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California Beats the FTC to “Click to Cancel” Law

By Laura Tucker
Click To Cancel Featured

If you’re staring at your credit card bill, wondering when one of your services became $2 more expensive, or slamming the phone down after several phone calls trying to cancel a subscription you no longer want, there may be some relief soon – especially if you live in California. While the Federal Trade Commission has spent more than a year working on a “Click to Cancel” law, “One-Click” just became a law in the state of California.

FYI: the FTC is also suing Adobe over its hidden fees and subscription model.

The Pain of Subscription Gouging

It’s a real problem in the technology age. It’s just too easy to get signed up for a subscription. Many of us have them. It’s easy to let them accumulate. Sign up for this one because you want this discount, sign up for this one because you really want to watch this show, and the channel it’s airing on requires a subscription.

Good to know: learn about the cheapest Netflix plan you can get without ads.

You look on your credit card bill two years later and realize you’re still paying for that service or that the price has been raised against your knowledge. You start scanning through your emails looking for a notification regarding the service, but it’s difficult, as everything you purchase puts you on its mailing list, and you get at least one email every day from these services.

Click To Cancel Paid Subscription
Image source: Pixabay

I’m really bad with this. I sign up for services to review something, try something, or even sign up for a news service because I want to read about tech news and how it affects the industry. But I can’t just cancel it. Some want me to call them to cancel. Why? I clicked to sign up, so why can’t I click to cancel?

I’ve had a Sirius subscription in my car for 12 years. Somewhere down the line I added to that to get Sirius in my home when they had a deal. Then I added my daughter’s car. Through that, I discovered that Sirius had quietly raised my subscription so much, it was like it doubled. It was like a car payment every month. Why am I paying this? It took hours of phone calls and demands to talk to a supervisor before I got them to reconfigure the price for me.

And I know that I am not alone.

California Passes Assembly Bill 2863 into Law

It seems lawmakers in California could no longer wait for the FTC to put their law into action. Since March of last year, the FTC has been working on a “Click to Cancel” provision. The goal is to stop companies from making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions. Some of the subscriptions were not even initiated by the consumer. It should take just one “click to cancel” to be removed.

Click To Cancel Subscribed

But California doesn’t want to keep waiting for that provision to go into effect. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2863 into law on Tuesday. It provides measurers to protect consumers on contracts signed or renewed after July 1, 2025. Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, said that it should be as simple to end a subscription as it was to start it.

It calls for no surprise subscriptions. Companies need to get consent from the consumer before adding them to a subscription that goes on in perpetuity. Additionally, there should be a toll-free phone number to cancel simply, as well as an online option that only requires them to click to cancel. Also, consumers must get annual reminders about the cost of the subscription and how to cancel it.

If California can create this provision and get it approved, there’s no reason why the FTC can’t go back to the table and figure out how to pass Click to Cancel so that everyone would have the same protection that California residents will have starting in 2025. Learn how to cancel Amazon Prime and Apple TV+.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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