If you’ve ever tried to cancel a recurring subscription and found the process maddeningly difficult (which is usually by design), new rules are coming, and it should become a lot easier.
Today the Federal Trade Commission approved a final rule that aims to make canceling a subscription just as easy as it is to sign up for it in the first place.
The changes affect “negative option programs” that have a feature that “allows a seller to interpret a customer’s silence, or failure to take an affirmative action, as acceptance of an offer,” the new rule says. It takes effect in six months.
“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription. The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release announcing the changes.
The FTC said that it received thousands of consumer complaints about sneaky subscription tactics, citing that the agency received nearly 70 complaints on the topic per day on average in 2024 alone. Over 16,000 comments were submitted to the FTC’s request for public comment on the proposed change.
Companies offering subscriptions will also be prevented from:
Misrepresenting any details of an offer
Failing to disclose the terms before your payment info is collected
Failing to obtain your informed consent before charging you
Failing to offer a way to cancel that’s as easy as the sign-up was and immediately halts charges
In June, the FTC sued Adobe for making it really hard to cancel subscriptions to the company’s Creative Cloud software. In addition to making it hard to find the controls for cancellation, the FTC took issue with hefty cancellation fees that it says were not disclosed clearly to consumers. In an unredacted complaint filed in the case, Adobe executives said such fees were “a bit like heroin for Adobe.”
