The government steps in to make it easier to cancel your subscriptions

• The Federal Trade Commission finalized a rule designed to make canceling subscriptions easier.
• The rule targets “negative option” programs, such as auto-renewing subscriptions.
• The FTC said it received more than 16,000 comments during the rule’s public-comment process.

The government has had it with companies making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced a final “click to cancel” rule requiring companies to make canceling subscriptions just as easy as signing up for them.

“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” Lina Khan, the FTC chair, said in a press release. “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.”

The agency said its amended rule, most of which goes into effect 180 days after being published in the Federal Register, would apply to “almost all negative option programs in any media.”

The Federal Register describes a negative option as an offer that contains a term or condition that lets the seller interpret a customer’s silence, or lack of affirmative action, as acceptance of the offer — like, for example, auto-renewing subscriptions.

The FTC said the updated rule prohibits companies from misrepresenting or omitting facts when marketing negative options; requires them to provide important information before a customer gives over their credit-card details; and requires them to get a customer’s explicit consent to a negative option before charging them.

The agency said its rule aimed to address common problems with these types of subscriptions, such as companies obscuring the terms of their subscriptions, customers getting billed when they didn’t agree to pay, and companies making it difficult or impossible to cancel subscriptions.

The FTC said it gets thousands of complaints a year about companies’ subscription practices, adding that the number had risen in the past five years. In 2021, the agency said, it received an average of 42 consumer complaints a day, while in 2024 it has received an average of nearly 70 complaints a day.

The FTC’s crackdown on deceptive subscription practices has been a long time coming. The agency announced its proposed rule last year but had to go through a lengthy public-comment process before it could be finalized.

The agency said that during that process it received more than 16,000 comments from consumers, federal and state government agencies, consumer groups, and trade associations.