U.S. President Joe Biden attends a press conference during the NATO 75th Anniversary Summit in Washington, U.S., on July 11, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The Biden administration on Monday unveiled a new cross-agency regulatory initiative to crack down on corporate practices that government officials say are designed to waste consumers’ time and burden them with unnecessary red tape in order to maximize their profits.
“I think we can all relate to that,” White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden told reporters on Friday.
“For example, you may want to cancel your gym membership, a subscription to a service or a newspaper. It used to be a one or two-click process. But now you have to come in person or wait on hold for 20 minutes just to unsubscribe,” she said.
The Time is Money initiative’s measures are designed to make it easier for consumers to cancel subscriptions, receive refunds, submit health and insurance forms online, and access high-quality customer service.
The new initiative comes at a unique time for the Biden administration, as Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to unveil the first economic policy plans of her presidential campaign this week.
Comprehensive initiatives like Time Is Money could be an opportunity for Harris to advance the Biden administration’s longstanding consumer protection mandate in new ways.
U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris walk into the East Room to welcome the 2023 WNBA champions, the Las Vegas Aces, during a celebration at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 9, 2024.
Craig Hudson | Reuters
“In all of these practices, companies delay providing service to you or try to make it so difficult for you to cancel service that they can keep your money for longer and longer periods of time,” Tanden said Friday.
Among the new initiatives announced Monday are a series of rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) aimed at addressing the “disaster loops” in customer service and ineffective chatbots used by some financial institutions.
“The CFPB will determine when the use of automated chatbots or automated voice recordings using artificial intelligence is unlawful, including in situations where customers believe they are speaking to a human,” a White House fact sheet said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will launch a parallel investigation into whether the CFPB’s proposed customer service requirements should be extended to telephone, broadband and cable providers.
The second FCC investigation will consider imposing requirements similar to the Federal Trade Commission’s current “click to cancel” proposal. The FTC’s plan would require companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions and memberships as it is to sign up.
The initiative also calls on health insurance companies to allow their insured members to submit claims online.
On Monday, a letter from Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will be sent to health insurance companies and group health plans, urging them to “take concrete actions to save people time and money when interacting with their health insurance,” according to a White House fact sheet.
However, not all of the initiatives under the Time is Money program are new. Some of them have been announced previously, including a rule issued by the Department of Transportation in April requiring airlines to automatically provide cash refunds.
Another existing effort that the White House is following is a June 2023 FTC proposal to crack down on companies that use deceptive practices in dealing with customer feedback, such as fake reviews.
None of the measures in the “Time is Money” initiative require approval from Congress, said a senior government official. The Republicans currently hold the majority in the House of Representatives, and new consumer protection laws have little chance.
Monday’s “time is money” initiatives are the latest step in a long line of aggressive consumer protection measures taken by the Biden administration over the past three years.
The White House is pursuing aggressive antitrust regulations and taking an extremely skeptical stance toward cryptocurrencies – both of which have caused resentment on Wall Street.
Biden is also committed to fighting what he calls “unfair and illegal pricing,” including so-called junk fees, “price gouging” by companies and “shrinkflation.”
Nevertheless, the White House official stressed to reporters on Friday that it was “not about stigmatizing big corporations.”
Instead, the “Time is Money” initiative represents “a new frontier in consumer protection,” the official said. “That’s how we think about it.”
