by: Omar Gallaga | CNET
A year after an appeals court effectively canceled a nationwide regulation requiring companies to make it easier to get out of subscriptions, New York City has 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. That applies to gym memberships, a cellphone contract or apps that charge 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 set by an executive order in January and went into effect on Oct. 1.
“No one should need 45 minutes of hold 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 be able to 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 web page where New Yorkers can file a complaint. The site allows a visitor to search for or add a business, even if it’s not based in New York City, and select from a list of issues, such as, “The business delayed canceling your subscription,” or, “You were not informed of auto-renewal.” A text box and an option to upload documents, such as screenshots, allow for elaboration on what happened. Those filing complaints can also choose the type of outcome they’d like to see, including “refund and cancel subscription.”
According to Samuel Levine, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, full-time staffers will field those web-submitted complaints. “They’re not going to be diverted into a chatbot doom loop,” Levine told The Verge. “We’re going to have actual people whose full-time job is to help them.”
Businesses that are the subject of a complaint will be investigated, and if they’re found to be in violation of the city rules, they could be fined up to $525 per violation.
Other places, other rules
What will happen in the rest of the country, where, according to a CNET survey, Americans spend on average more than $1,300 a year on subscriptions, some of them unused or subscribed to by accident?
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of competition and market fairness 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 yet again that local and state consumer protection agencies are stepping up to protect consumers even while federal agencies aren’t and provides a roadmap for other regulators to do the same.”
California, for instance, has a rule that requires businesses to get a customer’s explicit consent before they are charged for a subscription renewal.
That law was beefed up last year to include protections like offering cancellation on the same medium the subscription originated; a business can’t, for instance, 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 charge and to give annual reminders about auto-renewals using the same method of communication used to enroll.
A Maryland law that went into effect in June also requires companies to give customers a “cost-effective, timely and easy-to-use” way to cancel auto-renewals of subscriptions. The law falls under Maryland’s Service Contracts and Consumer Products Guaranty 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 merchants 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 because of a procedural error. When the Eighth District Court of Appeals struck it down, the court said it was because the proper regulatory analysis hadn’t been done, not because the court disagreed with its intent or approach.
There are signs that the Federal Trade Commission could be taking 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 was submitting a draft proposal related to “Negative Option Plans,” another way of saying auto-renewals, in which businesses don’t give customers notice or the option to cancel for ongoing subscription charges. In March, the FTC opened up the floor for public comment after it said it received 100,000 complaints in five years over businesses making cancellations difficult or impossible.
A representative for the FTC told CNET in an email, “We don’t have an update related to this issue” regarding click-to-cancel or the New York City law.
Peterson-Cassin of the CFA said that so far the FTC has mostly focused on disclosing fees rather than banning auto-renewals, “so it’s hard for us to believe they would 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, there is still time for them to do the right thing, and protect all Americans from these predatory subscription traps.”
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Omar Gallaga has covered technology, digital culture and other topics for outlets including CNET, NPR, Wired, Texas Monthly, MSNBC, Consumer Reports, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic and the Austin American-Statesman, where he was a longtime tech reporter, editor and podcaster. He lives in the Texas Hill Country. See full bio