US Court Of Appeals Rudely Blocks "Click-to-Cancel" Bill That Would Have Forced Subscription Services To Make Cancelling Membership Easier

Jaque Silva. Shutterstock Images.

A “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, has been blocked by a federal appeals court just days before it was set to go into effect.

The Federal Trade Commission's proposed changes, adopted in October, required businesses to obtain a customer's consent before charging for memberships, auto-renewals and programs linked to free trial offers.

The FTC said at the time that businesses must also disclose when free trials or other promotional offers will end and let customers cancel recurring subscriptions as easily as they started them.

I hate what I learn about something as soon as it doesn't happen. Makes me wish I never knew this was even on the table. Fuck you, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. Whoever the hell you are. I know our country is facing bigger issues. Half the country is flooded. Jeffrey Epstein's client list has vanished into thin air. There are TRANS in SPORTS. But this would have been a nice little win. A win specifically for society's laziest and most unorganized members who will be paying $8.99 a month for SiriusXM until the day they die, because there is no way they will ever go as far as placing an actual phone call to have a conversation with an actual human being.

Subscription services being intentionally difficult to cancel has long been a war on lazy people with a "disposable-ish-but-not-really" income. It'd be one thing if it were small businesses profiting off it. But for the most part, it's all the massive subscription based streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. It stinks that they're the ones who get to capitalize on my irresponsibility. 

Although even if this law did go into effect, and on every home screen you got a big flashing "CLICK HERE TO CANCEL" link, sometimes the real bitch of cancelling is remembering your password. Because of course you have to type that in before cancelling anything. As long as you're watching on the same device, they're perfectly happy to keep taking your money without ever making you re-confirm your identify. But when it's time to say goodbye, then all of the sudden they want to be very sure it isn't some Prank Sinatra who commandeered the remote to cancel your subscriptions (New Girl reference, don't be fooled by the female lead, it's a solid show)

I genuinely couldn't tell you the password to half of the things I'm signed up for. I will always guess them eventually. But it's enough of an inconvenience that it lengthens the cancelling process by a minute or two, which is more than enough time for me to get distracted, tell myself "I'll come back to this in a minute", and then not come back to it for another two years. And if you do wind up being forced to go the 'Forgot Password?' route, then you better hope you didn't sign up for the account with your old inactive college email address. If any of the subscription services I'm signed up for still have my college email, they've got a customer for life.

I know how trivial this all is at the end of the day. It's not like anybody with a working brain and a desire to cancel a subscription can't figure it out if they actually commit to doing so. But it would have been a nice little convenience. It's pro-consumer law that has zero reason to not exist. None of these subscription services will even attempt to give a valid reason as to why they do it. They know that we know what they're doing. And the loophole used to kill this "click-to-cancel" only days before it was set it go into effect seems so shady. 

The FTC rule was set to go into effect on Monday, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said this week that the FTC made a procedural error by failing to come up with a preliminary regulatory analysis, which is required for rules whose annual impact on the U.S. economy is more than $100 million.

The FTC claimed that it did not have to come up with a preliminary regulatory analysis because it initially determined that the rule's impact on the national economy would be less than $100 million. An administrative law judge decided that the economic impact would be more than the $100 million threshold.

The court decided to vacate the rule.

“While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission's rulemaking process are fatal here,” the court wrote.

The FTC declined to comment on Wednesday.

The agency is currently moving forward with its preparations for a trial involving Amazon’s Prime program. The trial stems from a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that accused Amazon of enrolling consumers in its Prime program without their consent and making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions.

The trial is expected to take place next year.

The U.S. economy simply couldn't survive if cancelling subscriptions was the slightest bit convenient. I mean, how can they accurately predict that number? They could have set it anywhere between $10M – $1B, and people would say, "Sure, that sounds about right". 

But surely if that's what the problem is, the Federal Trade Commission would be happy to put together a preliminary regulatory analysis, and once that's together we'll be able to move forward with the click-to-cancel rule as previously planned. Common sense would tell you that one small procedural error wouldn't kill something like this for good. I'm just kidding. That's a ridiculous thought. Should have done your preliminary regulatory analysis when you had the chance. Shame on you FTC. You let the people down. Good luck with Amazon in court next year. I'm sure that'll go much better for you.

P.S. I don't know how this law would have applied to gyms, but of all the subscription/monthly membership based businesses that get a bad wrap for this, gyms are the one's who have really been fleecing people. They might be the worst culprits of them all. When you sign up for a new gym, they treat it like you're enlisting in the fucking Army or something. You have to divulge a ridiculous amount of information. Then in order to become a member, you have to sign the dotted line on a contract which apparently states somewhere that in order to cancel your membership ,you have to show up and do it in person. That's so cruel to lazy out of shape people. People who have a desire to get in shape, but not the discipline to do it. They're forced to drive their out of shape ass back to the gym and fatly tell the hot young front desk attendant that they're a quitter. There's no reason to make people do that. Nobody is out there placing phone calls to cancel other people gym memberships. Half their business model is leveraging shame to guilt people who aren't even using their memberships into keeping them for way longer than they care to. Seinfeld Friends did a whole episode about it.

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I would have bet $1,000 that was an episode of Seinfeld. I swear I remember it being Jerry and George. And it being significantly funnier. No offense, Friends. RIP Matthew Perry