Most services are easy to sign up for. You enter some info, punch in those credit card numbers, and shazam! A subscription is born. The reverse isn’t always the case. Many companies make cancelling their services way harder than subscribing, which should be illegal. In fact, it’s about to be.
The FTC is officially cracking down on this type of shady activity. It’s called “Click to Cancel,” and it details how, among other requirements, the FTC expects companies to abide by a simple rule: It should be as easy to cancel a service as it is to subscribe to it. It’s not the first time they’ve taken steps towards fixing the issue, which I’ve previously written about. However, up until now, most of the companies acting in bad faith haven’t changed their behavior at all. Now that the FTC is about to make its views legal, these companies will have no other choice.
That said, the rule doesn’t take effect until 180 days after the FTC publishes it. While I hope companies get their acts together quicker than that, they won’t have to, which means we might have to deal with some scummy practices for another half year or so.
You probably have your fair share of experiences with these companies, as do I. A ways back, I subscribed online to a newspaper that was offering a good introductory rate. The paper kept raising its monthly fee until I couldn’t justify the cost. So, time to cancel—except the website’s cancellation page only invited me to give them a call, with no option to cancel online. Fantastic, let me just find time to call the newspaper.
It went about as well as you’d expect: The rep was so sorry to hear I was cancelling, then revealed I could keep my subscription at a “special rate.” No thanks, I’d like to cancel please. But apparently just for me, there was an even better special rate! No thanks, just a cancellation, please. To that, the rep responded, “Sir, if you cancel your subscription, how are you going to read your news?” JUST. CANCEL. THE. SUBSCRIPTION.
Wouldn’t you rather just click a few buttons? Me too.
You can cancel these subscriptions online
Being forced to call in is unacceptable when subscribing takes 30 seconds online. But until the FTC’s new rules actually force these shady companies to change, there is something you can do to fight back: lie.
As it turns out, this isn’t a universal problem: Some states have enforceable laws on the books requiring companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. California is the shining example: Since 2018, the state requires companies to offer California-based customers a way to cancel online. Paradise.
If you’re one of the 290 million U.S. citizens who don’t live in California, that’s OK. You just need the company in question to think you live in a state that requires them to offer you an online cancellation. All you need to do is change your billing address to a valid address in the state, and you’re good to go. Head to Google Maps, pick a California house you like, and pretend you live there for a minute while you cancel your news subscription.
This original idea comes from this post on X, sent in reply to a Marques Brownlee thread about shady subscription cancellations. It turns out New York has similar laws, and changing to a NYC billing address likewise forced a theretofore absent “Cancel Subscription” button to appear on the Wall Street Journal’s website.
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Until these companies adopt the FTC’s Click to Cancel rule, we’ll need to rely on the laws in individual states, and move to them for a few minutes while we cancel our predatory subscriptions.