I totally agree that call to cancel is a PITA and companies should be called on the carpet for it. The prime example of this is when I tried to cancel my Consumer Reports subscription a few years ago and it required me to Snail Mail a cancellation. What hypocrisy. But government intervention and more red tape is not the answer. Public shaming and taking your business elsewhere works better and maintains freedom. Otherwise we are only inviting in the long, inflexible, and political arm of the bureaucracy (and even worse in this case federal bureaucracy) to get involved in every facet of how a business structures its interactions with its customers. It encourages wasteful litigation, clutters our life with mountains made from molehills, incentivizes running to the government for the answer to every annoyance, and makes starting and running a small business the equivalent of running a minefield not knowing which local, state, or federal law or regulation it may violate with any particular action.
> Public shaming and taking your business elsewhere works better and maintains freedom.
This was not borne out in practice. I, too, wish more consumers were discerning and picky, and I, too, dislike regulation, but this part of the argument against it isn't valid.
Ah yes, that free market where any rapscallion can create a multi-hundred-reporter corps filled with publisher and Nobel prize winning staff spread across the globe to report on current events and politics.
