In one of its more popular (if simple) rules, the Federal Trade Commission announced earlier this month that companies must now make canceling subscriptions as easy as enrolling in them, and the process must be transparent. The "Click To Cancel" rule clarifies that it should take the same number of clicks to subscribe and unsubscribe to a service or product, and that any in-person enrollment should have a way to unenroll online and over telephone.

“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription," Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, said in a statement on the new rule. “Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”

Click-to-cancel is an amendment to a 1973 Negative Option Rule, says the Washington Post, which " is when a company notifies a consumer about their subscription expiring, and, if the consumer doesn’t answer, the company can take silence as permission to keep the subscription active."

“It’s just one of the many ways that pricing feels unfair and is unmoored from the stability it once had,” Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, adds. And where companies make it easy and mindless "on the way in", they are “trapping you in a corn maze or Rube Goldberg machine when it’s time to quit.”

But not everyone is against this disparity. According to The Verge, two groups (the Internet and Television Association, Electronic Security Association, and Interactive Advertising Bureau) have filed a joint suit aiming to block the new rule, saying the FTC is acting unconstitutionally and outside its powers by "trying to 'regulate consumer contracts for all companies in all industries and across all sectors of the economy.'"

The US Chamber of Commerce finds the FTC's ruling an overreach as well. "Not only will this rule deter businesses from providing sensible, consumer-friendly subscriptions, but it will leave Americans with fewer options, higher prices, and more headaches,” Neil Bradley of the Chamber said.

Amazon Suit

In one of its more high-profile battles over subscriptions, the FTC sued Amazon last year over its Prime Membership tactics.

"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," Khan said of the case at the time, reports NPR. As the filing details, the company used "manipulative design elements that trick users into making decisions they would not otherwise have made."

In May, Amazon tried unsuccessfully to get the case dismissed, but a judge rejected that bid and a trial date is set for February 2025, says Reuters.

Verdict

Sure, any company would like to trap customers in paying them on a regular cadence indefinitely but…come on. This seems about as direct and clear cut as a federal regulation could get.