Pa. House passes 'click-to-cancel' subscription bills
262 points by bikenaga 2 days ago | 103 comments- toomuchtodo 2 days agoWith the recent federal block of click to cancel, states implementing this will be the way to go.
> Both bills passed the House with broad bipartisan support. If the legislation is agreed to by the state Senate and signed by Gov Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania would join several other states that have moved to create such laws over the past year since the FTC began working on its now-defunct rule.
> New York, California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Virginia have all enacted state-level policies that include provisions similar to Ciresi and Borowski’s bills.
If you live in a state that has not passed such legislation, I would encourage you to hound your reps until they do. 45 states to go.
- amendegree 2 days agoJust to be clear the block was due to a procedural issue and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see this sorta thing have bipartisan support at the federal level, seeing as it enjoys bipartisan support at the state level in every jurisdiction it is attempted. The main hurdle at the federal level would be getting it out of committee.
- janalsncm 2 days agoTo add some color to the regulatory issue as I understand it, the court ruled that the impact of this rule would be over $100M so they’re required to assess cost/benefits of alternatives and submit them during the public comment period.
I don’t even know what the alternative would be apart from doing nothing. Making it more of a pain for consumers to cancel is zero sum on first order analysis (if I lose a dollar because I can’t cancel the company gets a dollar) but at a second order makes our economy less dynamic by entrenching incumbent companies and making it harder for consumers to allocate their money towards better alternatives.
If a company can trap your money in a labyrinth of process they don’t have to compete on quality or price. Simple as that.
- vlovich123 2 days agoI’m always amazed how willing the courts are to block actions like this on vague technicalities but are then so deferent to police violations of civil liberties where even a violation can still upholds the original judgement against that person and only applies going forward.
- bee_rider 2 days agoDo lawmakers want a dynamic economy? I guess that would make it harder to keep track of whose “lobbying” checks have cleared.
- AngryData 2 days agoI don't see how it isn't blatant judicial corruption that big business gets special legal considerations because they might not earn as much money.
- vlovich123 2 days ago
- sokoloff 2 days agoFTC can still do it without the legislature. They just have to follow a more rigorous process in rule-making.
- fumeux_fume 1 day agoThe FTC under the current administration has zero interest in pushing this forward
- fumeux_fume 1 day ago
- dfxm12 2 days agoWhen you look at what is happening in Washington, it is disingenuous to say something was blocked because of a procedural issue. It was blocked because the party that controls all three branches of the Federal government didn't want it to pass.
- Izikiel43 1 day agoWashington DC or Washington State?
- AnimalMuppet 1 day agoNo, it was exactly blocked because of a procedural issue. Despite the fears of many, Trump is not yet a dictator, and the Republican Party is not in total control. Judges rule in ways that they don't like all the time.
This keeps coming up because Trump tries to act like a dictator and just order things to be the way he wants, and it doesn't work that way. There are procedures that the Federal government has to follow; it can't just ignore them and get things done right now. And in fact, the government being forced to follow procedure is a very good thing, even if it's something we want the government to do. It's one of the things standing between where we are and a dictatorship.
- Izikiel43 1 day ago
- janalsncm 2 days ago
- kstrauser 2 days agoI confess to a lot of schadenfreude at the powers that be, like the US Chamber of Commerce, who fight against these federal bills and then find themselves fighting 50 slightly incompatible laws. Oh, you thought it was going to be hard to comply with that one, single pro-consumer regulation? Have fun!
See also: a patchwork of privacy laws[0] that are vastly harder to comply with than a national level GDPR-style law would be.
[0] https://pro.bloomberglaw.com/insights/privacy/state-privacy-...
- swesour 2 days ago> Tennessee
Rare red state w.
- ProllyInfamous 2 days agoI live here. We actually have fairly decent consumer protections... at least against product misrepresenation.
For example, our state constitution prohibits products being sold in containers which misrepresent the amount of their contents (albeit, it still happens).
Conversely, we also founded the pay-day-loan industry, which is just disgraceful (about a dozen states have banned entirely). Only passed because Allan Jones ("father of payday loans") donated $30,000 to PACs in the mid-90s.
I'm currently looking for greener pastures, up-to-and-including expatriation. This state overall has politicians' heads so far up their own...
- toomuchtodo 2 days ago> I'm currently looking for greener pastures, up-to-and-including expatriation.
https://hiring.cafe/ might be of help, no affiliation, just want to help everyone who wants out get out. Same with https://old.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/ on the expat front.
- toomuchtodo 2 days ago
- ProllyInfamous 2 days ago
- stronglikedan 2 days ago> With the recent federal block of click to cancel, states implementing this will be the way to go.
State's rights is just about always the best way to go. It's nice to see the power being returned to the people.
- dfxm12 1 day agoState's rights doesn't give power to the people. It gives power to mostly gerrymandered state legislatures and to appointed judges.
Click to cancel is popular among the people. It was blocked despite this. If the people had power (as opposed to lobbyists, or big business), this would had passed federally.
- IncreasePosts 1 day agoIt was blocked because it was implemented illegally, not because people don't have power.
How could this already be passed in CA? Does CA not have gerrymandering, appointed judges, and lobbyists?
- IncreasePosts 1 day ago
- __turbobrew__ 2 days ago> State's rights is just about always the best way to go
Generally agreed. I live in Canada and think we would be much better off if we pushed more legislation away from the feds and to the provinces. The needs/wants of Alberta/Saskatchewan is much different than Quebec for example.
Gun control is a major divisive issue in Canada as gun control is 100% at the federal level, but the preferences of how it is handles varies hugely between provinces, so much so that some provinces are threatening to not enforce the federal laws.
Im fine with the feds managing border enforcement, immigration, and military — and collecting taxes to fund those programs — but other than that they should leave to the provinces.
The other alternative is that everyone is subject to the mob rule of the major population centers which have much different needs/wants then those outside of the centers. Why not just give the population centers what they want and those in rural areas what they want?
- mook 2 days agoGun control is harder to do like that because guns are physical objects and it's trivial to bring them across unmanned borders. Something like subscriptions are much easier to deal with because that can just be based on billing address.
- 8note 1 day agogiving provinces too much power has generally been a problem for Canada, and a major goal of the current government is to bring more unity across provinces in terms of regulations, so that canadian markets are bigger than one province.
each province still has cities, so you arent getting away having cities dominate. instead, i think cities should be provinces to themselves, same as seattle and portland should both be states in the US. the rural albertans can take care of themselves without taxing calgary and edmonton.
- mook 2 days ago
- nkrisc 2 days agoThat’s good and all for things that begin and end within a single state. Some things really should be done at the federal level. I don’t think a single service I subscribe to is based in the state in which I live.
- Spivak 2 days agoDoesn't matter, you get click-to-cancel as long as you're in the state that has the law. Where they are based is irrelevant.
- Spivak 2 days ago
- AStonesThrow 1 day ago[dead]
- xyst 2 days ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 2 days agoStates rights exist in the United States, regardless of if its been used for good or ill. The United States is a federation, and States Rights ARE a thing. States Rights are also used for professional licenses and insurance regulations, jumping to slavery is absurdism.
- armchairhacker 2 days agoAllowing states to regulate subscriptions is different than slavery.
In particular, states shouldn’t have the right to restrict travel. If the slaves had free travel they would just leave for northern states. If people are able to leave to other states (even if it means rebuilding their life), plenty of bad state laws are OK because those affected will do so.
- AngryData 2 days agoCould I not make the same argument against you for authoritarian central state rule bullshit? Maybe in some European countries it might actually work alright in their current political climates. But how can you look at the US right now and be like "Yes, we need more centralized and powerful government despite the federal government already wielding far more power than ever before or ever imagined in the past." We have literal centuries full of lessons on why strong authoritarian governments are trash and inevitably result in oppression, corruption, internal conflict, and war.
- simplify 2 days agoAnything can be used for evil, doesn't mean that thing instantly becomes evil.
- renewiltord 2 days ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 2 days ago
- toomuchtodo 2 days agoUsually, it’s only “states rights” when conservatives want something. To be determined if this sticks as it rolls out to more states, or the federal government attempts to infringe on state authority. No different than the Missouri governor overriding voters and repealing voter-approved paid sick leave and minimum wage law, Ohio conservatives attempting to override voters on reproductive healthcare, Florida raising the bar for ballot initiatives, Texas gerrymandering efforts currently in progress, etc.
“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” -― David Frum
- babypuncher 2 days agoDon't forget what happened in Utah last year.
In 2018, voters passed the Better Boundaries ballot initiative, requiring our legislature to adopt non-gerrymandered congressional maps. In 2020, the legislature passed a law that effectively ignored the results of the initiative, and they drew even more gerrymandered maps after the census.
We sued the state, and last summer our Supreme Court unanimously agreed that, per the state constitution, the legislature does not have the power to unilaterally gut laws passed by ballot initiative after the fact.
So the legislature haphazardly put together their own ballot initiative that would have amended our constitution to give them the authority to ignore the results of ballot initiatives. This was put on our ballots, but our Supreme Court came through unanimously again, saying that the text of the initiative was grossly misleading and that they did not meet the constitutional requirement to notify the electorate far enough in advance of election day. This initiative was on our ballots as they had already been printed, but the results were not counted per the Supreme Court's order.
My state government is still fighting tooth and nail to kill Better Boundaries before the 2026 election. None of these lawmakers give a single shit about the will of the people.
- babypuncher 2 days ago
- dfxm12 1 day ago
- amendegree 2 days ago
- apparent 1 day ago> The bills would also not cover gyms – notorious for arduous membership cancellation policies – which are controlled by the state Health Club Act. This could be amended into the legislation, which Ciresi said he was open to.
What possible good faith reason could there be for exempting gyms?
- ironmagma 1 day agoWe need some kind of antitrust gym laws. There are far too few gyms for the amount of demand they see.
- justonceokay 1 day agoCreating a gym has relatively low barrier to entry. Buy heavy stuff and put it in an ugly warehouse: now you have a gym! The proliferation of CrossFit is pretty much exactly this
- justonceokay 1 day ago
- adamm255 1 day agoGood faith LOL
- metalman 1 day agofat people epidemic, and the idea that obesity is deadly, so make it harderfor people to give up on there resolutions
- ironmagma 1 day ago
- grndn 1 day agoPersonal anecdote: I had a subscription to the Philly Inquirer. They made it very easy to sign up online, but there was no way to cancel online. The website only said "call the sales team to cancel".
I changed my home address to California, and shortly after, a new "Cancel Subscription" button appeared on the PI website, which worked great.
- aspenmayer 1 day agoInstructions unclear? Do I move to California before or after I cancel my subscription(s)?
- aspenmayer 1 day ago
- fuckinpuppers 2 days agoThis sucks that it’s not federal. All these separate state regulations just create more burden on the company side to keep up, and we almost had it federally. :(
I am happy to see states still pushing forward. But it’s just so disappointing how much is being taken away for everyone.
- floatrock 2 days agoCreating more burden on the company side to keep up is the point -- feature, not a bug.
Who do you think lobbies against a federal-level pro-consumer bill? Hint: it's not the consumers.
The risk of a huge patchwork of not-completely-overlapping state level bills is one of the few checks consumers have against federal-level regulatory capture: if it's between a single set of federal-level rules vs. a patchwork of state-by-state rules, the profitable move becomes "okay, lets just let them have the federal-level rules."
The failure modes, of course, are:
- a completely-defanged federal rule which is worse than no rule (right-to-repair has continued to suffer this)
- further consolidation: if it's expensive to do business in multiple states, only the companies with the deepest pockets can continue to grow
Personally, though, my money is still on a growing patchwork of state laws will eventually necessitate a good-enough federal law.
- scosman 2 days agoThe company only has burden if they want to maintain maximally sketchy but legal business practices in every possible locale. Doing the right thing is easy to implement.
- bee_rider 2 days agoThe companies have lots of money. If they are having trouble following the laws, they can just direct the lobbying they were going to do at passing a universal consumer protection law.
- floatrock 2 days ago
- ruralfam 2 days agoI have a good many subs or monthly plans. Only one sends me an email notifying me that I will be soon be billed and the amount billed. All the others never provide any notification whatsoever. Can PA also consider a bill that requires notification of billing via email?? I'd bet this rule combined with easy-to-cancel would be of great, great, benefit to the good citizens of PA.
- pclowes 2 days agoI wonder how hard it would be to generate synthetic credit card numbers for each subscription service and then just cancel that "card".
I feel there is a whole cadre of consumer tech that is defensive against corporate taxes/tolls on our time. Eg: auto phone tree navigator, only allowing calls from double opted in contacts etc.
- Buttons840 2 days agoSometimes the company will continue to seek payment and put the missed payments on your credit report.
That should be illegal as well. If people stop paying for a continual service, like a streaming service or a magazine, then the service should just stop; companies shouldn't be able to accrue credit and continue seeking payment, just cancel the service and be done.
If something like a magazine wants a year payment upfront, then let them charge for a full year before the first magazine is delivered.
- 57473m3n7Fur7h3 2 days agoThere are many banks that offer virtual cards. Meaning you can generate unique numbers and individually disable those card numbers.
A related thing is, with Revolut you have disposable cards that are only possible to charge a single time. Unfortunately I have had a bad time trying to use disposable cards. One time I tried it the merchant did a single reversible charge for like a dollar to verify the card and then they couldn’t charge the actual amount so the purchase failed. Another time for a subscription service (I wanted to try their free 30 day trial without forgetting to cancel in time) they apparently got metadata telling them the card was disposable and they refused it so I had to use the non-disposable card number after all.
- DaSHacka 1 day agoCan you not instead set the cap at a certain amount? You can do that on privacy, and can also set it to reset the cap after a certain amount of time (for subscriptions)
- DaSHacka 1 day ago
- dewey 1 day agoThere’s many services providing virtual credit cards for exactly that purpose: https://www.privacy.com/
- Buttons840 2 days ago
- ge96 1 day agoInteresting I thought it didn't pass (maybe was a different one for the entire country)
Yeah the gym cancellation thing where you have to drive to the location and sign a paper was annoying me/had to do it
Hope they do something similar with cookies where there has to be an option to say no/reject all
- 3836293648 4 hours agoThe FTC had a rule against it, but courts struck it down, so now states are doing it individually
- 3836293648 4 hours ago
- sometimes_all 1 day agoSomewhere in the mid-2010s, The Economist lost my trust when I noticed that they did not have a way to cancel their subscription directly, you had to call a number (I was not intending to cancel, but someone pointed that out to me). I called that number on the very same day and cancelled.
Any company which makes entry easy and exit difficult will not have my money. The more difficult the exit, the harder I will try to escape, even if I like their product/service.
- breadwinner 2 days agoOne of the ways to prevent unauthorized charges is to use a virtual credit card. Many credit cards provide a way to create virtual credit card based on your real credit card, for example, Citibank [1] and Capital One [2]. Then if the merchant makes it hard for you to cancel, just delete your virtual credit card.
You can specify any expiration date for the virtual card (with at least 1 month validity). You can also set per-transaction limits on this credit card, which ensures the merchant can't charge more than the agreed amount.
[1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-N...
[2] https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/what-...
- JumpCrisscross 2 days ago> One of the ways to prevent unauthorized charges is to use a virtual credit card
This prevents payments, not charges. I’ve met two totally separate funds that buy up these claims and litigate them because killing your card doesn’t void the purchase contract. (And your liability keeps actuating so long as it’s not cancelled.)
- breadwinner 2 days agoThat's true. In addition to preventing payments, you also have to make a reasonable attempt to cancel service.
Recently in the case of Dish Network, I tried to call to cancel service, and the wait time is 45 minutes. There's no way I am doing that. (They don't let you cancel online or via chat, calling is the only option). Instead I contacted state attorney general's office and they made Dish cancel service.
If you can prove that you made reasonable attempt to cancel service then you're off the hook. In my case Dish sent my account to collections (for the 1 month it took to cancel service) and I wrote them back that I am not paying and why. Never heard back from them after that.
- JumpCrisscross 2 days agoSending a letter to the company pretty much always works and provides proof of the attempt to boot.
- JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
- breadwinner 2 days ago
- JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
- brikym 1 day agoI should be able to cancel from my bank. Use the Visa/MC monopoly for good.
- filoeleven 1 day agoYeah, this is the way. The charges ultimately get drawn from that account, so that should be the place where I can stop that from happening.
- DaSHacka 1 day agoI'd much rather just break up the monopoly
- filoeleven 1 day ago
- tritipsocial 1 day agoWhat are the most notorious offenders for hard to cancel services? I heard lots of horror stories in the early 2000s (AOL!) but I have not ran into this recently.
- FlamingMoe 1 day agoI buy a lot of plugins for WordPress sites, and there are definitely some companies in that ecosystem known to utilize dark patterns and have difficult cancellation processes.
- Macha 1 day agoGyms and newspapers
- apparent 1 day agoHome security companies and newspapers.
- FlamingMoe 1 day ago
- account7213 2 days agoThe article says this doesn't apply to entities regulated by the state utility commission, the FCC or specifically gym memberships. That would seem to exclude a lot of the worst offenders.
- ChrisArchitect 2 days agoRelated background:
US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
- xyst 2 days agoAs a software engineer, this means job security, lol.
If a few more states pass similar legislation, the default would be to make it as easy as possible to unsubscribe/cancel.
- 15155 1 day ago> As a software engineer, this means job security, lol.
My bro Claude would like a word with you.
- 15155 1 day ago
- nektro 1 day agoyay! if only the FTC had implemented this nationally and not had it rolled back by this admin!
- noobermin 1 day agoTime for trump to declare click to cancel woke and communist so they can pass a federal law banning it like they are passing other similar laws.
- brianbest101 1 day ago[dead]