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.

Telecommunications industry reform plz

Here's an actual source.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/08/12/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-launches-new-effort-to-crack-down-on-everyday-headaches-and-hassles-that-waste-americans-time-and-money/

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.

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.

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.

Stop muddling fucking unrelated laws together in the same bill!!! This is why good shit doesn't get passed.

Probably someone in the Whitehouse tried to cancel a gym membership and couldn't.

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.

At some point we might realise just how little power the greatest office on the planet actually has.

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.

Nevermind all that, where do I get me Crews Card™?

hey imagine if ALL this stuff were like this, and all the stuff our systems of organization did were stuff like this.

that would be pretty cool, right? like, no offensive wars, no weird syphilis shit, no trying to find the lethal dose of LSD my spiking random dudes' drinks.

just, like, being cool and making things better and building shit. wouldn't that be great?

Add shipping companies to this list, I shouldn't have to call the wrong number and get passed around for an hour just to talk to a person UPS

Maybe add to that "speaking to a real human" thing the provision that they be real humans who are actually empowered to address issues directly and immediately, instead of some call center where they keep you on hold for two hours before transferring you to someone who transfers you to someone else who hands the phone out the window to a passing town drunk who stumbles over to another call center where he chucks the phone through a random car window in the parking lot which just happens to belong to a manager just arriving at the office, who gives you a bunch of platitudes before telling you to mail a postcard with delivery tracking to a satellite office in the mountains from where it will be relayed on goatback to the bottom of a lake in a nearby fishing village.

Now do the USPS

Proposed but like… that means pretty much nothing right?

I'm getting a glide failed up grab this image but wanna see the picture ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I want custom debit cards again...