Name: FTC Click-to-Cancel Rule: Live Q&A for Gym Owners
Uploaded: 2025-05-08T19:01:09.276Z
Duration: 38 min 4 s
Description: FTC Click-to-Cancel Rule: Live Q&A for Gym Owners

Transcript for "FTC Click-to-Cancel Rule: Live Q&A for Gym Owners": Hello, everyone. My name is Holly. Thank you all for joining. So, Mitesh and Natalie, you all started us off exactly how I was going to, actually. We have, I think, a couple hundred people signed up for this webinar, so share where you're from. We'd love to hear where you're joining from. I'm in Colorado, so it's a beautiful day here. We got Smitesh kicked us off. Thank you guys for joining. Hello from New York, Brian. Alright. While you guys are popping, into the chat where you're from, we'll give everybody just, like, a minute or so, to join, and then we'll go ahead and get started. Christopher, Charlene, thank you guys for joining. I also have Hillary with me in case you see her popping in the chat. She's kind of back backstage with me here, so she'll be popping in answering, responding to some of y'all joining in. Alright. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and get started. We may have some folks trickle in over the next minute or two as they're getting logged in. But we will go ahead and jump in to this topic. So quick introduction before we get into the details. My name is Holly. I'm a senior customer success manager here at Zen Planner. I'm also going to have Erin join me. She will also likely be backstage. She is a product manager here at Zen Planner, and we will be your resources on all things related to the Federal Trade Commission's click to cancel ruling for the next forty five minutes. Quick housekeeping before we get started. This will be recorded. So if you need to hop off early or have staff that aren't able to join, we will send out the recording that you can share and watch at a later time. Also, you will have you'll see there's a few options to engage with us. So there's the chat where you're popping in, kind of where you're from, and there's also the q and a. We will be leveraging the q and a tab to answer questions at the end. So if during the presentation you have any questions come up, please pop it in there. Erin and Hillary will be kind of managing those, and we'll get them answered towards the end of the presentation. Alright. We will get started then. Quick agenda. Alright. So we will start with just a quick overview. Wanna make sure we're all on the same page regarding the intention and the expectations behind the ruling. We'll go into kind of a a quick, does this apply to me? I wanna make sure you walk away from this webinar with a clear understanding of whether you need to take action or not. We will walk through the new features. Wanna get you comfortable with the changes inside the product for both staff and members. And then we'll walk through some sample scenarios. I wanna give you some basic examples of how the cancellation settings impact memberships. We'll walk through some FAQs and then some next steps. So that'll give you a road map of what actions you may wanna consider taking prior to the ruling effective date. And then we'll wrap up with, some feedback and questions. So how to submit your feedback and, of course, as time permits, we'll answer as many questions as we can, make sure you guys are feeling comfortable with with what's, going to be happening in the next week or so. Alright. So before we get into the details of the ruling, quick quick disclaimer, mentioned in, I think, the Daxko wide webinar if you attended that. We are not legal professionals. If you want or need legal advice on this ruling, please contact your lawyer. However, we are your partner in ensuring you have the ability to comply with the ruling. So our goal is to set you up for success, but know that the adherence to the policy is fully owned by you. So let's discuss some key elements of the ruling. You see them all listed there. One, that first bullet there, online cancellations must match simplicity of the online sign up. The intentionality from the Federal Trade Commission regarding the click to cancel ruling is to remove the challenges in canceling, a membership. So a membership subscription, like, think of your your Netflix or your Disney plus. I have kiddos, so that's what we have. But any membership you have that is on a recurring basis that maybe you signed up for, you potentially forgot about, and now you go to cancel, and it's extremely difficult, convoluted, isn't as easy as as course, of course, is when they're taking your money. Right? This is the type of business that the, ruling is primarily targeting, but, of course, it applies to any and all recurring membership businesses, so that's where it falls on us. There are additional elements of the ruling. You'll see those listed there such as limitations on upsells, requirements on renewal, and rate increase transparency. However, we'll be focusing on the click to cancel portion of this ruling as it does require changes to Zen Planner. Alright. Few quick important dates. One has already passed. You see that first one there, March 25, we released some studio, UI changes. So, we announced those in app and hopefully gave you plenty of time to at least start to get acquainted, start to choose some of those business settings, and make adjustments if necessary. On the fourteenth of this month, we will be releasing the member portion. So members will have the ability to cancel their memberships in member connect. Do you wanna make a call out on that release? That's I think is really important. We do not plan on announcing this to your members. So the decision whether to announce this new capability is your yours entirely. It is certainly possible they were organically fined the option to cancel, but we will not explicitly make them aware. You own the relationship with your members. It's your business. We trust you are best equipped to make the call, but they will have that capability starting on fourteenth. And then that last one there, May 15, the following day, is when we're expected to comply with the new click to cancel rule. So that's technically the effective date of this new ruling. Okay. We will go into a more detailed decision tree in a moment. But at a high level, here's what we're looking at for what is in versus out of scope. So in scope is any auto renewing memberships. So in Zen Planner, that setting would be the auto renewals on copy current membership. Out of scope is one time purchases. So think of your term based, non renewing memberships, retail events. Those do not need to comply with the kick to click to cancel ruling. Alright. So let's break this down. Hopefully, this will make it clear whether the click to cancel ruling applies to you, and you should stick around for the rest of the webinar. Or perhaps it doesn't, and you can get some time back in your day. So we'll start at the top there. First question is, do you sell memberships online? If the answer is no, then the online click to cancel does not apply to your business. Again, this is because the ruling focuses on online sign ups, and more specifically, it states the member should be able to cancel in the manner which in which they signed up. So if you offer sign ups over the phone, a member should be able to cancel over the phone. So if you do not offer memberships online, then they don't need to be able to cancel online. Alright. So let's assume, you answered yes. So you do sell memberships online. The next question would be, is do your memberships auto renew? If no, doesn't apply to you. Feel free to exit or stick around if you're having a good time. This would mean that you sell one time memberships or that the member would need to resign up to continue attending your fitness business, after their original membership ends. So if you do sell memberships online, stick around for the rest of the web the webinar. You would fall in that bottom left, diamond there as the click to cancel ruling does apply to you. Okay. Keep moving. So, yeah, we'll see how many people we lost just then. Maybe maybe a handful if it doesn't apply to you. But, next, we're gonna go through a walk through video. So this is a video that Erin recorded. We will play that, and then we'll kinda move on to some of those scenarios. So I will jump to that video real quick and mute myself. Hi. I'm Erin. I'm a product manager at Zen Planner, and I'm gonna walk you through the new click to cancel settings. You may have already seen some of this, but I'm gonna go ahead and walk through the different options, as well as some other things you may have not seen. So under setup membership options, click on one of your memberships and scroll down to the bottom. I do wanna call out, first that if you do not sell your membership this membership type online, members will not be able to cancel through the member connect site. The only way a member will be able to cancel is if you do sell that membership type online. So as you can see, I unclicked it, and you can see those, settings went away. If you do click it, you're now able to specify, the required notice for cancellation. So we have no notice, fifteen days, and thirty days. You're also able to add that I out fee. Once you've added those settings, scroll down to the bottom, hit save changes. Then you're gonna wanna go under setup, go to your lookup codes. This is important. Go to drop reason so, that your members are able to choose a reason why they're canceling. So go ahead, add any reasons why you think a member, wants to cancel. You can also add them later. Put them in here. Make sure to check them online so that they're visible on the member connect site and save changes. As a member, this is what they're gonna see on their member connect site. So they're gonna go to my profile, and they're gonna see their different membership options. And if the membership is sold online, they'll have this button here to cancel. As you can see, this membership is not sold online, so there is no option to cancel. And then, this membership has already previously been canceled. The reason we're still seeing it is because the membership still has a few days left. If the member clicks cancel membership, they'll be taken to this page where they can choose why they're canceling this membership as well as, they'll see the end date of the membership and how much the buyout fee is. One thing to note here also is that if the member is trying to cancel, but they have any, unpaid bills or past due balances, they will have to pay those bills first before they're able to continue with canceling the membership. And that's the click to cancel settings. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our support team. There we go. Okay. Quick recap. We will, couple of things you'll wanna do. Right? In those membership options, you'll have the option to choose your required notice time frame. It's either none, which is immediate, fifteen or thirty days. You can set the buyout fee. So if there's any fee for them to cancel early in their contract, you can set that dollar amount. And then the lookup codes are any reasons you would want surface to the member for why they may be canceling. You have the option to delineate between something only your staff wanna see and something members can see if unite if you need to or want to. We will now walk through some scenarios just to make sure everyone understands what the difference is between a no notice required fifteen and thirty days. Hopefully, gonna make that really clear for you. So let's jump into that. Okay. So, yeah, one of the biggest areas of question are are how do these work. Right? How does the no notice fifteen thirty day impact the membership, and what do these settings actually mean? If you ever rented a home apartment, this is a concept you should be familiar with because it works exactly the same. Alright. So we will use a single scenario and walk through how the member's billing will be impacted differently depending on the required notice set on the membership option. So the required notice will determine when the cancellation takes effect, essentially. Alright. So let's read through the sample scenario. Hannah has signed up for a month to month membership on January 10 that bills for $200 on the tenth of the month. Today is May 8, and Hannah would like to cancel. So we have our three different scenarios down there. You see the no notice, fifteen, and thirty. We'll start with the no notice required. So if that is selected on the membership option, that means Hannah can cancel today and avoid any future bills. She will still have access through May 10 because she's already paid for it. Right? She paid, the previous month on the tenth, and she will have access through the end of that time period. Below, you see what she will actually see on member connects. Right? Your membership will end on this date. Your access and bills will no longer oh, sorry. On May 9. I said tenth, didn't I? It says May 9 right there. On May 9. But her access will end on that date. Okay. And then we'll move to the fifteen day notice. So Hannah can still submit her cancellation today, but because a fifteen day notice is required and her next bill is in two days, right, on May 10, she will be billed and have access through June 10 sorry, through June 9. I did that again. So that's how fifteen day notice would impact. She will see and Erin went over it in that demonstration. There will be a, cancellation notice banner letting them know what your policy is. So below, you see a cancellation notice. A fifteen day notice is required to cancel your membership. If it's thirty, it will say thirty. But the member will have visibility into the settings that you've chose for that membership. Alright. And then last one, very similar to the fifteen day. She can again submit cancellation today, but because the thirty day notice is required, and her next bill is in two days, she's still going to be billed the next bill, and she will have access through the June or sorry, through June 9. Okay. Hopefully, that makes it somewhat clear for a fairly straightforward membership. Right? Month to month, very common. She's billed on the same day that she started the membership. So, hopefully, that one's fairly straightforward. Happy to answer any questions at the end. We will go then to a little bit different scenarios. So our second sample scenario, is going to be we're gonna walk through a scenario where the sign up date and the cancellation policy is the same, but the membership duration and the billing cycle is different. Alright. So in this scenario, Hannah has signed up for a membership on February 1, and the fitness center she attends has a thirty day cancellation policy. Today is May 8, and Hannah would like to cancel. Alright. So here is what we have a couple different scenarios listed here. So a twelve month membership billed on first and fifteenth, '6 month billed member billed monthly, twelve month with a single payment. So it'd be like your paid in full type of membership. Alright. So here, we'll look at kind of how the cancellation will impact her membership. You'll notice the drop date on all of these is always gonna be the day they actually submit the cancellation. So that's the day I'm taking the action to say, I don't want to continue my membership. The effective date, so when I have a typo oh, no. That was right. The effective date is going to be when the drop is effective, and then last bill date, access date will go through each of those. Alright. So for the twelve month membership, it's billed on the first and the fifteenth. Here's how the cancellation will impact that. So the effective date will be June 14. Hannah will pay that last that bill on the fourth or sorry, the bill on the first, and she will have access through the June. So, hopefully, that's that's tracking. Because the cancellation time frame is thirty days, That June 1 bill falls within that time frame. She will technically have paid for that and have access through the June. So she's still getting the full membership that she's paid for. We're not you know, we won't do any proration or anything like that. Alright. So we'll move to the second example there, the six month membership billed monthly. Again, that drop date will be May 8. The effective date and the la the date that she has access through will be the end of the month, but also her last bill date will be June 1. So, because June 1 is within that thirty day window, right, today is the eighth, June first would fall within thirty days, we will grant her grant her access to the facility until the June. She's paid for that. Alright. And then the last example there is your sort of paid in full membership. In this scenario, she can still drop today, but because she's paid in full for the full twelve months, she will have access for the full twelve months, until the day before her membership was set to renew. So in this case, that would be the January 31. She won't receive an additional bill. We won't do any sort of, again, prorating, refunding, etcetera. She will just get what she's already paid for and not be billed again in the future. Alright. I'm sure this is where most of the questions are going to come, so feel free to pop them into the q and a. We will be happy to answer those at the end. If you have very, very specific ones about a certain number with a certain scenario, we may address that with you individually. But if it's kind of a generic one, happy to answer kind of how memberships will be impacted as a result. But, hopefully, this clarifies a bit of how that will work. Okay. We will move on now to a couple of frequently asked questions. So in the Daxko-wide webinar, we got a lot of questions about if a member will receive confirmation email, how staff can stay up on top of cancellations. Both scenarios, staff and member, can be addressed with a membership drop automation. This will not automatically be set up for you, so we will not, you know, force anything in this scenario. You will need to go in and set this up. And I'm gonna walk you through what this looks like. You see a screenshot there? But I'm gonna walk you through kinda what that looks like in studio here in just a moment. Let me get that up so you can see some of the settings and some of the flexibility you have as well. Alright. I'm gonna stop sharing and hop over to studio. Give it a minute to load. Okay. Let's see. It's working on it. It's working on it. Okay. Here we are. Alright. So in Studio, under automations, I have one set up already. If you don't have one created, you would choose the membership drops option. Click add. And this is where you can get a little more granular if you would like. You have the option to choose the drop reason. So if you wanna have two different automations, one for a staff notification, one for a member confirmation, you can certainly do that and distinguish between the drop reason they would select on the kind of admin side versus the member side. You could also just have one, which is kind of which is gonna be the example I show you now. So, ability to choose the drop reason, choose the time frame when you want it to send after the drop is created, and then we're gonna go ahead and look at that template real quick. So it's gonna come from you. They can reply to your school email to their primary. Now this is where you can either have a separate automation or if you just wanna cc your school email, you'll see the same confirmation that this member would see. That'll give your staff a heads up to either reach out, take whatever action you deem necessary, and then you have the ability to customize this email as well. So this is the new editor in case some of you are like, oh, I haven't seen this before or this looks a little different than mine. This is the new email editor. Check it out. It's, got a lot more flexibility than the old one, but you'll still have this all the same capabilities in terms of adding logos, images, your social, links, and all of the merge tags that you had in the previous editor. So create this automation. That'll that'll be how you notify both staff and members. Again, you can choose whether you want one or two automations or just have one cc your school email or a specific staff member, and that's how you can keep up to date on when a member is canceling, through member connect. Alright. I will stop sharing and jump back into the slides. Okay. Alright. So next commonly asked question is, how can I report on member cancellations versus staff cancellations? So in an existing drops report, you will have a new column called cancel by. I won't pop in the studio for this one. Hopefully, you can kind of see in that screenshot there, but it's just a new column that you'll have available to you. You can take all the typical actions you normally would from this report if you wanna filter by, sort by member versus staff cancellations. You're certainly able to do that. So that will be available to you as well. And now we're gonna jump into just a list of FAQs. We're almost finished to the content portion of the webinar, so we'll wrap up with a few of these questions real quick. So first one there is, does this apply to international customers? Answer is yes. Most countries including Canada, Australia, EU all have consumer protection laws. US is a little behind in this area, to be honest. But if you are a customer that is not US based, these settings, the member workflow will also apply to you. We're not delineating between US versus international clients at this time. Alright. Second question there, if a member is on hold, can they cancel their membership? Yes. A hold will not prevent a cancellation. So, think of this as gonna work exactly the same way as if your staff was canceling. There's nothing to prevent them from canceling their membership if they are currently on hold. Alright. Third question there, are class reservations canceled if a member cancels their membership? Similar answer there. Yes. Just as if staff are canceling, the reservations will be removed after the cancellation date. And last question there is, can members cancel in the app? Currently, no. You probably noticed we only showed you member connect. Currently, they will not be able to cancel in the member app. You'll see there exciting new sneak peek teaser. We are currently developing a new member app, so that's coming soon. When that launches, we will build this capability into that app, but it will not be in the existing member app at this time. Alright. Okay. We are getting close to wrapping up here. I hope y'all are feeling more comfortable with the changes that are here coming. Totally okay if you need to revisit this webinar or we're gonna send out some documents, as a follow-up to kind of help guide you as well. I know this is a lot of new stuff. But here are a couple of things that we'd recommend focusing on over the next week, given we're about a week out before the click to cancel, ruling is effective. So first one there, define your online cancellation settings. So that was, again, your no notice, fifteen to thirty day, whether or not you have a buyout fee for that membership. So you'll wanna go through all of your memberships, make sure those are all aligned with whatever your, contracts are, are list are listing. Second bullet there is choose your cancellation reasons to be shown. Again, you can distinguish between staff facing or a member facing reason. You'll wanna make sure those are polished up and your members are only seeing the reasons you want them to see. And then last on there, ensure your contracts are reflected in your policies. So, hopefully, you're leveraging the signature documents in Zen planner, so those are automatically signed by anyone that signs up. Just make sure that any cancellation policies that you're setting in your membership options are aligned with what you have in those documents. Make sure everything's, all aligned. Okay. That is that quick checklist. Again, I said we will be sending this out afterwards. We'll send out a little bit more detailed checklist, so you can make sure you get things rolling in the next week or so. Okay. Last but not least, if you have any feedback, notice there's a change and, certainly, we recognize that there is likely a host of different cancellation policies, different scenarios, etcetera. If you have feedback, please submit in the feedback widget. That's in all of the apps. Should be top right corner in Studio. Please send us over that information. Happy to chat if you have feedback on something that's missing you feel is missing or maybe we didn't talk about. In addition, one thing I did wanna mention is to look to kind of look for in the next week or two is we will be changing the verbiage of the, in the platform. Everything currently when related to a cancellation is referred to as a drop. So you noticed when I showed you that automation, we talked about the drops report. We're gonna just be updating across the board for that to be cancellation aligned with the verbiage that everybody uses. So instead of drops, you'll see cancellations. Don't be alarmed. Just a a quick verbiage change, but that'll be coming in the next couple weeks or so as well. Okay. We have wrapped up the content portion of the webinar. So now, I guess, we will I will pause, stop talking, and open it up to Erin. If there's any, q and a stuff we need to address that we didn't, in the content portion. Thanks, Holly. Some of the questions we're getting right now are I just wanna cover again. Would you mind going back to that next step slide? I just wanna walk through. Okay. So you'll see a little screenshot of settings. The biggest question we have right now is, will my members be able to cancel if x, y, and z? Your members will be able to cancel no matter what if you have that box checked where it says online. So if you don't have that checked, members will not be able to cancel their membership. So just wanna make sure that we know that that checkbox is what actually is creating that cancel membership button through member connect. Tully, you touched on it. We are not, we don't have the setting available currently in member app. Like Holly mentioned, we have a new app that we will be building. So we held off on including this with the member app. So this is only in member connect. Another big question we keep, I'm seeing is the sixty day notice. We don't have that currently. We are hearing that a lot. That could be coming in the future. But when we launch, it will just be the no notice fifteen days and thirty days. And then the last question I do wanna make, clear is that when a member if you sell this membership online and a member cancels, they will not if you have a bio buyout fee option selected so if you check that box right there where it says additional charges, buyout fee, they will not be able to cancel their membership until that buyout fee buyout fee is, paid, as well as any past due bills. So if they have a bill that's outstanding, they will need to pay that before they can actually have the cancellation go into effect. Let's see. Yes. Another thing we wanna touch on is, receiving notifications when someone cancels. So we have automations already set in place. Just make sure you go into settings automations, turn on that cancel it's the cancel membership automation. It might still say drop as we're changing the verbiage, but make sure you have that turned on and set to send, to yourself, and you'll be notified every time someone's canceling online. And you'll be able to see this in reports. So if you go I think right now it says drop report, it will be changed to cancel reports. When you click on there, you'll be able to see everyone, who is canceled, and you can see if it was done by a staff member or if it was done online. So you'll be able to see all that. What else? I think those were the biggest questions. There are specific scenarios that people are asking. Just know that if the membership is sold online, you have that checkbox. You'll need to select either no notice, fifteen days, or thirty days. If it is thirty days and today's May 8 and they cancel, their membership's not gonna end until June or it will take effect June 8. If there's a bill between May 8 and June 8, they will need to pay those bills before that, but they are also gonna have access. So we're not taking away access for members either. If they pay for an additional month, they're gonna get till the end of that month. We don't wanna, obviously, no make your members upset by charging them and not giving them access. So they will have access till the end of that time. Alright. Let me just go through a couple more and make sure I answered. Let's see. It does not one about custom memberships? Oh, custom memberships. Same thing. If it's a membership and it is sold in person, so it's not online, they will not be able to cancel. The only way they're gonna be able to see that cancel button is if that checkbox right there said if that's checked in your membership types, then they'll see the cancel. You already touched on lookup codes. Make sure that in lookup codes, you have all the options. You're more than welcome to add them later. If you you add them now and then you decide later you're actually seeing other a lot, maybe, you can add a few more options in there for people to select. We don't have the ability for, members to type in the reason why. That is something we can definitely look into in the future for improvements. Let me I think Oh, one other thing we are going to look into is percentage based. So right now, we just have the flat fee, buyout fee. However, we have heard some feedback on, you know, they want to collect the, like, 20% of the whatever the amount is of the remaining of the membership. We are looking into that. That is not going to be launched, come May 14, but we will look into that. Yes. I just saw a question come in. If they signed up online, but the membership you went and unchecked that box, they will not see that button. So that that button will determine that online checkbox is the button. So even great question. If today, I go in as a member at your gym and I sign up for a membership, and then, say, two weeks from now, you go into your settings, uncheck the online box, that member will no longer see that cancel membership button. I saw a question around, using the kiosk for sign ups, and, like, does this apply to them? It sounds like that's kind of the question. So, again, just to reiterate, the ruling is really like it's a like for like. If they sign up in person, which would be your kiosk option, they should be able to cancel in person. So if they sign up online, cancel online. In that scenario, if they cancel or sorry. If they sign up on the kiosk, you would not be expected to allow them to cancel online. Now if it's also sold online, then, yes, if you sell it in both places, but it's really a like for like for how they sign up is how they should be able to cancel. Correct. Yep. Yep. Alright. I think let me just make sure there's nothing else we didn't cover. Yes. We will make sure, I think, Holly, you touched on this. We'll send out the slides, and, we'll have a recording of this too. So you can definitely go back and check everything. And I'll make sure you guys have that video of the walk through. I think that's everything. Please feel free to reach out to our support team for any additional questions if you have if you just wanna walk through it with someone on a case to case basis on how your memberships are set up, we are more than happy to jump on a call and see what works best for you. Alright. I think we've gone through most all questions in there. Thank you guys for joining. I hope this was, informative and will sort of quell some of the any anxiety we had around this this change. But like Erin mentioned, I'll just echo. If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team. Happy to walk through any specific scenarios and make sure you all are set up for success. Alright. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one.