Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC's click-to-cancel rule
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
If the FTC got nothing done but this and it stood up in court it’d be a huge win for society.
I remember the relentless and annoying and capricious and arcane process I had to go through to cancel Comcast for my elderly mother.
Gyms do this, too! Super easy to sign up almost impossible to cancel.
Just scraping a bit of money out of each transaction, no doubt.
When you want to cancel, tell them you are moving to Canada and have to cancel. they stop trying to sell you on keeping the service. Settle up and cancel your Virtual CC.
No virtual CC or similar tricks: the companies get the money from your account and you never see the bills .
One major point which may not exist in the US is that you have a button on your bank web site which you click to suspend or delete the DD authorization. From there on the bank will refuse to pay and the discussion is between you and the company.
When I want yo cancel something it is either straightforward on their site, or I send an email requesting the account to be removed and block DD
Anyone with knowledge who can expand this or explain what exactly is "arbitrary", "capricious" or "abuse of discretion"?
As far as I can tell, the best argument the cable companies have is "a consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options" but that feels contrived at best. Anyone have any better arguments against the new FTC rule?
That way consumers will understand the consequences of signing up and cancelling.
The obviously ideal case for the cable companies is "easy to signup - borderline impossible to cancel", as that'd lead to the highest short-term profits.
(I had nothing to do with it!)
> Additionally, the FTC has rulemaking power to address concerns regarding industry-wide practices. Rules promulgated under this authority are known as Trade Rules.
But of course, that specific sentence is labeled "citation needed" so can't really dig deeper there. But taking it at face-value, isn't that one of the points of the FTC at least today, that they can setup these "Trade Rules"?
In part. They’re also claiming the Commission didn’t consider some material facts. (What they are is so far unstated.)
When the criminal says "hey, that's not fair, the legislature didn't make this thing illegal that should be illegal"... well, let's pass it as a law. Anyone not a criminal should be on board with that, including the complainants.
Make no mistake. This is fraud by any sane standard, fraud of the criminal sort. These companies should be fined tens of billions of dollars, if not more. Those who cannot afford such fines (Planet Fitness, etc), should be bankrupted, their assets sold at auction, and their executives and directors prohibited from ever holding such jobs again. Make the shareholders of these companies destitute.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose new laws and rules than your own guilt.
No reason to oppose such a one as I hinted at. Other than your own guilt.
A service has all your source code. Click to cancel is super easy. Privacy laws mean that data must be destroyed almost instantly. You accidentally click and POOF all your stuff is gone. So... to avoid that the service implements something like github - now you have to enter details of the repo, maybe 2fa in because security, and so on. An overzealous Lina Khan type now comes after a service doing the right thing making it hard to shoot yourself in the foot.
every new rule has lots of cases like this. At any given point a good number of the agency heads are ambitious folks trying to build a career of note, not actually protect society.
There is a good reason why Harris doesn't use the FTC (under Lina Kahn) to gain political capital. This is the sort of stuff that actually matters, so naturally barely anyone ever talks about it.
A class action lawsuit could likely work. This doesn't need to be a rule per se. These companies are behaving poorly and it should cost them billions - but we don't need to create red tape every time this happens.
Much better to maintain the status quo. Wouldn’t want to upset a corpo now would we?
If you follow SCOTUS opinions, like half of them are about these words. That isn’t an answer so much as an admission that the APA is one of the more jargon-heavy areas of law. Importantly, however: these standards are not overturned by the junking of Chevron deterrence.
Arbitrary-and-capricious focuses “on the process of decision-making rather than the outcome itself. Courts applying this standard do not substitute their judgment for that of the agency but instead examine whether the agency’s decision-making process was rational and based on consideration of relevant factors” [1]. Courts will look at if the agency “relied on factors that Congress did not intend it to consider…failed to consider an important aspect of the problem,” or “offered an explanation that runs counter to the evidence before the agency.” So if an agency doesn’t consider reasonable alternatives to its rule or doesn’t provide evidence for each step in its thinking, its rule can be struck down [2].
Note that these concepts trace from judicial standards, i.e. appellate courts will overturn lower courts if they acted arbitrarily, capriciously or abused their discretion. If a lower court “does not apply the correct law or rests its decision on a clearly erroneous finding of a material fact.…rules in an irrational manner” or “makes an error of law,” its ruling can be overturned on the basis of abuse of discretion [3]. So if an agency facing a statute of limitations gets stonewalled by a defendant running out the clock, and a court dismisses (versus stays) the case on the basis of the statute of limitations having run out, that is abuse of discretion [4].
[1] https://attorneys.media/arbitrary-capricious-legal-standard-...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicles_Manufacturers....
[3] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/uploads/guides/stand_...
[4] https://casetext.com/case/pension-ben-guar-v-carter-tillery-...
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/lina-khan-vs-planet-fitne...
And, if a judge does rule that this change did not follow the law, then no matter how much you like it, it's far better that legal requirements get met than to weaken them over something like this.
It's a reference to a specific level of evidentiary standard that the Act prescribes. Basically, the APA is generally deferential to the agencies deciding how to implement regulations, so challengers have to demonstrate that the implementation in question represents an unreasonable abuse of power.
What it really boils down to, though, is that they're complaining that the FTC didn't make a strong enough case that the burdens this rule imposes on service providers are proportional to the consumer protection benefit.
It's good that these cases happen. The agencies should be kept in check, they can't just make stuff up as they go. There is a reasonable position that some folks take - that the agencies were never intended to have such broad powers and have vastly overstepped their bounds.
Not one person fighting this is a surprise
That is for whatever reason they have for not wanting to do it. Except, maybe for not doing it for publicity reasons and exploiting that fact with a large campaign.
No, only the ones who suck. I don't mean this in a jokey way. If I'm UpstartISP, Inc. and I believe that my product is actually better than Comcast offers, I want people to be able to cancel services without being jerked around, waiting on hold, and hassled, so that they can sign up with me.
It's only companies that know they suck, and that their whole business is full of scams and deception, that want this. Yes, that's entire major industries, such as the "home security" lobbying group and cablecos mentioned in the article. As well as gym memberships.
Sooner or later, some SeniorLeader inside UpstartISP, whose bonus is driven by profit or loss, will do the math and note that making it harder to cancel will cause quarterly profits to increase by 0.N%, and then the company will surely make the change. The tendency for all companies to profit-maximize guarantees it.
Which is why they should be restricted from engaging in any easily-definable instances of that behavior (ideally by actual legislation instead of this silly executive branch stuff).
Banning the mature, craven companies from building moats of anticompetitive, anti-consumer behavior is a way to help the next generation of new entrants to either kill them or to force them to compete, either of which is a win for consumers and better startups trying to dethrone them.
Companies need people empowered to say "that will probably increase short-term profits, and damage our reputation in the long term, so no, we're not doing it; we're in this for the long haul".
A really good example is https://www.verizon.com/plans/free-trial/ I was testing between verizon and mint for my physical location. For whatever reason, VZ was underperforming, so when the trial expired, I left a happy temporary customer. I have since recommended it to others, knowing that they aren't going to get locked in.
Being able to cancel actually make more happy customers, not less. It is only the enshitified mba run companies that trap customers that exhibit the parasitic practice of trapping customers into long contracts, confusing bills and impossible to cancel w/o burning your payment account number.
I actually would sign up for the local gym that just went under in my neighborhood, but I knew I would never be able to cancel, so I skipped it.
There's what, like 10k hours in a year, half a million hours in a lifetime? So rather than "make it easy to cancel" laws what we really need is some general recognition of the fact that deliberately stealing 1 hour of time from half a million people is roughly equivalent to murdering 1 person. Everyone knows that class actions for a $2 dollar check are a joke. If your business is practically essential so that you're basically guaranteed customers, and your business practices deliberately add friction that cost people time+money, then you're guilty of violence as well as theft.
Agreed!
But it's typical of big industry groups to try to block any kind of regulatory- or legislative action that inhibits them from doing what they want.
Not only would many people in the US be against this on principle ("the feds should stop meddling", "the free market will sort it out"), but the companies in question would invest lots of money into propaganda that many, many people would fall for.
These people would be against maintaining their own lives if the Dems were for it.
Case in point: you're using it here to describe people who are not particularly wise to propaganda, which has nothing to do with the word at all. You're probably referring to social conservatives, but it's always hard to tell if comments like these are meant to be a strawman on purpose or not.
It goes from big issues, like cannabis, reproductive rights, gun control, all the way down to common sense consumer protections like this. That's why I'm weary about about politicians who thump "states' rights" & "self determination", but never seem to put forward any big ticket ballot propositions.
A lot of people seem to forget but the maximum amount of democracy isn't the best. Mob rule is not a good system of government.
When did Mitch McConnell say “the American people should decide,” aka the “mob”? When he wanted to block a SCOTUS appointment for almost a year. Suddenly the mob was wrong when the shoe was on the other foot and the window of time was barely over a month.
Good faith “mob rule” arguments are rare. It’s mostly just an easy appeal to shut down otherwise valid arguments.
Secondly, the electoral college does not give the GOP disproportionate political power. That's a misunderstanding of how it works.
As to your second point, see: the senate. Democrats have 1 more seat which basically translates to 52% of the country to the GOP’s 48%, yet they actually represent 36% more of the country (204mill vs. 150mill) than Republicans do when looking at the populations they represent. It doesn’t have to be one-to-one, but surely you can see that the difference here is striking? This is a consequence of all states getting the exact same number of senators.
So which are you talking about exactly? Maybe you're just quoting things you heard by rumor?
But seeing as you changed the argument to the Senate, I'll respond to that.
The Senate was never and is not supposed to be representative of the population. It's supposed to be representative of the states. This is a good thing to keep. That's also why things like Governors being able to simply pick replacement senators without having an election is allowed.
Until the most recent census was finished and electoral map updated (which has been years of work due to unpacking the census plus several states fighting over redistricting) the democrats had to overcome an ~5pt disadvantage to even begin winning due to how the maps are drawn and the FPTP system. Republicans had a distinct advantage which is now a smaller advantage (~1.3-1.7 IIRC). Still, if I was running for president I’d rather be on the side that starts with the weight slightly in their favor. Especially given the razor thin margins elections are seeing now.
You can’t lose the popular vote and win the presidency that many times without raising eyebrows. They clearly have electoral and other structural advantages that are well documented at this point. They have won the popular vote I believe 1 time in the last 8 elections. They haven’t won it since 2004. I guarantee you they’ll lose it again this year no matter the electoral outcome. No one even debates it anymore in predicting the outcome, it’s just assumed.
The demcorats consistently govern/represent far more Americans and have to overcome an electoral college disadvantage that is now just a slight disadvantage. We can argue all day about whether or not you agree that’s how things should be, but the math is clear here. There really isn’t a whole lot to debate.
Gerrymandering can absolutely causes biases, but gerrymandering is performed by both sides.
Saying it's "consistent" when we're only talking about the past 20 years I think is a bit much.
FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions
Cancelling the service was easy.
Cancelling the recurring payments has turned out to be an entirely different matter.
That’s literally the fucking point.
I'd love to have a convenient way to transfer a phonecall to a message playing on loop, continuously without gaps for the other end to respond. e.g. "take me off your spam list immediately".
Translation: "WTF, how dare you suggest that we have to stop deceiving and ripping off our customers? We aren't prepared to do business honestly! This is an outrage!"
Note: California has this same type of law scheduled to go into effect in July. Can't wait!
As near as I can tell, that's the real rub here - this is not a law,, nor was it directly enacted by legislation. It's a regulation written independent of lawmakers, and the question is whether the FTC has the authority to write this specific set of regulations.
I'm hoping the cable companies lose but we should be aware of the consequences of allowing uncheck regulatory rule making outside the scope of congress.
Edit: I know in general it's the left who "likes to regulate things" but a relevant example on the right would include regulating things like immigration.
IMO that problem can be traced back to issues like:
1. The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which prevented adding more Representatives as population grew.
2. The game-theoretic outcomes of continuing to use plurality/first-past-the-post voting.
3. How most officeholders end up spending most of their time raising money for re-election rather than the job itself.
With a magic wand I’d massively increase both the house and senate, publicly fund elections, and switch to 3 member mixed districts to increase the chances every citizen of a district has someone they feel reasonably represents their major views.
I’m not saying it’s worse than what we have now, I’m actually more curious how the people who would like to see that reform would want it to look in practice so I can know whether I could support it and how I’d argue for it.
When I’ve pictured this it’s with member counts in the low to mid thousands, not tens of thousands.
Floor debates are already mainly performative, with little bearing on changes to bills. All the real work happens in committee and by the Speaker’s office. I’d think about embracing this with more different caucuses of various members who come together on specific issues and bring versions of bills and amendments for committees to adopt or reject, maybe even a few levels of committees to build consensus slowly so the final floor vote is more formality than debate.
Here's the Congressional passed statutes regarding the FTC [1].
In particular note that 15 U.S.C 41-58 includes that the FTC "is empowered... to .. prescribe rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive, and establishing requirements designed to prevent such acts or practices" among many other similar things.
The phrase "unfair or deceptive" occurs 56 times in the FTC charter. Go read it.
> The FTC's highly prescriptive proposal requiring numerous disclosures, multiple consents and specific cancellation mechanisms is a particularly poor fit for our industry. Our members offer services in a variety of custom bundles. They're provided over a wide range of devices and platforms. Consumers, for example, frequently subscribe to a triple play bundle that includes cable, broadband and voice services. They may face difficulty and unintended consequences if they want to cancel only one service in the package.
> The proposed simple click-to-cancel mechanism may not be so simple when such practices are involved. A consumer may easily misunderstand the consequences of canceling and it may be imperative that they learn about better options. For example, canceling part of a discounted bundle may increase the price for remaining services. When canceling phone service, a consumer needs to understand they will lose 9-1-1 or lifeline services as well. Especially important, low-income consumers could be deprived of lower-cost plans and special government programs that would allow their families to keep broadband service.
I mean, except for the 9-1-1 point, I guess I feel like all of those policies -- the bundling in particular -- should ALSO be disallowed.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/ftc-negative-op...
>"All wireless phones, even those that are not subscribed to or supported by a specific carrier, can call 911. However, calls to 911 on phones without active service do not deliver the caller’s location to the 911 call center, and the call center cannot call these phones back to find out the caller’s location or the nature of the emergency. If disconnected, the 911 center has no way to call back the caller."
Source: https://www.911.gov/calling-911/frequently-asked-questions/
Seems they're deliberately distorting their responsibilities.
Requiring carriers to enable whatever side-channel is necessary to transmit location info to the 911 PSAP shouldn't be a heavy lift.
The callback issue seems harder to resolve, but even if a handset has no assigned phone number, there are other ways to address it (e.g. IMEI). Carriers should be required to build in a capability to make this work.
Carriers can and they should.
> The callback issue seems harder to resolve, but even if a handset has no assigned phone number, there are other ways to address it (e.g. IMEI). Carriers should be required to build in a capability to make this work.
Carriers can't, because the 3GPP standards do not make this possible.
These are spurious objections. They're grasping.
"Customers may not know what they are signing up for or may only want to sign up for one service rather than the bundle"
But of course, they only feel the canceling part would be bad, not the signing up part (which is also ridden with dark patterns and deception to fool customers).
[0] https://www.axios.com/2024/08/21/disney-plus-court-case-arbi...
The Federal court system is divided into circuits [1]. Circuits are further divided into districts (eg Eastern District of Texas). In sparsely populated, large areas there districts may be further subdivided into divisions. The idea is you shouldn't need to drive 6 hours to get to a Federal judge.
Each district has an Appeals Court that sits above the District Court so that's what "Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals" means. Above all the circuit appeals courts sits the Supreme Court. Additionally, each circuit has a single Supreme Court judge who is available to hear emergency motions from appeals court rulings. That judge can rule on the motion or refer the matter to the entire Supreme Court.
Judges reflect the politics of the state they're in because of the blue slip system [2]. Presidents nominate judges to Federal courts. A Senator from that judge's state by tradition (ie there's no law for this) essentially can veto that nomination.
Federal district court judges have the power to make rulings and issue injunctions that affect the entire country.
So in Texas we have a perfect storm for judge shopping and a forum to push conservative views through lawsuits. Texas is a large state so the districts are divided into divisions. A division might only have 1-2 Federal district court judges. So if you nominally establish a business in Amarillo, TX you know with a high degree of certainty what judge you'll get when you file a lawsuit. With certain questionable tactics, you can know pretty much 100% what judge you "randomly" get assigned.
This is called "judge shopping".
It's why all the patent cases are litigated in the Eastern District of Texas. It's why any anti-abortion lawsuit always ends up in front of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk [3] in the Northern District of Texas (eg [4]).
So the Fifth Circuit is conservative because Texas, Alabama and Louisiana are conservative. Conservative judges are usually viewed as more friendly to lawsuits attacking any sort of government regulation. Even if the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn't rule in favor of the cable companies, the matter will go straight to the Supreme Court. This current Supreme Court has shown themselves highly likely to take up the case and intervene, probably in favor of cable companies.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judicial...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_slip_(U.S._Senate)
[3]: https://www.txnd.uscourts.gov/judge/judge-matthew-kacsmaryk
[4]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1159220452/abortion-pill-drug...
Whenever people bring up "states rights" with objectively false claims, one needs to consider the history of such a claim. It was most prominent in the Secession Crisis and the obvious follow up question is "states rights to do what?" because the answer is "to own people as property".
Google is free.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_judiciary_of_the_Unite...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/art...
Your ideology is leaking.
(There are different playbooks for passing laws that curtail personal rights, by arguing to do it at both the state and federal level, or removing federal prohibitions on something and then enacting it on a state by state basis while trying to pass the reverse at the federal level.)
Yes, it was. The Founding Fathers created this system.
Simply use google instead of making up claims.
ExTwitter's new ToS require cases to be held in their jurisdiction, in Northern Texas, which has particularly wild people.
This is absurd court shopping/forum shopping & this court is slated to unmake a huge huge huge part of the USA. The Supreme Court has chastised them numberous times, but they are going to undo so so much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
Folks have been similarly complaining about the Ninth for some time, which has its rulings reversed about as often as the Fifth’s [1].
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/SCOTUS_case_reversal_rates_(2007_-_P...
"But both sides do it," they say?
No worries. There's no particular harm in destroying both.
That’s only the recent term.
Scroll down to the first vertical bar graph. Sixth is reversed over 80% of the time, Ninth right behind it. Fifth, Eighth and the State Courts comprise the second cohort in the 70-ish percent range. Note that these are conditional probabilities; we’re observing cases SCOTUS took on.
I'm also not sure why reversals are the metric we are going off of here to decide if a court is partisan/legislating from the bench. You're asserting that as if it's self-evident.
That said, I agree this isnt a contest. "whataboutism" is only useful insofar as it demonstrates that this is not a phenomenon exclusive to either the 5th OR 9th circuits. Having sent that topic to bed, the question is what (if anything) reversals mean.
To me, they simply mean that the courts are in disagreement with the SCOTUS. Circuits have different opinions, just as the supreme justices have different opinions.
I dont think it is unreasonable the presume that the SCOTUS legal philosophy falls between that of the most liberal circuit and most conservative circuits. This is not in of itself unexpected or a condemnation. If every court was in perfect harmony, we wouldn't even need the appeals process.
One can ask if the legal opinions held by the 5th or 9th courts pass the red face credibility test, but I agree reversals alone wont tell you that. you would have to get into the weeds.
I'm also not sure why reversals are the metric we are going off of here to decide if a court is partisan/legislating from the bench. You're asserting that as if it's self-evident.
That a conservative court overturns the 5th as often as it overturns the 9th is in itself telling.
When we talk about Google or Microsoft or whoever doing something shady/unwanted, do we have to list every other major company that also engages in bad behavior? Am I obligated to list every single appellate court with issues or am I allowed to focus on the one we are talking about right now?
Chevron flew right past people's heads, didn't it.
That's why people keep looking to the courts. Congress can't even pass the most fundamental law -- appropriations to keep the government open -- in a timely manner. Everybody is well aware that Congress is incapable of passing any law more pertinent than renaming a post office.
Unfortunately, that's the result of everybody's individual Congressperson doing exactly what they're sent to do. Which is: stop the opposing party's legislators from accomplishing anything.
Pick any mainstream rag and I will show you an op-ed that blames the courts. Pick any popular internet social and I will show you the same.
I'm not saying the courts aren't activist or partisan mind you, but the problem starts with bad laws made by bad lawmakers.
The American legislative system is bizarre.
To begin with, Congress is accorded very little power by the constitution, with most of it resting with "We the people" or the states.
This however, doesn't pattern match with the amount of power some people (typically progressives) _think_ the Congress or government _ought_ to have, or the amount of power Congress _wants_ to have (as much as possible), so we see BS things like the abuse of the Commerce Clause loophole to justify any Congressional intervention.
Now, you'd think that with all this power that they have loopholed their way into, they would actually exercise it, but that doesn't actually happen, because they are permanently gridlocked and can't pass any damn shit unless it's part of a giant 1000-page omnibus bill that has 100 unrelated things clubbed together based on whatever horse-trading they manage to do one day before the govt shutdown deadline.
So what actually happens is that the actual rule-making is done by the executive, in the form of these government agencies, which ideally should be enforcing things that the Congress has passed, but effectively are given pseudo-legal power through a variety of judicial interpretations (eg. the Chevron Doctrine) that can be overturned by the next Supreme Court as trivially as they were written in.
All in all, you get a massively dysfunctional system where regulatory agencies act as effectively unelected lawmakers, with the actual lawmakers doing jackshit, and the judiciary effectively supporting these shenanigans through capricious rulings.
And while doing all this, lawmakers can conveniently ramp on the rhetoric during campaigning because they know they don't actually need to do anything. They didn't even pass abortion-related legislation for 50 whole years, because they could use that division to reap votes every election cycle.
It's a brilliant way to specify powers to a legislative body, essentially a nation-state equivalent of Linux's "don't break userspace" directive. In both cases objections can bubble up from the bottom to the top, with courts being the equivalent of a mailing list post, "Hey, this new code breaks my use case! Fucking change it back!"
In both cases one could argue about the implementation matching the aspirations of the concept. But to find the basic concept itself "bizarre" is to signal to the world that you don't understand one of the basic tenants of the constitution.
Second, I _do_ understand the basic tenets (not tenants, btw) of the constitution, that's why I was able to describe them in my comment.
What I am trying to point out is that the Constitution as written is at odds with what a lot of people want (eg. progressives want a more authoritative state, with vaccine mandates as an example), and since they can't change the constitution easily, we have developed a complex web of quasi-legal systems in order to loophole our way around the constitution.
The judiciary and legislature are complicit in this.
The Commerce Clause has been expanded to basically include everything under the Sun (something that should be bothering you if you understand the basic tenets and the spirit of the constitution), which means there is very little left that the Congress cannot legislate on. However, the Congress then actually legislates on very little, sticking itself in permanent gridlock, and actual policy effectively being created ex-nihilo by federal agencies, which should ideally have only been enforcing them.
This was done with the agreement of the courts, but remember they can as easily choose to disagree tomorrow.
Congress doesn't have universal power, but the power it is explicitly listed is actually a lot broader than you make it sound. Some particularly powerful grants of power include:
1. commerce clause gives power to "regulate commerce...among the several states". As always the wording is vague, but it can reasonably be interpreted to be VERY broad. And it generally has been interpreted broadly. Why does the government have the power to criminalize drugs? Because there's an interestate market for drugs, basically. If you can criminalize possesion of a substance under the commerce clause, you can sure as shit regulate shady subscription practices by national chains.
2. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments guarantee a bunch of rights and then grants congress power generic enforcement power. Enforcing such powerful and varied rights can reach into a lot of things.
3. Congress can raise and then spend money however it wants. So unless it violates a right, congress can basically empower the executive to do ANYTHING that money can buy.
4. The necessary and proper clause gives power to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution". This really encourages broad reading of the explicitly listed powers and is used to justify congressional oversight, applying federal law to all kinds of random situation.
Moreover when it comes to the agency power, they effectively have the COMBINED power of the executive (which they are part of) and whatever powers the legislature has given them.
No law can be made without them. They have tremendous power.
> So what actually happens is that the actual rule-making is done by the executive, in the form of these government agencies
The FTC was literally created by an act of Congress, which explicitly gave them the power to enact rules like this. See my other comment on this page where I like the laws.
Do people simply hear whatever their favorite politics pundit spews and take that at face value? It's so easy to simply look google such things.
I'm a lawyer. Here's a summary from Perplexity.ai, which comports well with my general understanding:
The U.S. Supreme Court defines "arbitrary and capricious" in the context of administrative-agency action primarily through the standards set forth in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). According to the APA, a court must invalidate agency actions that are found to be "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law" 1 3 4.
The arbitrary and capricious standard is applied when reviewing an agency's decision-making process and involves several key considerations:
Consideration of Relevant Factors: An agency action is deemed arbitrary and capricious if the agency has relied on factors that Congress did not intend it to consider, failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency 2 3.
Rational Connection: The agency must demonstrate a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. This requires a satisfactory explanation for its action based on consideration of relevant data 6.
Consistency and Reasoning: The decision should not be based on seriously flawed reasoning or be inconsistent with prior actions unless adequately explained. The agency must also respond to relevant arguments or comments during the decision-making process 6.
Zone of Reasonableness: Recent interpretations by the Supreme Court have introduced the concept of a "zone of reasonableness," where agency actions are upheld if they fall within a reasonable range of decisions based on the agency's expertise 4.
I say this as someone who actually builds and sells AI research software - but there’s a time and place for such things.
That said, the cable companies could still work around this. The rules seems to still allow "saves," which could include them contacting you the next day to try and reverse your decision.
The save portion of the rule seems to be a loophole the telecommunications companies convinced the FTC to add for them, it sounded like originally those would be blocked.
I think cable boxes change it somewhat, but the last time I had cable and not just cable internet they still had someone come to hook the cable box up. Admittedly, that was fifteen years ago now.
It can still be cheaper to send a guy out on service start to ensure the existing hookup is of sufficient quality (hasn’t degraded or been chewed or cut by the last owner) and the new customer isn’t trying to hook it into their aerial or old satellite dish or something. Or if your records are spotty and aren’t certain there’s an existing hookup.
Needing somebody to show up to connect it made me assume someone disconnected it, but a status check makes more sense.
15 years is lifetimes when it comes to technology capabilities. They world has moved on from that.
I've had techs "need" to come out for cable internet connection setup, but all they did was the exact same thing I would do myself: connect the coax, plug in the modem, and call a number to say "here's the MAC address, it's plugged in". It's such a waste of time (mine and theirs) and money (depends on if they're jackholes who charge a connection fee or if they eat the cost themselves).
Meanwhile, another cable company I subscribed to last year for internet service just mailed me a kit, with QR codes that handled activation. It didn't work right the first time, and there was a number to call; they realized the problem was on their end and fixed it quickly.
I've had cable internet hooked up more recently and still needed a technician, I just stopped getting cable TV about fifteen years ago. Which seems to mirror your experience except last year.
And checking my local providers, I still need to schedule an appointment for a new connection. It seems like it's easier elsewhere.
As far as I'm aware, no humans other than me were really involved with this.
It's being able to trivially downgrade service packages the same way you can upgrade them. That does not involve a major cost like a technician visit.
Also... who cares? If there's regret and then the customer gets charged a reconnect fee, that's life. People need to learn that making decisions without thinking them through can have consequences.