Canceling a subscription should be easy, Democratic lawmakers insisted Wednesday, introducing a bill to revive the Federal Trade Commission's so-called "Click-to-Cancel" rule.
The FTC hoped to enforce the rule due to "increasing reports of consumers losing time and money from intentionally difficult subscription cancellation processes," lawmakers said. But cable companies sued to block the FTC rule last year, arguing that the FTC failed to conduct an economic impact study before making it easier to cancel over a billion paid subscriptions in the US.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court nullified the rule, agreeing with an administrative law judge that the FTC skipped a regulatory analysis required to pass the rule since compliance costs would exceed $100 million. That study would have included cost-benefit analyses of alternatives to the rule, in addition to gauging the rule's effectiveness in comparison to those alternatives.
