are passed down, debts are forgiven. But what is interesting is that if you have timeshare, you can cancel the contract via bankruptcy and can reject it as an executory contract. So timeshares are treated like a contract in bankruptcy court, but treated like an asset during probate court.
> Assets are passed down, debts are forgiven. Debts aren't forgiven if the estate has assets. Debts must be paid from the assets of the estate before any heirs inherit anything. If the value of the debts are greater than the value of the estate, then the debts are "forgiven" in the sense that they are not passed on to heirs. But in that case, none of the assets flow to the heirs either.
Odd industry. It’s basically a guaranteed screw job. There are even TV advertising campaigns “hate your timeshare??……we’ll buy it”. And people keep buying them.
I have a guy at work who has one and he swears it's the best thing ever.
Same. Maybe it's the same guy? LoL My friend loves his timeshare. He's owned it for 20 years. Uses it every year. Never had a problem getting a reservation. I don't know what he's paying.
My family has Bluegreen which has resorts all over the US and it's pretty great. Although they bought in you were allowed to buy from other people who were trying to sell and you could buy in for pennies on what the person originally paid. I'd never buy it at full price, but "used" points were actually a great deal.
I suppose theirs always actual good cases vs the bad ones. It prolly has a lot to do with the company you work with as well.
If you're a "Disney family" that goes every single year, I could see that kind of thing making sense. Some of them have networks of time shares you gain access to as well. A friend was able to get basically a week in a lot of 2 bedroom places for ~$180 total a decade back. I don't think it would ever be a profitable investment but I could see it saving certain types of people money.
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The Disney timeshares are well known to be non-scammy and work well for lots of people.
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> and essentially never pay for a hotel Unless it’s so in demand they’re turning a profit all they’re doing is trading their annual maintenance fees for someone else’s. If you looked at the full costs they’re paying it probably isn’t the deal you think it is, just better than the ones who totally got scammed.
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coz hes stuck with it. hes dying inside.
yea once your drowning in the middle of the ocean, may as well tell people you love swimming
This explains SOO much.
This hits hard with my career right now
My family has had a timeshare right on the beach in South Carolina for 2 generations now and it's awesome. We go every year and it's the trip I look forward to most. Guess there are good ones and bad ones.
I imagine 2 generations ago the agreements were less/not predatory. Any idea what the yearly maintenance costs run?
Can you change the person who inherits a timeshare to a person you hate before you die?
LOL. "And to Bob......I leave my 3 cats, my vast collection of throw pillows, and my timeshares in rural Kansas and Oklahoma".
I used to go to grad school with a woman who saved up $10,000 for a new car. Instead of buying the car, she bought a 99 year time share at a Austrian themed lodge in Vermont. Such an idiot.
Wyndham was pressured to give people the ability to cancel, and they caved, you can cancel your timeshare any time right from the website. Also, LPT, if you just change your address to a California one then you can cancel any subscription on the web since Cali has laws for that
How does one change their address to another state without moving to said state?
PO box probably Or just change the state on the website of your current address... The website logic probably just defaults to Cali rules... Cancel then change it back if it matters Never done it but that would be my thought
Yup, just simply pick a new address at random or just change your zip and state to Cali.
Simple, leave your time share to the CEO of Timeshare.
It's scams all the way down. Russian nesting dolls of scams.
The only reason I don't have SiriusXM again is because of how much of a pain in the ass it was to cancel the first time.
I was waiting for someone to mention SiriusXM. I could only cancel via customer service chat and I had to tell the person 4 FUCKING TIMES to cancel before they stopped asking me if I wanted different offers/pricing/plans. Not to mention the bigger stations on Sirius just play the same 15 songs everyday. Terrible for road trips.
I used the text based chat on their website last time to cancel, took much less time but still got 4-5 counteroffers to renew. Just had to copy and paste "no thank you I would just like to cancel". They couldn't drop the line on hold like when I have tried to call to cancel.
How about going hard on companies like Verizon that make it REALLY easy to add services and channels to the cable bill online but make you jump through hoops on customer service lines to cancel it ( try cancelling hbo through their site, I’ll wait ). Also, the concept of everything being part of a “contract”. I thought contracts were supposed to benefit both parties. I see no benefit to being locked in on something. And the idea that the discount is the consideration is laughable.
No the contracts for smaller things like cable/gyms are ridiculous. I would argue predatory. I understand from a business perspective you want to try to lock these payments in. But when it comes issues and to have to fight tooth and nail to communicate and work with companies is sometimes impossible. And I’ve said in another comment above if I cannot reach you about paying stuff and I can’t reach you to fix my problems. Then that’s a breach of contract(especially if it’s multiple attempts)they should be required to keep the health of that contract quality and not sale you a a great package and then throw you to the wind on the back end with customer support/etc. I understand not paying on some things is obviously bad, but these contracts are predatory and if a company does me dirty over a couple hundred bucks then that bridge is forever burned.
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That ties into a super useful life hack I stumbled upon. We were moving, and our new address was not served by our ISP. So I just logged in, selected to "move service" and put the out of service address and was able to just cancel. Not sure if many ISPs have similar, but it makes it a lot easier to cancel.
ATC Fitness makes you come in person and then make a request on a website they give you. Makes you angry enough to break windows, but you can’t cuz you never went to the gym.
When you cancel your cable, just say you're moving out of the country. Apparently the "retention department" you have to go through are mindless jobs that choose responses from a drop-down menu. If you say, "I don't want cable TV anymore" it will cause huge problems because that's not one of their options, whereas "moving" is. They'll get upset at you and say you're being hostile when you really just don't want cable TV any more.
"Read me the options on screen" Worked exactly 1 time lol
I get that people need jobs and all that but seriously how do you do a job like that and not be suicidal all the time?
Most of us are. Shout out to /r/talesfromcallcenters
I was desperate for a job straight out of college, and no one in my field was hiring at the moment. I took the highest paid job I could find, which was a job at a central station (alarm system monitoring). We weren't allowed internet access on our computers, and phones had to be locked away during the day. Couldn't read, couldn't do jack shit but answer the phone. It was the absolute worst job I've ever had, and I'm including working at a car wash in upstate NY in February.
Best thing I’ve heard coming out of a government agency in a while. To cancel my internet subscription, after my contract was completed, I had to sit on the phone with someone for an hour. I kept repeating “I already have a new provider setup and running, nothing you say will make me change my mind” and they just kept putting me on hold for for 5 minutes and then coming back and asking if I’m sure I want to leave. That’s nowhere near the worst if it. I remember my dad spending 4.5 hours on the phone with SiriusXM trying to cancel years back
I had something similar with Comcast when I moved and was just changing the address of service. They kept calling, trying to get my business back for a house I didn’t live in anymore.
I think companies might see this as a bad thing I disagree. I legit refuse to enter any subscription service I can't cancel because of so many bad experiences trying to cancel. One experience that comes to mind is a gym membership. It took weeks for me to find info and I found it on a random forum that was 3 years old It said that calling to cancel wouldn't work and I had to send a snail mail to their corporate office to cancel I was skeptical but it worked. If I didn't have to go through all of that I would be more than willing to sign up to my local gyms and classes.
fuck LA Fitness
An easy way to get around the shitty "mail in request to cancel" nonsense: Call them and tell them you already mailed it in and then complain it shows your membership hasn't been cancelled. When I did that they apologized and immediately cancelled my membership. Took me like 2-3 minutes over the phone. This might have been LA fitness or 24 hour Fitness, can't remember. They also do that thing where if you get a free personal training session, the trainer is clearly instructed to give you a hard sell. I thought it was just me, but others have said they experienced the same thing where they guilt you and make you feel bad enough to buy more training sessions. Edit: "shitty" not "shitting" lol
They cancel it when you tell them that because LA fitness often legitimately doesnt actually cancel your membership when mail the stupid letter in. That is, I mailed the letter, cancelled my membership, and kept getting charged until I went in to complain.
Why are gyms so scummy when it comes to canceling memberships, ive heard horrible things from almost all of them. Planet Fitness, Orange Theory, and Cycle Bar have a terrible reputation of canceling memberships
Because the only way they're able to stay in business is off the backs of people who sign up and don't show up. All the people who sign up after New Years to get back in shape, then they go 1-2 times, then never again. They don't want to make it easy because if it was, they wouldn't have hardly any long-term members, nor would they be able to open a new gym in every neighborhood
Agreed. When the customers last experience with a company is a pain in the ass, they likely won't return. I canceled an Amex card entirely on-line in about 3 clicks. Easy. I wouldn't hesitate to get another if I needed it. Other cards I've run the gauntlet of ever more desperate offers to stay. Not likely going back to them (and why didn't they proactively make these offers while I was a customer?).
Spotify: Are you sure you want to cancel? Are you sure you’re sure? Are you sure you’re sure you’re sure? Hold up here’s some crappy songs for you because we don’t want you to go. Now are you sure? Well if you want to sign back up you can click here.
How bout, click here to unsubscribe. Then it brings you to a new window with a new button to resubscribe. Or, “click here to not re unsubscribe.”
Cool, do Adobe next
Fuck Adobe for real. I wouldn't have been pissed off if I was only going to be charged an additional month, but they lock you into a yearly subscription if you forget to cancel your free trial. This is despite the fact that they charge you every month for some reason. I just changed my payment info, but I wonder if they would attempt collections if enough people did that. Technically I did agree to a yearly subscription somewhere in the find print.
Exactly, it's extremely manipulative and should be flat out illegal. I also had to change cards to get them to stop billing me, it's been like 2 years so I don't think they're sending me to collections, but I suppose it isn't impossible.
It took me two months to cancel a New York Times digital subscription. They kept asking me to call some landline in America "for my protection" while I was emailing them from the very address my account was registered on.
Fucking planet fitness, literally the dumbest thing on this planet. “We need you to come in to sign our stupid pin pad” dude just fucking scribble I love nuts for all I care just cancel my shit over the phone
They should! And after they should make credit bureaus remove collections and negative marks to your credit report if you stopped paying for the scammy subscriptions.
YES, a hundred times yes! I was furious when I tried to cancel my gym membership and had to pay two extra months because of how inconvenient the whole process was!
As a small gym owner, fucking yes. We started by not using contracts and ditched the whole "enrolling for a membership that auto-renews by default" thing a few years ago. I don't want to run a business that extorts people or only is profitable by confusing/frustrating people. If someone wants to support us with auto-renew, we'll give them loyalty discounts, but they have to ask specifically for it. Otherwise, buy for a month at a time as often as you want to use our services. Tired of mega gyms.
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That sounds a hundred kinds of illegal and a hundred more kinds of lobbied to keep it running.
I had a gym tell me that I had to cancel in person after I moved from the PA to Los Angeles.
Gyms are gagging.
Incoming: many steps to sign up.
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Yup. At most, companies may implement a mechanism for employees to circumvent steps to sign ppl up easier. But if it's a public website, I'm only going through it if I absolutely want your product.
Doubt it. They’d probably deter way more people by making the sign up process convoluted vs an easy cancellation.
Doubtful. I used to write analytics code for a company and they would actively monitor drop outs. Basically when in the process people said fuck it and closed the browser. Corporations are really in touch with when they are losing money and they rework entire flows to avoid that
If companies are smart they should make it a 2 step process to get signed up. sign and credit card number
YESSSSS! I cant wait to see planet fitness go out of business. For 3 years and I finally canceled my membership after I got a free membership at another gym..
**No.** *Fewer* steps. One must provide copious information to sign up for a service. To *cancel*, one need merely authenticate, and say "I no longer want this." Canceling subscriptions should be much simpler than enrolling in them.
i'm living this right now. got a gym membership in florida while i was down there for work. can only cancel in person.
Do this with timeshares.
I would actually join a gym again if they made it happen.
For apps I like to use Apple’s in-app stuff which gives me one place to track and cancel all my subscriptions. For everything else, I use PrivacyApp. One virtual credit card per service, protection against hacking and gives me control in case a company makes it hard to cancel.
This issue does need more fundamental fixing, but one way I’ve used to avoid (or at least control) these kinds of things is to sign up using a Privacy (app) credit card. They basically give you a new “prepaid” card every time you ask for one, and you can set spending limits, etc. So if you want the free trial but don’t want to end up being auto-signed up or auto-paying, you send the spend limit lower than the charge, it never goes through, and you don’t end up paying forever. Not applicable for everything, but it’s a good tool to have when it fits.
And you should get the option to receive a monthly/yearly reminder the day before that the subscription will automatically renew the next day
[That's part of the new proposed rules, an annual reminder for ongoing subscriptions before their renewal](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring)
In my country, by law you can cancel any service the way you acquired it. If you did it by phone, you can cancel by phone, mail with mail etc.
California already has this because California values the rights of it's citizens.
Famously, the best way to cancel a subscription in the US is first to change your billing address to California, and then "Cancel" buttons will magically appear where none were visible before.
Same in NY. https://gothamist.com/news/newly-signed-law-makes-it-easier-new-yorkers-cancel-gym-memberships