Everyone must have picked up their bank or credit card statement one day and looked at it: “Why am I still paying this?”. Sometimes people don’t even know what they are signing up for anymore. Thinking about problems like this, a group of American lawyers is developing a bill to automatically cancel subscriptions in the United States. The idea is to make consumers’ lives easier.

The bill, which has the participation of senators from both the Democratic and Republican parties, proposes that digital service contracts should not last more than one month, in addition to a clause that requires platforms to clearly notify when a free trial is about to end. In addition, the legislators intend to require that the process of canceling a product be as simple as the contracting process, avoiding those cases where companies offer you all the necessary support at the time of signing up, but create several challenges to end a contract.

Simplifying contracts

As an example of services that would be eliminated by the bill, the text cites companies that contract their services online, but can only be canceled by phone (something very common with telephone and pay TV companies in Brazil). If approved, the law on canceling subscriptions will prohibit these practices.

The Chamber of Deputies sanctioned, in May 2019, the Law 13.828 / 19 that according to the deputies, “seeks to put an end to the constant disrespect shown to consumers who waste time on phone calls trying to cancel their contracts”, and guarantees the possibility of canceling pay TV services in person or online.

In addition, the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) has a online ombudsman platform where consumers can file complaints to cancel both cable TV subscriptions and mobile phone operators. According to Anatel, when filing a complaint using this tool, operators will have a set period of time to resolve the complaint and may be penalized with a fine.

Penalties are taken so seriously that operators have dedicated departments for these matters and tend to resolve issues more quickly. Unfortunately, in the case of subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Spotify e other apps we still don't have any alternative other than the procon.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Engadget

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