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.

It’s long overdue.

It’s not “business friendly” so it’ll be DOA in Congress.

• Dems won’t fight for it, because there’s no donor money coming in as a reward for passage.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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”

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

Meanwhile, many major banks are still running 1970s computers and code in Fortran in the background, because replacing anything would cost money.

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.

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.

Good. Ok with them getting pissed off at the bullshit us commeners deal with. Do cable company cancelations next.

Nope.

1. The President isn’t running for reelection

2. 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.

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.

They have power, they just don’t use it in a way you want them to. They serve the oligarchs not you.

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.