A line from an Eagles’ song dating to 1977 serves as an introduction to today’s column: “‘Relax,’ said the night man/ ‘We are programmed to receive/ You can check out any time you like/ But you can never leave.'”
Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place.
Today, we’re staying at the hotel in a room we wound up in by hitting the “free trial” button found on a website the other day. You may have checked into one of these rooms, thinking that, as the free-trial notice said, you could “cancel at any time in the free-trial period and your credit card will not be charged.”
Were it only true. In many cases, it is not. The entanglement happens so often, in fact, that there is a bipartisan move afoot in Congress to pass legislation requiring such trials offer an easy way out.
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U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, introduced the legislation about two weeks ago. The Unsubscribe Act, as it is called, is cosponsored by Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and John Kennedy (R-La.).
It would require companies with free or reduced-priced trial offers to be transparent and provide easy exits for those prospective customers who want out of the offer to which they subscribed. Companion legislation has been introduced in the House.
The Unsubscribe Act has a few basic requirements – all of which seem to be common business sense. But the sponsoring senators, and some of their colleagues, believe that some companies have a business model that traps customers into staying longer than they had planned.
As a result, customers wind up paying millions of dollars in costs for a service that they were just trying out, the act’s sponsors added.
Therefore, one of the requirements of the act provides that the method of canceling the subscription be the same method that was used to subscribe to it. Something like an “End Free Trial” button.
The act would also require that those using a free trial be notified before the time period runs out, so as to afford an opportunity to end the trial, rather than seeing it roll over to a monthly credit-card charge.
Also prohibited: Automatic transfer from a free trial to a contract longer than one month. A free-trial user would need to give explicit consent before such a transfer could be made.
“Free trials should benefit consumers, not trick them into endless payments for a product they don’t want. This bill would give customers who enter subscription trials a clear, easy way to cancel those subscriptions,” Kennedy said.
If what Kennedy said sounds like a bit of an echo from the past, that’s because it is. In February 2017, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., commented on a bill he introduced: “This bill gives power back to consumers by forcing companies to get their explicit permission before charging them, allowing consumers to cancel a service through a straightforward process, and ensuring companies are transparent about their cost and cancellation policies.”
Takano is one of the House sponsors of the current Unsubscribe Act.
Yes, the act has been rolling around Congress for a good while now. Although it seems like there could be agreement on giving “power back to consumers,” there seems to be little the current Congress can agree upon.
Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place.
Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.
