Years ago when signed up with them I opted to pay the extra service for local tv channels, which required an andditional antenna to install.

For some reason the installer couldn’t fit it securely on our house, and said to call Dish to remove the service since we cannot receive it.

Dish refused to remove the local service! They said since we signed a contract we were stuck paying for it even though they couldn’t fit the antenna.

I pointed out in a hundred different ways that the contract also required them to provide a service which they are not providing so we shouldn’t have to pay.

All of my attempts to reason with them were ignored, and their call staff refused to escalate to their manager.

Long story short we had to pay for twelve months for something they couldn’t provide to us.

Literally the minute the contract was up we cancelled (it was easier to cancel back then).

I would never ever go near this company again.

In some jurisdictions you have to show up to small claims yourself though which prevents some third party from just handling it. Makes sense since the idea behind small claims is to keep the legal costs low enough that you actually have a chance of recovering smaller sums without paying more then what you will get.

If a company sends you a $2 check ten years after they recognize a profit from defrauding you or lying to you or harming you, that's not a punishment, and is certainly not an incentive to not do those things.

You could win that case with very little evidence. Merely the written contract, a photo of the loose antenna (or the antenna itself, if the installer left it behind instead of installing it), the statement from the installer stating that he couldn’t complete the job, and the bills for the service that you couldn’t use but that you have had to pay up to that point. That’s all paperwork that you should have held on to anyway, at least for a few years.

There is the case of ignorance, where a person might not know about small claims court, let alone how it works and what it does. Then there is the case of an increasing number of forced arbitration clauses. Then there is the fact that companies wishing to not get swept up in a wave of small claims will reach out and try to fix the problem if they do actually have a case they think they might lose, further preventing more people from talking about it. And small claims court may ‘only take minutes to resolve,’ but that small length of time would only happen once you are actually seen in court. Before that, you’d need to - file with a clerk (meaning, spend time learning what you need to file, where you need to file it, etc.), - serve the defendant (which costs money and time), - arrive at the court in the morning for roll call, - wait a few hours until you and the defendant are actually called (if they showed up…, which if not expect to come back after serving them again).

This is not a ‘trivial’ task, and all the while the company that scammed you already had your money. As a large company, you can arbitrage the profit of this shady behavior against the risk of someone actually going through all of the steps.

Besides, it’s easier than you pretend. The form you have to fill out is literally two pages long. The costs and filing fees are minimal, and they’ll even waive them if you ask. You can email your local sheriff and have them take care of service, or do it by mail. Yes, you will likely spend more time waiting in the lobby (more likely the hallway in the basement, but whatever) on the day of your hearing than you will spend in front of the judge, but what more could you possibly want? The process has been made literally as simple as is currently feasible.

None of these shit companies will ever take you up on the offer though, because expecting to get paid for a service you don't provide (and can't provide in this case) won't fly in court.

Have you actually tried this? Because having not tried it myself, I'd bet a paycheck that you get sent to collections, get a ding on your credit report, and you're still on the hook for taking it to court if you want it resolve to your favor. (Assuming U. S.) And as a cherry on top of that shit sundae, it's probably in the contract that you have to go through arbitration anyway.

When collections calls, you explain them the situation (service not provided or whatever, and evidence of trying to resolve it with them in good faith) and they go away.

Have yet to see a court summons or anything, although I'd love to see them try their lies in court.

I did not care about the credit report impact - it's probably the only valid reason not to do this if this is something you care about.

Thanks for the follow-up. I suspect UK does make a difference, but IANAL in either country. I do, however, have a bit of personal experience in the U. S. :-)

If you are relying on them for something other than the thing you don’t want to pay for, this becomes a problem.

For example, I disputed a charge with my CC from the Apple App Store when I was charged for an app that I shouldn’t have been years ago. They immediately cut off my access to the Store. Other apps couldn’t update, OS couldn’t update, couldn’t get new apps, etc.

But the fact that I have a billing dispute with a company and they are able to hold everything else that bit of technology touches hostage is just wrong. Imagine if you had a billing dispute with the city water company and they cut your city power because of it.

Ironically, that inherent dysfunction is the main reason to suspect that won't happen. But politically, every regulation as automatically partisan, even when it has overwhelming support.

(At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of citizens into felons with no oversight beyond drawn out and expensive court cases against them.

I never liked the smell of this power being afforded to agencies in the abstract, even for the "good guys" at the CDC or Department of the Interior. It's too rife for abuse. Federal regulations (whether you call it a law or a rule, the party van is coming if you break them) are supposed to be hard to pass. We once needed an amendment to ban alcohol before we forgot the definitions of interstate and commerce, but if my understanding is correct, under Chevron deference the DEA could have decided to schedule it without even asking congress.

The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.

That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters.

The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than scientific. The agencies don't do a good job, but a lot of that is because of garbage they are saddled with by congress (think of the machine guns--the basic problem is that the legal and practical definitions are out of sync) and a lot of it is because politics manages to get in anyway.

How about a middle ground: agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court. You can't go after the ruling but if you can knock out it's supports it goes away. This would cut both ways--exempt something from a more general ruling and the reason for the exemption can be challenged. (And I'd like to see the same thing for laws.)

The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.

It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein

The seers have been banned. I don't think anyone thinks they're not machine gun parts.

What's been going on is the ATF has been going after a variety of methods of circumventing the concept--means of using the recoil to "pull" the trigger without the operator actually pulling it. The result sure acts like a machine gun, albeit an unreliable and inaccurate one. The problem is that it's simply too easy to do, they are fighting a hopeless battle.

My understanding is the same problem applies to silencers--plenty of filters out there that just happen to be of the right size to function as silencers. And there isn't even any reason for the rules against silencers. They aren't like Hollywood, it's still loud but below the threshold of hearing damage.

The case entirely hinged on the definition of machinegun being a gun that fires more than one shot "by a single function of the trigger" with the majority saying that because you need to keep forward pressure to keep firing, bump stocks don't count.

The aspect of bump stocks being just a part and not a gun wasn't important to the case because the statute is clear on this point: any part that's intended to convert a regular gun to a machine gun is itself a machine gun under the relevant law.

I think that's already true, except that you probably need standing - you need to show you're affected by the rule - to sue. There are many rules around rule-making including against arbitrary rules, guaranteed public comment periods, etc.

Not on it's own, no. The bigger culprit there is the erosion of the nondelegation doctrine. But Chevron aggravated the problem by allowing agencies to stretch their authority beyond what even congress intended with little possibility of legal challenge.

Interpreting the law is and should be the role of the courts, not the role of the agencies that that law is supposed to be governing. It'd be like if we passed a law intended to regulate insurance companies, and the courts decided to give deference to the insurance company's interpretation of that law because "they're the experts on insurance".

The US isn't well functioning its just rich

The US is rich because it's well functioning.

* The country was launched on most of a century of essentially "free" land grabs-- limited pushback from native civilizations. buying cheap from distressed foreign powers (Louisiana), the main wars of conquest being insignificant squabbles with Mexico over trifles.

* Said land was also compelling-- you weren't fighting the environment to extract value the way you would be in Siberia.

* After 1865, no significant nation-scale conflict on the territory itself to blow down existing investments.

* This created an opportunity for bulk immigration-- first with Homestead Act style programmes and then because the American economy was compelling enough to be a pull by itself. A high immigrant population has a unique "opt-in" demographics-- a situation that self-selects for entrepeneurialism.

None of this required wildly competent government. George Washington could have chosen to be a king, a religious caliph, or a protosocialist planning enthusiast, and the deck would have still held almost all the same cards.

Consider: Congress passes a law which sets limits on the authority of an agency. You think the agency itself should get to decide what that law actually means? And the courts, the branch of government specifically granted the role of arbiter by our constitution, should be required to differ to that interpretation if anyone ever objects and brings a lawsuit? It's absurd, and no less so than if the law was concerning a private company rather than a public agency.

But that's beside the point anyway, because it shouldn't have to be the legislature's job to be constantly weighing in on whether an agency is following the law as written. That's literally what the courts are for; to interpret nuances of the law.

You could always argue in court that the agency’s interpretation of the statute was not reasonable. The court could always agree with you and establish case law against that interpretation.

It was a two part test:

1. Is the statute clear? If so, defer to statute. Otherwise, go to (2).

2. Is the agency’s interpretation reasonable? If so, defer to agency. Otherwise, the agency's rule is no longer enforceable.

Now, the court is allowed to come up with its own interpretation even in the presence of a reasonable agency interpretation. That is the only change. If the agency's interpretation was unreasonable, then it was already going to get thrown out.

The courts took the authority to throw out interpretations that they themselves (the court!) think are reasonable. Unreasonable interpretations were NEVER protected by Chevron deference.

> Proving something is "not reasonable" in a legal sense is a pretty high bar to clear

Sure it is, but that is literally not the bar. The courts always had the authority to do their own analysis of reasonableness so long as the challenger raised the question. In fact, they didn't just have the authority to do it, they were obligated to do it.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/706

The low probability of overturn is an argument for Chevron deference. It is empirical proof that courts almost always found agencies' rules to be reasonable interpretations.

"Correctness" is an actually meaningless concept here. Correct according to which rubric? Please answer specifically.

I.e. you’re going to need a better rubric.

"The agency's own personal interpretation" is another nonsense phrase where you're trying to simply presume your opinion alongside a weak argument. The agency is not a person.

>I.e. you’re going to need a better rubric.

I see nothing wrong with the rubric I gave. It's the one the constitution set up, and therefore 100% correct from a legal perspective. Past courts having different opinions from the current one is irrelevant to that.

> The agency's own personal interpretation" is another nonsense phrase

No, it means exactly what is says. The agency has its own interpretation which has and ought to have no more legal weight than a random person's. If it's just the word "personal" you're objecting to, that's obviously a figure of speech that doesn't alter the substance of my argument.

An agency is an agency, not a court. They have exactly zero constitutionally granted authority to interpret law. Why in your view should their opinion on the law have any more weight than yours or mine, or than any other person's personal interpretation? Or more importantly, more weight than the courts; the institution created for the very purpose of interpreting the law? Because it seems very obvious to me that it shouldn't. Especially in the context of a lawsuit to which the agency is one of the parties.

Okay so on June 27, 2024, the "100% correct from a legal perspective" was that courts defer to agencies when they have reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

On June 28, 2024, the "100% correct from a legal perspective" was that courts should not defer to agencies when they have reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

Each of these decisions define which structure "the Constitution set up." This fact is itself defined in the Constitution.

Your argument that this is a good decision because it's "Constitutionally correct" is literally just begging the question. It is an entirely circular argument that could just as easily have been applied to defend Chevron. If your argument can be used to defend either side of it, it's a bad argument.

When I say things like "the courts are the mechanism our constitution defines for resolving disputes about the interpretation of law", I am making a principled argument based on my understanding of the Constitution and the Separation of Powers, not based on anything the Supreme Court has or has not said.

The United States Constitution defines three separate branches of government:

1. The Legislative Branch, which makes law

2. The Judicial Branch, which interprets law

3. The Executive Branch, which enforces law

These branches are intentionally separated from each other to prevent the concentration of power, and so that each branch can serve as a check and balance on the powers of the other branches.

Government agencies are part of the Executive Branch, which enforces law. They are not part of the Judicial Branch, which interprets law. Therefore, they should not have a role in interpreting the law, and granting them that power breaks this simple fundamental principle of the Constitution.

This is civics 101 level stuff. It doesn't seem like it should be controversial to me, which is why I've been asserting it as true without feeling the need to try to justify my points beyond those assertions.

> given that judges likely have even less knowledge of the subject than the ATF, probably worse and more inconsistent.

In the unicorn rainbow world where the regulatory agencies are omniscient saints only worrying about the common good, that may be an argument. In the real world, where the regulators are extremely politicized, extremely concerned with gaining more power and extremely happy to pass completely absurd and harmful regulations if it fits their particular agenda, it's not. And by now we all know this is the world we are living in.

What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government.

From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights.

So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.

The sheer stupidity of that argument is mind-blowing. When you have a government agency with dedicated technical resources, but you will rather a bunch of couple hundred of people with different backgrounds make specific rules about everything. That's just madness

In a https://www.scotusblog.com article, Amy Howe quotes the Chief Justice as saying "Chevron deference, Roberts explained in his opinion for the court on Friday, is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that sets out the procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for courts to review actions by those agencies. The APA, Roberts noted, directs courts to “decide legal questions by applying their own judgment” and therefore “makes clear that agency interpretations of statutes — like agency interpretations of the Constitution — are not entitled to deference. Under the APA,” Roberts concluded, “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says."

I ought to go read the decision for myself, which I have to this point not yet done. I am not an attorney, but do have a general interest in these matters.

But back to the earlier poster's notes, ATF has been a prime example. They have a history of capricious reinterpretation at the whims of whichever administration is in power. They issue letters to people and businesses that say one thing is okay and then outlaw in without any law changes a decade later. I have never owned a pistol brace, but they stated it was an acceptable innovation for certain applications, thousands and thousands of people relied on that, they issue a rule making comment period and get feedback and then threw all of that out and came out with a final rule that bore no resemblance to the one in the comment period. Then they stand behind Chevron that the courts had to listen to their interpretation. It is legal "heads, I win" and "tails, you lose!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...

If the interpretation in Loper Bright was not "reasonable," the Supreme Court already had the tools it needed to reverse the agency without breaking any precedent. If on the other hand it was reasonable, why should the courts be getting involved?

Removing Chevron simply allows the courts to select their preferred policy outcomes more directly.

Everything is ripe for abuse.

———-

Right now, agencies are the defensive structures. Corporations which own media or parties that are effectively corporations - are the threat.

One of the specific defenses that’s employed by private forces is reduction in trust of agencies.

——

All systems are vulnerable. It’s a question of relative vulnerability.

Pistol braces was struck down not on second amendment grounds, but because the ATF failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically failing the logical outgrowth test. They proffered a comment period and then did a switch when publishing the final rule.

Similar shenanigans were afoot with the Trump area bump stock ban, which was ruled against by the Supreme Court itself in Garland v. Cargill. I think that had to do with the agency exceeding its authority beyond what the statute specifically specifies. In laymans terms, the legal details were not ambiguous enough to justify the conclusion that the agency came to stretching the statute through their interpretation.

It's hard to argue with this in principal. The rules as law BS has been a band-aid over dysfunction. It needs to go. It'll hurt in the short term but should be more sustainable in the long term. That people will get more angry at congress for doing nothing is icing on the cake.

I want to be optimistic about this. In practice it seems that the strategy created by McConnel to block any legislation at all has been doing/tricking the voter really well. As he predicted, credit for anything good goes to the current admin while anything bad also gets blamed on the current admin. I can see a likely scenario where "people getting more angry" will only make this strategy to block everything work even better. I hope I am wrong and the "nuance" that congress exists and isn't controlled by the president will finally get into people heads. I also hope that once it gets into their heads, the conclusion won't be that a authoritarian dictator is needed.

"Let's meet in the middle" says the unjust man.

You take a step towards him. He takes a step back.

"Let's meet in the middle" says the unjust man.

There are decades of rules in the federal register. How long do you imagine it will take the legislative branch to patch them?

Go skim some of them, and see if you feel the same way afterward:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%...

then being a renter would be quite an adventure.

It's very easy to argue with this in principle. Congress can't be constantly updating every law as new technology or situations emerge. It's much better for laws to set general goals and leave implementation to agencies staffed with experts.

If you are left-leaning, suppose the “experts” are former oil company lobbyists.

If you are right-leaning, suppose the “experts” are Marxists hired by President AOC.

That is why the “trust the unelected experts” idea fundamentally bothers people.

Who is behind this move? What individuals, and what politicians? By what legal means is this happening? I've literally never heard of anything like this before - without further details, this is just political flame-baiting.

The supreme court. The removal of Chevron Deference this year means that the courts have given themselves huge amounts of power over any administrative decision that isn't specifically regulated by congress (rather than the prior stance which was to presume that agency decisions were reasonable interpretations of the legislation unless there was clear evidence to the contrary).

Agencies no longer get special privileges in interpreting the scope of what Congress delegated to them.

Within the scope of what Congress delegated to them, they still have an much power and discretion as ever.

The judge said, "Even as the agency has the power, I don't feel sufficiently convinced by their argument and will block it anyway."

That doesn't sound like they have as much power in their delegated responsibilities if an arbitrary judge says "... and you also have to convince me personally, even though you're entitled to do it."

What you are proposing is that Congress be allowed to abolish its own power, completely destroying the constitution.

Who cares if they had that ability? They wouldn't use it.

And even if they did, it wouldn't violate separation of powers.

And even if they did, they could make a new law that takes it back.

Of all the worries about delegation, this one seems like the least meaningful.

They always have?

Article I, section 1 of the Constitution: ‘All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.’

It doesn’t say, ‘Congress may delegate its legislative Powers to the Executive.’ Arguably, the ‘shall’ language forbids that! Article I, section 8 does give the Congress the authority to pass laws necessary and proper to execute its regulation of interstate commerce (among other things), but … it’s not necessary to delegate legislative power in order to execute the law.

Those people need to be paid, and their services accounted for.

Those outreach and comms programs also need to be handled.

Congress can’t add 300 days into 24 hours. So this is a reading of law kinda like an absolutist readings of a text.

By necessity, legislators delegate rule making to agencies.

Who do you want determining the precise definition of a kilogram? Congress or NIST?

By necessity, some rules have the force of law. Like how many state's Secretaries of State are entrusted with clearly scoped essential administrivia, like how to run elections.

Do you really want legislators doing the technical and operational evaluation of tabulators?

Of course, precisely where the lines are between various jurisdictions must be adjudicated. That's why we have the courts. IIRC, most cases heard by SCOTUS pertain to administrative law.

How else could our government function?

I agree that there are distinct activities. In our system, there are three distinct activities: lawmaking, law execution and law application; they correspond to the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government.

It’s clear to me that regulations with the force of law must be passed by the Congress, while regulations applied within the executive without the force of law may be promulgated by the executive.

> By necessity, legislators delegate rule making to agencies.

I don’t see that it is in any way necessary, and I do see that it is extremely dangerous to a republican system of government. Every member of the executive ultimately answers to a single man: the President. If the Congress enables the President to dictate the content of a law, then that one man is a dictator.

The Founders did not want a king, and the Constitution does not allow one. Again, to quote the document: ‘All [emphasis added] legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress …’ Not some legislative powers, but all.

> Who do you want determining the precise definition of a kilogram? Congress or NIST?

It’s not about what you or I want; it’s about what the supreme law of the land allows.

As it happens, it wouldn’t bother me if Congress set the definition of the kilogram. Why would it bother you?

> Do you really want legislators doing the technical and operational evaluation of tabulators?

Again, it’s not about what I want, but what the law requires. In the case of tabulation, that seems pretty clearly an executive responsibility. The rules for tabulation seem to be pretty clearly a legislative responsibility.

If one doesn’t like that arrangement, then one is free to advocate for changing the Constitution! An amendment such as ‘The President or his delegate may issue a law defining weights and measures’ would work. I think that it’d be a bad idea, because it gives too much authority to one man (imagine if some future president issued a law defining that any use of the meter is to be punished with death …).

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

Two (of many, many) books which detail two separate efforts to dismantle our administrative state are:

Lobbying America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691168016 the history of how Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, et al reacted to The New Deal by transitioning from trade groups to political players.

Democracy in Chains https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Chains-History-Radical-Stea... shares (Nobel winning economist) James McGill Buchanan's role in bootstrapping the Southern flavored conservative movement (libertarian "free enterprise" segregationists reacting to Civil Rights Era and The Great Society).

Three major developments from the courts in this direction have been:

- The overturning of Chevron gave courts the power to interpret portions of laws written by subject matter experts, instead of those experts themselves.

- The big questions doctrine has allowed the courts to decide when the legislature has deligated too much power.

- Cornerpost has removed the statue of limitations for challenge policies and rules out in place by agencies.

These together clearly paint a picture. Any policy can be challenged (in any venue, allowing the plaintiff to pick their venue). This allows policies in place for decades to be challenged and brought to the supreme court. The most recent court has adopted the major questions doctrine, allowing them to strike down any policy they feel pertain to "issues of major political or economic significance." (no they didn't define it more than that). Or, if they can't make that argument, they can interpret the law to strike down the policy due to the overturning of Chevron.

We've seen an unprecedented shift of power to the supreme court in the last few years. They're using the disfunction in the legislature as an opening to gain power. Which is scary considering it's a group of 9 unelected people with lifetime appointments.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/corner-post-inc-...

"concluding they did it for no reason"

What?

We left their crap in a room for ~6 months total at the advise of his estate lawyer. Eventually they did accept that he was dead and canceled the account as well as sent a box to send the equipment back.

They got their equipment back after it had all had an unexpected encounter with a hammer. Never heard a peep about it.

> Any advertised price must include all mandatory taxes and fees. No exceptions.

For the second just have a law that says:

> An end user must be allowed to use the same method to cancel as they used to sign up for the service. No exceptions. Additionally, an end user cannot be required to perform more manual actions to cancel than was required to sign up. No exceptions.

No one should be against this except greedy corporations. Easily solved, common sense rules that already have working examples in the real world. 1 is already the law in Netherlands and Australia and these countries aren’t falling over from the undue burden placed on businesses.

I’ll end with: two cornerstones of a free market are price transparency and the ability/mobility to switch services when a better competing offering emerges. Not having legislation like above to protect those values is anti capitalistic

Free airfare to Hawaii!

Fee for paying by cash: $1000 Fee for paying by check: $1100 Fee for paying by credit card: $1050 Fee for middle seat: $200 Fee for window seat: $300 Fee for aisle seat: $250

Note that no fee on this list is mandatory because you always have other options.

It becomes trickier when the fee is elective, but a significant part of the advertisement. Southwest Airlines complaining about having to advertise their fares, which come with two bags included, alongside other airlines who don’t include any bags comes to mind. I think there is probably some world where elective fees are included as well though this seems more nebulous.

However, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Even just including everything that is compulsory in the base price itself, including taxes, would be a massive improvement to the status quo. Fixing this elective fee ambiguity would be a next step

The (hypothetical) airfare was listed as "free", but it was impossible to end up paying less than $1200 for it.

The point being that even if you have a choice between several fees (making none of them "mandatory" by a narrow reading), you're still paying something beyond the advertised base price.

The logical good-faith rule in a case like this would be that you must advertise at least the minimum price anyone would end up paying based on the available "fee choices".

It's really not a practical problem in any country that has the appropriate laws. The only thing it takes to fix this is the political will to do so.

I recently ordered cake for $x, with a mandatory selection of "size". The only possible size was "large", which cost an add-on fee of $3. Just make that type of stuff illegal yesterday. Absolutely nothing of value will be lost.

This insistence at having EXACT WORDS for things that aren't exact is just naivety, thinking the world is can be divided perfectly into categories if we just make the categories specific enough!

You cannot.

- In the EU, what can legally be defined as a "sale" price (e.g. 20% off till Friday! deals) uses very precise verbiage that states an item must be at a certain percentage higher for a specific period of time (typically 30 days) to constitute a sale.

- In the USA, the regulations basically say that companies should make a good faith effort to not deceive consumers with sale prices. It leaves defining what a good faith effort is as an exercise to the reader (states).

The end result is that you have a lot more misleading price info in the States, since all manner of questionably legal manipulation tactics are used and enforcement of this is lax.

Here in Sweden, if the amount isn't clearly presented, there's no agreement to pay the specified amount, so there's no contract and no obligation to pay-- an agreement becomes binding because of the reasonable expectation of a party on the counterparty.

I don't understand American contract law, since I even see ideas like changing agreements, which are completely contrary to the very notion of a contracts as I understand it, so it's nice that something is done about these strange practices.

I don't understand how it's come to this point though. That courts have been willing to tolerate things that aren't in the contract (i.e. changes to contracts), provisions that aren't clear, etc., and complex and strange provisions even in contracts of adhesion and things presented to consumers.

Occasionally this is unavoidable--shipping charges. If they simply pass through what UPS charges, fine. Otherwise, they should be listed up front.

With regard to shipping charges, don't you choose your shipping options and get to see the price before buying?

Sales tax is also usually added in at the very end, again because it depends on where the buyer is.

The difference here is that the "hidden junk fees" are just extra money they charge, with no real defence. For example, Ticketmaster loves their arbitrary "convenience fee", Airbnb was long known for "cleaning fees" (though they've improved here), etc. These are things that the seller knows they're going to charge beforehand and clearly they do this purely to trick our brains into thinking things are cheaper.

They do this to increase profits.

A certain portion of the population is pro-profit at virtually any cost.

It might seem like Dish employees wake up every day and say, "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?" But usually they're just trying to find ways to make more money.

Dish did do something sort of similar years ago though, don’t know if they still do, but they did some thing where your DVR would automatically record all primetime shows, so in that way, as long as you were ok waiting for the next day, in a sense, “everything was on demand.” https://www.reddit.com/r/dishnetwork/s/e0wspFb7zq

To be fair, satellite TV has always been one of these even when it was a healthy business. High cost of acquisition, high commission for sales, high barrier to cancel.

Made the mistake of buying a boost mobile sim this year. It was “expired” upon opening it. Retailer refused to refund it.

Having not learned my lesson yet, I went elsewhere and ripped it open to check the expiration date this time before I bought it.

Well “it’s prepaid for 90 days and comes with 35 gigs” it says on the card.

Go to activate it, it puts a further $100 on my credit card and congratulates me for activating my 30 gig service plan.

Hokey frauds.

Their aggressive data throttling always rubbed me the wrong way, along with the Extreme data pricing, considering it was on Sprint's terrible network.

But you repeat yourself.

Shit flows downhill. Their owner, Charlie Ergan, wakes up every day thinking of new ways to defraud the government with DISH and Echostar: https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/us-news/doj-moved-to-dismiss-3...

I usually complain about his spectrum squatting with DISH, but there's so much more if you dig a little.

What percent? (Citation needed if it's anything greater than 1%) What does "virtually" mean? This statement has no details and just comes across as political dogwhistling as a result.

> What does "virtually" mean?

virtually /vûr′choo͞-ə-lē/ adverb Almost but not quite; nearly.

I expect people to not make claims without evidence. I never asked for a study, either - that's you misreading my comment. I asked for a citation, which could be a public poll - some empirical evidence, as opposed to none.

> virtually /vûr′choo͞-ə-lē/ adverb Almost but not quite; nearly.

This is an intentional misinterpretation of my question, as well as being sarcastic to mock and emotionally attack me. Any reasonable reader would have known that I meant "what value does virtually mean here?"

You're intentionally being deceptive and emotionally manipulative to push a political agenda. Don't do that.

This is a mischaracterization of the criticism.

Suppose we all agree that Dish sucks and making it hard to cancel is malicious. A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website. Is that a completely reasonable rule that will have no negative consequences?

A lot of small businesses don't even have a website, or if they do it's fully static content that just provides information about their offering and if you want it you call them. Some two-person landscaping service doesn't have an IT department to implement this and having to call them to cancel isn't a real problem because they actually answer their phone.

And if this was only one rule they would just suck it up and pay someone a thousand bucks to make them a website where you can cancel, but it's not. So when you propose yet another piece of red tape they have to take food off their table to make go away, they line up with rotten tomatoes, and anyone proposing to pare some of it back gets their vote.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...

Except that's not the proposed rule. The way this works in California (and the way the rule the FTC recently published works, I believe) is that a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed. That doesn't require anyone to start running a website.

The rest of your post is just arguing against something that's not even happening.

But then you're not really fixing it anymore. "Must be able to cancel directly via website" (i.e. without waiting for a customer service rep) might have been useful. Require only the same medium and soon Dish has both sign up and cancellation happen via a customer service chat window on their website, but if you choose sign up the chat has representatives/acceptance bots appear instantaneously to approve your sign up, whereas cancellation has a four hour queue and if you fail to wiggle your mouse every 30 seconds you get timed out.

You have to come up with a rule strict enough to defeat the corporate lawyers without making it so complicated or comprehensive that it puts significant compliance costs on smaller entities. Which is really hard to do, with the result that most of the rules that actually pass don't do that, which is why people get irked.

Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again.

If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.

Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction?

> And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)

The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.

Otherwise people who signed up under the wife's name may try to cancel under the husband's name and you don't know who they are, neighbors who don't like the racket from the equipment see your website on the trucks and try to cancel the service even though they're not the customer because you have no authentication, people want to cancel because they've moved and give you their new address instead of the one they're subscribed under, people make ambiguous or incomplete requests and you don't know what they're asking to do. But if you have to contact them to clarify you're not satisfying the requirement that they can cancel via the website.

What do you mean?

You go to the website, it has a form where you fill in your name and address and what service you want. They don't need any further information to send you an invoice. As soon as you pay it, landscapers come to your house and mow your lawn, and then each month you get another invoice until you cancel. That's a subscription; you signed up on the website using the form.

If you have a cancel form it does matter, because it has to match the one used to sign up or they don't know who you are, even if the customer doesn't remember which one they used. Or any number of other issues with matching the request to a subscription.

Humans can sort this out, but then you can't cancel on the website. Computers can also sort this out, but then you need sophisticated programming instead of a basic form. It's not symmetrical.

If the free market had it's way we'd still be under the yoke of Standard Oil and Ma Bell.

Consumer protection regulations, especially those regarded trading and credit, cast a very long shadow (ray of sunlight?) you're possibly unaware of, but still immensely benefit from.

Obviously there are diminishing returns and unintended/negative effects to consumers too sometimes, but throwing protections out completely in favor of a "pure free market" doesn't do these asymmetries justice.

In a truly free market cancellation would be implicit by no longer paying.

There are primary indicators that you use to decide whether to make a purchase, and then there are other (let's call them secondary) indicators.

Primary is stuff like "the advertised price" and "the claimed features/service." Secondary is stuff like "have I ever heard that this company does shitty things" and "is there going to be a BS fee added to the total right before I click 'charge'?"

Once you're in their snare, a company benefits from being shitty. Plenty of people will pay the junk fee (did they even notice?) -- the important part is that your advertised price ranks near the competition. Plenty of people will sign up for a service that is difficult to cancel -- the important part is that the price starts out reasonable and that the service is adequate.

Even if the company is run by true saints, raising that sticker price to reflect the true price is anti-competitive! We can't be the only ones being honest! And they're right. That's why a law is needed to address it.

edit: Perhaps you were being sarcastic. Felt good to state my opinion, anyway :)

When they buy a debt, they rarely get comprehensive documentation.

It's far from a good solution, but it should at least put you in a better position vis-a-vis the courts if it comes to that.

Furthermore, there's an entire category of people for whom "talk on the phone" is not an option, period. If they wanted to cancel by the approved method, they'd not only need to take that time themselves, they'd need someone else willing to take that time with them.

If you misrepresent that you have and they are just ignoring you, you might practically get away with it, but do know that that kind of misrepresentation might get you into trouble some day.

If however the merchant is actually unreachable for a bona fide cancellation request, that's totally on them.

Disputes should have been the backstop to incentivizing the market to making cancellations easier, but things apparently didn't pan out that way. So arguably, the free market has had its chance, and it's time for regulations.

"I attempted to reach them via phone on or about _____, ___. No remedy was achieved."

I've seen Americans living in Europe get bitten by this quite frequently in some countries, where sending something to collections is both commonly done and the collection agency will successfully take you to court and win in almost all cases even for pennies.

On the other hand, the EU has had "two-click cancellation" regulations for a while now, so there is a better alternative available for both sides (customer and company).

for many people, any kind of regulation that restricts companies abilities to make money, regardless of the consequences for average citizen, is "wasteful and discourages innovation". Elon would like to get rid of the FTC altogether for that reason, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up to help protect users from scammy behavior like this.

so yeah, don't hold your breath for the next 4 years (or longer if Elon manages to buy the next election too)

Making wage information more accessible to workers being a policy he- an Austrian School economist- supports.

This government ruling falls under that class of policies IMO. It makes prices much more available to consumers and does not on first inspection threaten to distort supply and demand.

P.S. this is also a good summary of every all in podcast episode post election

But require it to be practical to do online, with no delays and no requirement about when relative to renewals.

Better, in my opinion, is a clear and easy way to "uncancel" if you accidentally cancel. But even that can be abused: "Here's a button that looks like a confirmation, but actually it's a resubscribe button." It's just too tempting to make that "number of people who resubscribed after cancelling" number a target. You think you're reminding the customer of their mistake, but really you're just optimizing the dark pattern.

If you just add a fine with a threshold it is actually much harder to pick the right fine amount. This way it has some sort of degree of scaling naturally. A small delay is less costly to you than a long delay rather than being all-or-nothing.

I agree that for simple things like unsubscribing a button can be mandated, but for other causes of calls to customer support it isn't that simple.

With any such service, I budget 1 hour. If I can't get cancellation within that time-frame I have a standard form letter that gets sent out.

Once the letter is sent, after the current billing cycle ends any additional charges from said service are disputed (either on the card or on bank account) as fraud.

On three occasions, I've been asked to provide proof of fraud.

I've emailed a scan of the cancellation letter. The fraud has never been further disputed even from a gym in Chicago that (via their contract's language) demanded an in-person cancellation.

Life is too short and time is far too precious.

The lawyer field is captured and they know they'd get taken to court by other lawyers if they "recommended" such a thing, because their industry has made them liable for things they "recommend".

We still get the same consumer-hostile practices from companies, but usually they give up if you send them one of those letters.

One thing about the U.S. is this sort of liability also has a huge gamut depending almost entirely on which actual U.S. state the transaction is done.

However, there's also likewise a huge gamut between what's technically actionable versus what's practicable with jurisprudence. Europe has an entirely different notion of "legal fees".

Genuinely, sometimes calls simply get transferred to the "wrong people", the CSR rep is brand new, the system itself gets backed-up (Poisson distributions can be a bitch), the company is going through a transition to a completely new CSR interface, or the general counsel just shoved an entirely new set of operating agreements up everyone's ass. Companies are made of people.

I consider 1 hour my botd (benefit of the doubt) tax for cancellation of consumer services.

Also note, that's not one continuous hour of time*attention.

Companies like to pretend that they can set the rules for all interactions with them when that's just not the case.

Well, depends which people, I suppose: subscribers or providers...

Chargeback: "attempted to cancel via phone."

Done.