_xeno_'s Journal: Can't Cancel Your MMOG Subscription? Pass a New Law

Some guy in Illinois can't figure out how to cancel his son's Final Fantasy XI subscription. Which is fair enough, I know how to cancel your account and I can't figure out how you're supposed to get that information from the Final Fantasy XI website (note: JavaScript required).

But in any case, after calling up customer service and being put on hold for about an hour, he finally succeeds. But he's still upset. So he complains to his state representative about the process, and his representative then proceeds to push through a law requiring "game service providers" to allow you to cancel online.

I'm somewhat torn. It seems kind of silly, especially because you apparently can cancel Final Fantasy XI subscriptions online. Just don't ask me how. I don't know. Last I checked you had to do it through the game software, which does make some amount of sense if you're playing one of the console versions.

On the other hand, it seems almost like something that should already be a law for any service provided online. If I'm allowed to sign up online, shouldn't I be allowed to cancel online? I already run into plenty of services that allow online account management, but stop short of actually allowing you to cancel online. Instead you have to call up customer support and be put through to an "account retention specialist" who attempts to annoy you enough that you decide it's not worth the effort of canceling. (AOL comes to mind for some reason...)

So why stop at "game service providers?" Why not require anything that can be subscribed to online and managed online to also be able to be canceled online? I mean, the whole point behind this consumer protection law is to prevent companies from basically making it impossible to cancel your contract. You shouldn't have to waste an hour of your time just to stop being automatically billed every month, whether it's for a video game or for phone service.