A year after an appeals court effectively nullified a national regulation that required companies to make it easier to get out of subscriptions, New York City revived it for those who live there.
Announced last week by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, alongside the city’s top tech officer and consumer protection commissioner, the rule says companies must make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. This applies to gym memberships, a mobile phone contract or apps that pay a monthly fee. It’s similar in principle to the “click to cancel” rules that were proposed in 2024 during the Biden administration but never fully rolled out. NYC’s law was established by executive order in January and went into effect on October 1.
“No one should need 45 minutes of stop music to stop paying for something they never wanted,” Mamdani said in the announcement. “If a company can take your money with one click, you should get your money back with one click. And now, if they won’t let you cancel, the city is coming for them.”
Part of “Coming for them” is a website where New Yorkers can file a complaint. The site allows a visitor to search for or add a business, even if it is not based in New York City, and choose from a list of topics, such as “The business delayed canceling your subscription,” or “You were not notified of the automatic renewal.” A text box and an option to upload documents, such as screenshots, allow elaboration on what happened. Those making complaints can also choose the type of outcome they’d like to see, including “refund and cancel subscription.”
According to Samuel Levine, commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, full-time staff will fill out these web-submitted complaints. “They’re not going to be relegated to a chatbot doom loop,” Levine told The Verge. “We’ll actually have people whose full-time job is to help them.”
Businesses that are the subject of a complaint are investigated, and if found to be in violation of city rules, they can be fined up to $525 per violation.
Different places, different rules
What’s happening in the rest of the country, where, according to a CNET survey, Americans spend an average of more than $1,300 a year on subscriptions, some of them unused or accidentally subscribed?
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of competition and market justice at the Consumer Federation of America, said New York City’s click-to-cancel law shows how local governments can create new ways to protect consumers. “This innovative move highlights once again that local and state consumer protection agencies are stepping up to protect consumers even when federal agencies are not and provides a roadmap for other regulators to do the same.”
California, for example, has a rule that requires businesses to get a customer’s explicit consent before being charged for a subscription renewal.
That law was strengthened last year to include protections when the cancellation occurred on the same medium as the subscription; For example, a business can’t make you go to a physical location to cancel something you signed up for online. It also requires companies to notify customers before an upcoming renewal fee and annual reminders about auto-renewals using the same communication method used to sign up.
A Maryland law that took effect in June also requires companies to provide customers with a “cost-effective, timely and easy-to-use” way to cancel auto-renewing subscriptions. The law falls under Maryland’s Service Contracts and Consumer Products Guarantee Act and can result in fines (PDF) of up to $10,000 per violation or $25,000 for repeat violations.
Colorado’s equivalent law, the Online Cancellation Act, went into effect in 2025 and mandated that retailers provide a one-step cancellation link. Earlier this year, the act was expanded to include transactions between two businesses or entities.
National ‘click to cancel’ could return
The “patchwork” approach, as some describe these disparate regional laws, is in lieu of the national rule that was stalled due to a procedural error. When the Eighth District Court struck it down, the court said it was because the proper regulatory analysis wasn’t done, not because the court disagreed with its intent or approach.
There are signs that the Federal Trade Commission could take the initiative to revive a national click-to-cancel policy, or at least parts of it, but it’s hard to tell from its language. In a January press release, the FTC said it would submit a draft proposal related to “negative option plans,” another way of saying auto-renewals in which businesses are given no notice or the option to cancel further subscription fees. In March, the FTC opened the floor to public comment after it said it had received 100,000 complaints in five years about businesses making cancellations difficult or impossible.
A representative of the FTC told CNET in an email, “We do not have an update related to this issue” regarding click-to-abort or the New York City law.
The CFA’s Peterson-Cassin said that so far the FTC has focused mainly on disclosing fees rather than banning auto-renewals, “so it’s hard for us to believe they’re going to come up with something as strong as the New York rule.”
However, she said, “Given how much attention there is on this issue and New York’s good example, it’s still time for them to do the right thing, and protect all Americans from these predatory subscription traps.”
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