THE Federal Commerce Commission Delayed the start of a rule which aims to make the cancellation process less a nightmare. Last year, the FTC voted to ratify the amendments to a regulation known as the rule of negative option, adding a new rule “click on conviation” which obliges companies to be frank on the terms of subscription registrations and prohibits them from “to make consumers more difficult to cancel than to register”. Surprise nobody, telecommunications companies were not satisfied and continued the FTC. Although the rule was nevertheless to be implemented on May 14, the FTC now affirms that the application was pushed by 60 days until July 14.
Certain parts of the negative updated option rule came into force on January 19, but the application of certain provisions was postponed until May 14 by the previous administration to give companies more time to comply. Under the new administration, the FTC affirms that it “carried out a new assessment of the charges that forcing compliance on this date would impose” and decided that it “explains the complexity of conformity insufficiently”.
Once the deadline of July 14 has reached, the FTC said that “regulated entities must comply with the whole rule because the commission will begin to apply it”. But, the declaration adds: “If this application experience exposes problems with the rule, the commission is open to the modification”.
