In the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) last major rulemaking before the 5 November election, the agency also said that businesses must let customers end subscriptions as easily as they start them.<\/p>\n
Most provisions take effect 180 days after the rule is published in the Federal Register, the agency said.<\/p>\n
“The FTC received more than 16,000 public comments throughout this rulemaking process,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
“People shared how much of a headache it’s become to cancel all kinds of subscriptions-from gym memberships and meal delivery kits to medication, home repairs, phone plans, and more.<\/p>\n
“The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want,” Ms Khan added.<\/p>\n
She also highlighted how the pandemic “brought to the surface” these issues, which included requiring in-person cancellations while businesses were closed.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration included the FTC proposal as part of its ‘Time is Money’ initiative.<\/p>\n
This was announced in August with the aim of cracking down on consumer-related hassles.<\/p>\n
The US Chamber of Commerce criticised the administration’s approach, saying in August that “heavy-handed regulations that micromanage business practices” will lead to higher costs for consumers.<\/p>\n
Democratic presidential nominee vice president Kamala Harris highlighted the “click-to-cancel” rule last month as a policy she would pursue if elected.<\/p>\n
FTC commissioners passed the final rule on a 3-2 vote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n
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A new rule that will force businesses to make it easier for customers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships is to be introduced in the US. The “click-to-cancel” rule will ban retailers and businesses from misleading consumers about subscriptions and require them to obtain people’s consent before charging for memberships, auto-renewals, and programmes linked to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}