ATLANTA — In a bid for more transparency for Georgia consumers, lawmakers have introduced a bill to add extra steps for renewing services year-by-year, and put the onus on companies to have better communications about them.
The Georgia Online Automatic Renewal Transparency Act would require that any automatic renewal of a contract that lasts at least one month must now have more transparency about when it renews, how much it’ll cost and how to cancel it if you want to stop paying or using the service.
House Bill 529 would prevent any seller or server from entering into a contract lasts longer than a single month with an automatic renewal position provision, unless they do the following:
- Tell the customer that there is an automatic renewal, and makes it easy to find in the contract
- Give customers the option to have it end automatically instead of waiting for automatic renewal
- Require sellers to be solely responsible for cost and expense of incorporating the contract terms into the signed agreements
- Require that any contract terminated after specified period, rather than automatic renewal, exercised by consumers make the contracts null and void upon termination, and its terms unenforceable and void
- Inform customers of cancellation times between 30 to 60 days before a cancellation from lack of automatic renewal would occur
For contracts that are set for 24 months or longer, sellers would also have to maintain documented written and/or electronic acknowledgement from the customer with an affirmative response, agreeing to the service period.
Violations of these proposed rules would lead to contracts becoming void, according to the bill text.
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