Sick of customer service bots and subscription headaches? There's a plan for that

When you have to call a customer service line, where's your patience on a scale of 1-10?

"Most people start at a nine or nine-and-a-half," says Amas Tenumah, who wrote a book called Waiting for Service. "But then you start this interaction and you're met with an automated system, right? Press one, press two..."

And then, after a few more menus and buttons, you manage to get past the automated system and to a human, only to be transferred to another operator where you need to repeat all your information. By this point, Tenumah says, your grace has worn thin.

"You are at a zero, and lots of people are in the negative," he said.

This week, the Biden administration announced it is taking on more of what it calls "everyday headaches and hassles that waste Americans' time and money." And it's doing that by having federal agencies make new business rules. Things like:

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

There are actions to simplify health insurance paperwork, crack down on fake product reviews, streamline parent-teacher communications in schools. And, yes, circumvent those automated customer service calls that the White House labels "doom loops."

It's all part of a wider economic mission to eliminate modern business practices that the Biden administration believes exploit Americans.

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It's called the "Time Is Money" initiative

If this sounds familiar, it's because the Biden administration