It’s long overdue. Seems like a common sense thing but it’s different than the typical type of legislation so it seems unexpected.
My mom told me about her bank “it’s impossible to get anyone on the phone anymore” and I didn’t believe it. I tried myself and wow, she was right. The fraud department, sure . Just basic customer service, though, they’d take you in circles with their robot phone menu, make you repeatedly verify your information, then just hang up on you. Pretty wild that’s how a major bank can get away with treating their customers.
Major bank is probably the problem. I’ve never had issues contacting a live person at our credit union, nor with any customer service at all, from resolving card issues to working with us to make a loan doable.
Credit Unions are one of the easiest examples of how socialism works in the best interest of the general public. There is a reason that they provide great customer service, and it is because they are not run by malicious capitalists.
A credit union is a financial cooperative, owned and controlled by the people who use its services. Credit unions call their owners “members.” That means that all of the money they make goes back to you, the members. It’s your money to begin with, and it’s pooled with the resources of all other credit union members.
Credit unions don’t have any outside stockholders. As non-profit organizations, credit unions are exempt from certain tax requirements. All of the money that’s deposited in accounts, all of the interest collected on our loans, every dollar that comes into a credit union stays with the credit union. That money is used to keep loan rates low and savings rates of return high.
Crazy idea, but imagine if we took that idea and expanded it to other public services.
I know, madness. Never mind.
It is absolutely ridiculous that we have cooperatives in many sectors that have all shown to be effective and it is all overshadowed by shitty capitalists like Musk. Although I don’t exclusively shop at coops and employee owned businesses, the ones I do shop at have the best customer service and are not more expensive than comparable businesses.
Damn commies.
/s
that’s called syndicalism. not only is it communism, it’s strongly associated with(spooky sound effects) anarchism. I’m sorry, you’ll have to be shot for suggesting it.
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Same. I had terrible issues with BoA, Chase, and Capital One but since switching to a local credit union I’ve been really happy with my service.
I’d like to see the wording before forming an opinion. I think it’s an awesome idea on the face of it. However, I would hate for it to kill off the CLI button a lot of credit card companies have put out. That’s exactly the kind of thing a bad actor would put in to either kill it off or make it suck so that they could point and say “See, the Dems suck and hate you!”
CLI button?
Credit Limit Increase
I definitely have problems contacting a live person with my credit union. Nobody answers their phone anymore and unless you are living nearby to go to the branch you aint getting service.
Credit unions are great. I spent the last several years traveling often, though, and needed a bank that had branches in whatever state I would be in for a while so I had to go with a regular national bank.
Major bank is always the problem, but small bank always bought out by major bank. 😓
It’s long overdue.
It’s not “business friendly” so it’ll be DOA in Congress.
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Dems won’t fight for it, because there’s no donor money coming in as a reward for passage.
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Republicans will fight it aggressively, because they’ve got an enormous financial incentive to be seen as on the side of these corrupt business interests.
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State and municipal governments will claim they don’t have jurisdiction to set these rules locally, so we’ll never see a localized attempt to implement these rules and prove them out as useful.
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Any compromise that does squeak through will die in the courts. Judges will throw up injunctions and gut the language, because they see a path forward in their careers by siding with big business.
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Customers getting exploited by these laws will remain more fixated on immigration and foreign wars and abortion and national debts as hot-button issues, because the candidates in their districts simply won’t talk about this part of the platform.
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YouTubers, AM Radio shock jocks, and other shill influencers will make up elaborate conspiracy theories about why the rule is bad, because that’s what they’re paid to tell people.
Its the same fucking game every time.
Pretty wild that’s how a major bank can get away with treating their customers.
None dare say the words “Break up the monopolies”
I was in the Investment Banking Industry during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath and paid a lot of attention to what was done in the places with the largest Financial Industry companies (which most definitely includes the US) and the Democrats (at a time Obama was POTUS) were almost as much to given large Financial Institutions whatever they wanted with no restructuring and no conditions, as the Republicans.
Further, remember how Hilary Clinton suffered when running against Trump because just before starting her campaign she was personally paid half a million dollars to go give a speech to a bunch of Goldman Sach’s types.
(Interestingly, after his unconditional rescue and support for the Finance Industry, Obama too made a lot of money giving speeches to these types).
Even more, remember that the 2008 Crash was the result of Bill Clinton repealing the Glass-Steagal that kept Investment Banking separate from Retail Banking (and the consolidation you can see in that chart would not have been possible without it, since all of those you see above joining are Investment Banks that merged or bough Retail Banks or are Retail Banks that opened Investment Banking divisions).
The Democrats might be less prone to Fascism (though Biden’s undying love and military support for Genocidal ethno-Fascists shows it’s hardly a line they won’t cross so long the Fascism happens abroad) and indulging in Ultra-Conservative Moral Proms, but very few of them are there representing “The People” rather than representing those who can afford to buy them with non-executive board memberships, gold-plated consulting positions and millionaire speech circuit gigs.
If everyone was this pessimistic, nothing would ever happen.
This legislation will be popular enough that it might be political suicide to be against it. If it’s not poison pilled I bet it passes.
Just another reason to use a member-owned credit union.
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Here’s a tip: you can go to a branch and have someone there dial the number for you. They have a special line for some problems with lower wait times. Plus, if they have to dial the normal line they know that exact buttons to press to get a person.
Bonus tip: you can use that visit to withdraw all your money and close your accounts, then take it to a credit union.
If I was already at the branch I can just ask them to take care of whatever. The only people you really need to talk to on the phone at that point might be the fraud department.
Having worked for a major bank before in one of their customer service departments, I would typically get the brunt of it from people who had to navigate that labyrinth, it was sometimes just as easy for workers to get lost on the inside as people on the outside. Sometimes I thought it was just all poorly planned out and not necessarily out of any ill intent, but other times it seems like the whole thing was just designed that way to get people to quit trying. Sometimes we would go through with the customers through the whole dumb system ourselves just to make sure they were getting to the right place, but still run into all sorts of road blocks or find out later from the account notes that wherever we got them to still couldn’t help them. And it doesn’t help when customer service reps are being graded by their time on the phone, staying on a call longer than whatever the designated cycle time counts against customer service reps, so the motivation is to get people off your phone as quickly as possible.
My impression is they are trying to reduce the number of calls that make it through to a person, since phone support is famously quite expensive to provide.
Gyms are ridiculous with their requirements to quit. When my Dad was alive, I needed to cancel his gym membership because he could barely walk and it just wasn’t necessary anymore. They required that he show up in person to cancel the membership. So I had to get my Dad out there in a wheelchair or walker or whatever we were using at the time just to cancel something that we should’ve been able to cancel over the phone.
Lucky you got to it while he was still alive. They probably would have still enforced this policy if he had died and not yet canceled.
I can’t think of anything that would get them to end the policy faster than the manager having to deal with someone dragging a corpse in there.
Or bring with you an urn, wether the victim is dead or not.
It was grandpa’s final wish to terminate this gym membership. He also wanted his ashes spread in the sauna.
“I will magnanimously cancel your pop pop membership and I’m happy to enroll your dog and you for our ash scattering program. The first hour is free and you can cancel anytime you want after only 45 years, even if Floofy dies, you can keep his membership as a souvenir. You’re welcome 🤗!”
Telecommunications industry reform plz
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There would be nothing to print since many of these laws are squashed with the automatic filibuster threat and the general US system built on obstruction so they never make it to a vote.
The majority of laws that end up getting passed are either because horrible people are angry enough to stick with it or it sounds like a positive thing, but is bad enough to get the horrible votes (Patriot Act).
What I want to see them tackle is automatic renewals for subscriptions. It should be the law that when you sign up for a subscription service, you have to opt in if you want automatic renewal. What every service does is make you sign up for automatic renewal, and then you have to remember to cancel. And even though most sites will extend your subscription to the date you’ve paid thru so you can go cancel right away, that’s never stated clearly on their site.
I like what they recently did with the phone contracts here in Germany. The initial contract is 2 years and still renews automatically but you can cancel monthly after those 2 years.
Automatic renewal is fine if it’s not automatically renewed for a whole year or more imho as it’s usually just convenient
We have this in the Netherlands for almost all subscription products, except it is a initial contract period, (max 2 years )and then it becomes 30 day… not even month to month.
Exceptions are specific to insurance products and some other things but even most of these orgs now just go with 30 days after the initial contract.
And contracts must be able to be cancelled the same way it was started.
And even though most sites will extend your subscription to the date you’ve paid thru
Not doing that is fraud/theft. It’s fine for free trials because the customer didn’t pay anything.
I found out the hard way that Hulu ends your subscription immediately.
Edit: I was remembering a free trial, not paid subscription.
Is that even legal in the States? Or do you at least get a partial refund for the remainder of the month?
That’s not even true, it shows clearly on their website that is not the case
https://help.hulu.com/article/hulu-cancel-hulu-subscription
This was a couple years ago and it was a trial of the Hulu no ads plan. According to This help page they don’t even offer trials of the no ads plan anymore. The page you referenced also states that the Hulu + live TV trial ends immediately upon cancelation.
Still, your original comment was a bit misleading then. Ending something that wasn’t paid for immediately upon cancellation is OK in my book. Not great, but not bad, either.
They should standardize a system where your card issuer can send a simple API call to cancel a subscription.
Log into your bank/card’s website, see a list of your subscriptions, click cancel on one and it tells the company to stop charging you instantly.
I feel like with all the money our card issuers are making, they could very easily make better quality-of-life features, but they choose not to.
Of course, that feature would reduce their total fees, but even a feature like getting a digital copy of your receipt sent along with your payment would be amazing. Not by email, but just on your card statement.
Meanwhile, many major banks are still running 1970s computers and code in Fortran in the background, because replacing anything would cost money.
Well it’s also because it works. And new code might crash the entire banking system.
Well quite, but that also explains why they’re so reluctant to offer any new features until they’ve been completely overtaken by newer fintech outfits and are noticeably losing customers.
Better law: almost nothing can be a subscription.
Printer ink should not be subscription. You should just be able to buy ink. Shows and movies should not be subscription. You should just be able to pay for what you want. Internet service should not be a subscription. You should just pay for your usage.
There’s an incredibly small number of things that benefit the consumer by being subscription. Subscriptions are to benefit the seller and usually by trying to offer as little product as possible for as much money as possible.
slight disagree on internet, usage based pricing does work for a fair amount of people, but there should also be price tiers for guaranteed speed and latency without having to resort to business plans. For example, if the ISP advertises 1gbps, they should be held to a standard of say 800mbps for at least 3 9’s reliability, and/or ping within some deviation based on your distance to the local hub.
internet should be a free public service, and if we’re going to have a government, they should be running it. the one major disadvantage of that is that they would absolutely spy on you, which the corporations freely let them do anyway, but charge us out the ass for. fuck them.
and if you want to keep the corpos (why?) it’s not even about speed: the only costs of internet access are initial infra, backbone licensing, and maintenance. none of those are super use dependent; the parts are not mechanical, and do not wear much faster with increased throughput.
Ya know honestly I’d be happy if they had to guarantee only 10% of what they advertised as the “up to” speed. In the afternoon, I’m only getting 0.1-0.5 mbit/s upload on my Gbit plan. It’s infuriating to wait 3 minutes for a teams message to send
Shows and movies should not be subscription
In addition to the other complaint about internet services, which I agree with. This also makes little sense. Cable was essentially a subscription service to media. Media should not be locked to a service, it should be freely available to buy yourself or stream providers to license for their services and compete for price. There shouldn’t be media silos where content producers also act as sole distributors.
election year
Nope.
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The President isn’t running for reelection
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The Biden Administration has been going after junk fees, anti consumer practices (e.g. refunds being issued as vouchers instead of cash), and dark patterns for its entire term.
The junk fees and other anti-consumer practices was something Biden was pushing for while VP too. The big one, at the time, being that charges have to hit an account in chronological order so that banks can’t re-arrange the order of charges to maximize over draft fees.
The President isn’t running for reelection
I wouldn’t necessarily count that out, since Biden still has an interest in boosting Kamala Harris’ chances.
Just because he isn’t running does not mean he doesn’t care.
So we agree; he’s doing this because he cares.
These regulations could have been done years ago. So I think it’s pretty clear what exactly he cares about here.
That’s some weak shit, do better.
It’s almost like you can’t get everything you want all at once.
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Probably someone in the Whitehouse tried to cancel a gym membership and couldn’t.
Good. Ok with them getting pissed off at the bullshit us commeners deal with. Do cable company cancelations next.
I wish they were still making videos
They are, they rebranded from college humor to Dropout.
Stop muddling fucking unrelated laws together in the same bill!!! This is why good shit doesn’t get passed.
These aren’t actually bills. The press release in question is documenting Rules that the mentioned agencies are proposing adding to the CFR, which is controlled by the executive branch (although Congress does have some oversight/ability to veto that has grown recently due to Conservatives wanting to curtail the ability of a Democratic executive to improve people’s lives without negotiating through a Republican controlled filibuster) and separate from the US that is the set of laws controlled by the legislative branch. And these are separate rules within the CFR, probably not related to each other at all except for both being mentioned in the same press release.
And coincidentally those minor improvements are only proposed a second before the election. Probably will never come through. Then you vote and then come another 4 years of tax cuts for the rich and money transfers to israel and the military.
We call this system a democracy, because you see, the power lies in the hands of the people. The power to tick a meaningless box that is.
You can’t take the politics out of politics. Of course the timing is suspect, and on average efforts to make changes like this don’t succeed. But occasionally they do, and now is a good time to start talking about them. Forcing Republicans to take stances on things before November is an excellent idea, because the Republican party itself is in the process of crumbling, and depending on the outcome of the election, there is a chance to pass legislation on various issues that would make life better for the average American.
As you point out, the whole process is totally messed up, politics is so dirty, large corporations and the ultra wealthy are so powerful. But on occasion we do see positive change, so we shouldn’t write it off as impossible or meaningless.
My asshole is bleeding only 22 out of 24 hours. I should be glad they didn’t fuck me more.
I got two hours to spare, thats if you’re down.
elections are not politics. they are a symbol that signifies absence. the big ones at least.
At some point we might realise just how little power the greatest office on the planet actually has.
They have power, they just don’t use it in a way you want them to. They serve the oligarchs not you.
But the people do have the power to elect someone who is wlling to make change, bernie for example. Most people just dont vote for their best interest.
The people did vote for Bernie in the 2020 primaries, then the Democratic Party said they knew better than us and made Clinton the nominee anyways. And oopsy the two party system means you don’t get to vote for someone who represents you, just for the person who is slightly less evil.
I wish range voting can be implemented somewhere so people see its power
That’s not what happened. People voted… for Hillary. She won the popular vote, that’s not the controversy. I mean it’s the made up controversy that people buy into. What happened as far as them playing kingmaker was that they put party support behind a candidate before the votes had been made. They nudged people to vote for her instead of being unbiased. They did vote for her though. She would have won without the super delegates, but people like to complain about bad things even when they aren’t what caused the bad outcome. I also think you mean 2016? Biden had the votes by a larger margin in 2020.
lol no we don’t. not through electoralism alone, anyway. they need to be AFRAID to offer a compromise candidate like FDR. like, ‘the russian revolution just happened and those circumstances are happening here oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I do not want to die in a coal mine and the coal miners ARE ALREADY FIGHTING THE ARMY AIR CORPS shit shit shit shit shit’ afraid
One time I had to cancel my gym membership because I was moving. I called and called. It took days for the gym to pick up. Literally could not get a hold of anyone. Until finally I got someone a week later on the phone which I was told I would have to come into the gym to cancel. So I show up at the gym at some later date. And wait… And wait… Like, it was a scheduled appointment. It wasn’t a surprise. And I was on my lunch break from work so I’m rushing as well. Finally after waiting for my entire lunch break in front of the gym office. A guy comes in and is like “oh you hear to cancel?” No shit bro. I’m the guy who called you to talk to you about the cancellation. FINALLY I was able to cancel my membership. Turns out the person that managed the place died of COVID. So nobody was actually managing the gym.
Fuck gym memberships. I’m still a little mad about it. Why the hell do you have to jump through so many god damn hoops to cancel a service? It took me 3 weeks to cancel the service.
What’s strange is that the abuse has been ongoing for more than a decade and the US this kind of measure is still in the “we’re proposing to do this” stage.
