Consider this from NPR: NPR

When you have to call customer service, how patient are you on a scale of 1 to 10?

“Most people start with a nine or a nine and a half,” says Amas Tenumah, author of a book called Waiting for service. “But then you start this interaction and you hit an automated system, right? Press one, press two…”

And then, after more menus and buttons, you manage to get past the automated system and reach a human, only to be transferred to another operator where you have to repeat all your information. At this point, Tenumah says, your grace has run out.

“You are at zero, and a lot of people are negative,” he said.

This week, the Biden administration announced it is addressing more of what it calls “the tedious, everyday hassles that waste Americans’ time and money.” And it’s doing so by having federal agencies create new business rules. Things like:

• The Federal Trade Commission is trying to make it easy to cancel a subscription.
• The Department of Transportation is set to require automatic cash refunds for canceled flights.

There are moves to streamline health insurance bureaucracy, crack down on fake product reviews, streamline parent-teacher communications in schools. And, yes, bypass those robocalls to customer service that the White House labels “doom loops.”

This is all part of a broader economic mission to eliminate modern business practices that the Biden administration says exploit Americans.

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It’s called the “Time is Money” initiative.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Biden administration has been aggressively pushing its broader consumer agenda for a couple of years now.

In his State of the Union address in March, for the second consecutive year, President Biden mentioned his ongoing crusade against hidden or surprise surcharges.

“I’m also getting rid of junk fees. Those hidden fees that are tacked on to the end of your bill without you knowing,” he said, adding, “I’m saving American families $20 billion a year with all the junk fees I’m eliminating. And I’m not stopping there.”

But how exactly would all this work? All things considered Host Ari Shapiro posed this same question to Neera Tanden, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in the process of starting a rulemaking process, which is basically going to create rules of the road,” Tanden said. “So a good example to me is, you know, when you get a subscription, a streaming service, or a mobile phone service, if it takes one or two clicks to get the service, it should take one or two clicks to get rid of it.”

Tanden says the administration sees many examples of companies wasting people’s time and energy with practices that are really just about keeping their money longer.

“They essentially create such tension among people that they just give up and continue paying for the service instead of giving up a service they don’t want and then getting a service they do want,” he said.

There is a resistance and a demand for ideas

The initiative has already attracted harsh criticism from some sectors.

The Chamber of Commerce issued a statement this week saying the move could actually hurt consumers: “Companies thrive on customer service and have a history of much better customer service, streamlined paperwork, and quick response times than the federal government. Imposing heavy-handed regulations that micromanage business practices and pricing is the wrong approach, which inevitably increases costs to consumers.”

Tanden doesn’t believe it.

“I would say that, fundamentally, we think this should be a basic protection for consumers,” he said. “If your business model is based on trapping people in services that they no longer need, that’s a reflection of the fact that you’re not competitive and you’re not providing a good service. And companies should compete on services, not obstacles.”

The White House says some agencies have already started making changes, and now it wants Americans to share their ideas on other things that can be addressed. It has created a Time Is Money portal where people can submit their ideas.