“Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act” or simply S.3386
President Obama just signed into law a new bill that could change the way internet marketing is run. Depending on how it is enforced, many marketers online today are considered criminals. Theoretically this bill was put into place to protect the consumer from Acai Weight Loss and Make Money Online re-bill sites. These types of site have gotten a lot of press because it was hard for any of them to be prosecuted. Check out these hi-lights though, it appears that many honest, well honester, marketers have gotten trapped too.
- The bill expressly prohibits data transfer of any consumer financial information for the purpose of billing a 3rd party transaction. For post-transaction upsells, billing information has to be re-collected. Ouch.
- The bill requires material terms of all negative option offers to be disclosed prior to the collection of consumer billing information.
- The bill includes references to credit, debit, AND bank account information (meaning that the ACH and check 21 billers in the industry are no longer off the hook.)
Many online sites run on a business strategy of upsells. Their initial product might just break even or even lose them money, but the upsells are where the real money is. The majority of products on Clickbank run by this strategy. It’s unknown how the FTC will enforce this bill, especially with marketers located outside the US but we can expect to see some changes in the future.