FTC vs Greedy Streaming Companies

Government agencies are not the best problem solvers. But sometimes they things right, and take a stand for what is right, what is logical, and protect ordinary people. Latest drama between FTC and streaming companies is a perfect example of this. Last week Federal Trade Commission announced a new click-to-cancel rule for subscription services. The rule is a very simple expectation, and super logical. We should be wondering why this wasn't a thing a decade ago. As the naming of the rule suggest, the idea is to make cancelling services that require subscription as easy as it is subscribe. Companies are smart, and they spend a lot of money to come up with strategies and tactics to gain and retain new customers. That's why signing up process is almost always fast, simple, and easy. Otherwise, they would be losing money. However, when it comes to cancelling services things get complicated.

Not only it isn't straight forward and easy to navigate, companies take extra steps to make things complicated so that customers do not cancel. It is definitely intentional and deceitful practice. I have had frustrations in the past figuring out how to cancel an online subscription. While these companies haven't made any improvements regarding this matter (intentionally), I don't see this as any issue anymore and when I decided to cancel I am always able to navigate to the page for cancellation. Practice makes perfect. That's just because I know these companies will continue playing dishonest games as long as it results in money for them. For the same reason, I refuse to pay anything extra.

It didn't take these greedy companies to express their dissatisfaction about FTC's new rule and to sue the FTC. The groups that started the lawsuit are NCTA, Electronic Security Association, and Interactive Advertising Bureau. All the large streaming companies and many more are associated and represented by these groups, one way or the other. Obviously, these companies will fight as long as they can when it comes to making more money. It may actually be cheaper for them to spend money on lawyers and lawsuits, than actually engaging in a free market.

The thing I absolutely dislike about the greed of such companies is that these are the same companies who benefit from free market economies, yet they choose to undermine the free market and play dishonest games to make even more money. The arguments they present against FTC's new rule are hilariously stupid. One of them is that such rules would hurt the customers because it may cause price increases for the services. What?! So it is ok to steal money from people who actually are not using the services, and can't cancel to keep prices lower. It doesn't make sense. I would rather pay higher prices, than my services being paid by those who don't need the services. Moreover, they argument is very weak. Prices are decided by free market supply and demand. They can raise prices all they wan't. If there is no demand at certain price point, they would lose business instead. They know it too. They have experts that do all the calculations day and night. Deception is what they believe in.

Subscription based business models are great for some cases, and absolutely terrible for others. But in all cases they benefit the most one party, and that is the companies offering these services. In streaming business, I think subscription model is a great fit. I doubt pay per content would work well. Some companies tried that already. Amazon, Apple, Youtube, and others have tried pay per content, as rent or buy. They don't really work well. Subscription for such cases a better option. It works for the businesses and works for customers. This also facilitates competition and competition results in better products and services. In some cases subscription is terrible. For example companies like Microsoft making their well known office software subscription based doesn't really help the product. It hasn't improved the product at all, but they get to continuously collect money as if they are selling a new product. That is due the monopoly they have built in their areas. There are cases where subscription is borderline criminal. For example HP printers with subscription for the cartridges where they charge per printed pages, and cancelling the services stops the machine from working completely. That's just beyond greedy.

I think many would agree streaming platforms with subscription plans have worked well in recent years. Netflix started the revolutions, many other joined. The more recent problems with these services is that there are too many of them, and less content available than before. Because they all competing against each other, they make content owned by certain companies unavailable for others. Or they would outbid each other. We end up continuously subscribing and cancelling to manage the budget, that is if we are mindful of the money spent on these services. Sometimes we don't care and forget. There was a time I forgot a subscription for a service for six months that never was being used. They don't care, they will continue collecting the money.

But also there are times we may want to continuously keep services active, just because they provide great service. That was the case with Netflix. I had uninterrupted plan with Netflix for many years, and even when it wasn't used I didn't ming keeping the account active. Because Netflix was a great companies, provided great services, and didn't play deception games. Netflix stayed true to its commitment of no ads for a very long time. As long as they kept that commitment, I had no reason to cancel it. But corporate greed hit Netflix as well, and there came a time to add ads to their services. That was the time my commitment to Netflix ended as well. Since then I only subscribe to Netflix for a short period of time, if find something really interesting there.

Unlike other government agencies FTC has done some really good actions in recent years in protecting the consumers. This new click-to-cancel rule is another great move. That is what these agencies should be doing all the time. Identifying problems and solving them. Especially the easy ones. This one is easy. It make perfect sense. These streaming companies should stop tricking people and building UI that hides the cancel button. It is an easy fix too. It doesn't cost them money to make cancellation a one click process. I would even argue such improvements would make these companies better and prosperous. Anytime deception is removed from companies and their actions are more transparent, they earn people's respect and trust. This would make them focus more on customer service rather than customer deception. This is a much better way of making money, and I am sure they would make a lot of it. The future is heading towards trust or trustless. More and more people will bring their businesses to companies that build trust, or companies that utilize trustless decentralized systems. Those who are greedy and rely on deception will hopefully fail, and leave the space for the honest ones. Hulu is the worst!

Lastly, there is still one company that I trust with subscription and don't mind keeping the account active for a very long time. That is Amazon Prime. Not only it gives access to the digital content, but also is great for the purchases and fast shipping. I can see the effort for great customer service here. I am not saying Amazon is not greedy. But at least their greed is backed with focus for a great products, and reliable services. Amazon does have its problems. Customer service is not one of them.