For anyone planning to attending the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting in Washington DC this week (March 29-31), please look for your friends from Kelley Drye Ad Law on multiple panels on Wednesday and Thursday:
ABBY STEMPSON (Special Counsel in the Ad Law and State AG practices) will be speaking on a panel entitled Fundamentals –
If you’re offering any products or services involving a negative option or automatic renewal plan, pay close attention to the FTC’s announcement today of a proposed rule that would drastically alter requirements for negative option disclosures while simultaneously granting the agency authority to seek redress and civil penalties for misrepresentations unrelated to the negative option transaction itself, such as claims related to underlying products, features, and services. Among other things, the rule as proposed would require that cancellation be “at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to initiate the Negative Option Feature,” and that companies obtain consent before trying to “save” a cancellation attempt and provide annual reminders for services that do not involve the physical delivery of goods.
In her dissent, Commissioner Wilson characterized the proposed rule as an “end-run around the Supreme Court’s decision in AMG” and detailed a host of substantive and procedural issues with the proposed rule.
Further analysis and our take below.
Join members of Kelley Drye’s Advertising, Privacy, and Financial Services teams on March 8, 2023 at 12:30-1:30 ET for an overview of hot topics and issues to watch for in 2023 in fintech and financial services.
Both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have set an aggressive agenda for
On Friday, the FTC announced what would ordinarily be an unremarkable enforcement action against a company for unsubstantiated earnings claims. The FTC alleges that WealthPress, an investment advice company purporting to offer training from experts on trading strategies, made a series of unsubstantiated earnings claims such as “make $24,840 or more every single week,” “track
In today’s open meeting, the FTC voted unanimously to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) considering expansions to and revisions of the FTC’s existing Business Opportunity Rule (“BOR”). This will be the first review of the BOR since it was promulgated back in December 2011. In her statement announcing the ANPR, Chair Khan
The FTC’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) seeking comment on a potential rule prohibiting “junk fees” and related practices hit the Federal Register yesterday. The rule has the potential to fundamentally alter how fees are disclosed in advertising and across the customer experience in nearly every industry that charges some type of fee. Interested parties now have until January 9 to provide comments and feedback on the proposal. The ANPR’s publication follows a series of meetings and announcements by the FTC, CFPB, and President Biden that the administration was taking actions to prohibit so-called “junk fees” that “can weaken market competition, raise costs for consumers and businesses, and hit the most vulnerable Americans the hardest.”
Prohibiting junk fees may sound uncontroversial in the abstract, but what does it mean in practice? We concentrate here on the FTC’s ANPR given its potential breadth and impact on a host of industries including travel, delivery services and others in the gig economy, restaurants, and e-commerce sites.
What is a “Junk Fee”?
The ANPR uses the term “junk fees” to refer to “unfair or deceptive fees that are charged for goods or services that have little or no added value to the consumer, including goods or services that consumers would reasonably assume to be included within the overall advertised price.” According to the FTC, the term includes, but is not limited to “hidden fees,” which are fees disclosed only at a later stage of the customer experience or potentially not at all.
Continue Reading The FTC and CFPB are Coming for “Junk Fees,” but What Does that Really Mean?
In a decision with potentially far-reaching implications for the CFPB, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit yesterday ruled that the Bureau’s funding structure is unconstitutional. The case involved a longstanding challenge to the Bureau’s 2017 Payday Lending Rule and marks another significant obstacle for the Bureau two
In addition to announcing a new COPPA policy statement and related “crackdown” on children’s privacy issues (discussed here) in its most recent open meeting, the FTC also proposed changes to the FTC’s Endorsement Guides. The changes would build on and expand previous guidance, including by expressly extending liability to endorsers, intermediaries, and platforms
Last Thursday (February 10), the FTC announced that it “will vote” at its February 17 open meeting to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on “deceptive earnings claims for business ventures, gig or other work opportunities, or educational, coaching or training offerings.” Here’s our take on what we can glean from this announcement
