Efforts in Congress to create a federal “click to cancel” rule — intended to make canceling subscriptions as easy as it is to sign up for them — have ramped up.
A bipartisan House bill called the Unsubscribe Act was introduced in mid-January as a companion to a Senate measure proposed in July. Among other provisions, it would require companies that offer subscriptions to provide easy cancellations and to get consumers’ approval before charging them after a free or reduced-cost period.
The measure joins two other bills floated in July — one in each the House and Senate — that generally would reinstate a click-to-cancel rule from the Federal Trade Commission that didn’t take effect last year as scheduled due to a federal appeals court striking it down. The FTC’s rule was similar to the Unsubscribe Act.
Alongside the congressional push, more than half of states now have some sort of law on the books that is similar in theme to the Unsubscribe Act and the FTC’s rule, said Gonzalo Mon, a partner with the law firm of Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington.
“This does seem to be a bipartisan issue, and a lot of regulators are concerned about consumers getting into subscriptions without knowing all the details,” Mon said.
