It was about to get easier to get rid of that pesky subscription you’ve been stuck paying for until the Federal Trade Commission delayed enforcement of its new click-to-cancel rule.
Former FTC chair Lina Khan, in a Thursday post on X, said that the enforcement delay will give firms more time “to keep trapping people in subscriptions.”
Most consumers are familiar with the unwanted subscription rigamarole: It’s painlessly simple to sign up online for a streaming service, gym, or other subscription, but when the time comes to stop monthly payments and unsubscribe, there’s no way to do it digitally, and you’re forced into the dreaded routine of navigating call center chatbots that only seem to operate during the middle of your workday.
The FTC’s click-to-cancel rule was supposed to go into effect in its entirety this week, ending the nightmarish cycle and making it just as easy for consumers to cancel their subscriptions as it was to start them. But on Friday, the commission’s leaders voted to extend its enforcement deadline by two more months.
“Having conducted a fresh assessment of the burdens that forcing compliance by this date would impose, the Commission has determined that the original deferral period insufficiently accounted for the complexity of compliance,” read a statement from Chairman Andrew Ferguson, co-signed by commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Mark Meador, about the decision.
After the FTC approved the click-to-cancel rule, also known as the Negative Option Rule, in November 2024, businesses had more than six months to comply before enforcement was scheduled to begin.
The rule’s requirement to remove statements that misrepresent the nature of a subscription took effect on January 14. Its enforcement provisions — requiring clear disclosures, user consent, and easy cancellation policies — were set to take effect on May 14. However, the FTC’s latest decision pushes the enforcement deadline back by 60 days, to July 14.
“We object to the delay,” former FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter said in a joint statement posted to social media on Tuesday. “And were we allowed to exercise our duties as commissioners, we would have voted ‘no.'”
Bedoya and Slaughter were the only two Democrats serving as FTC commissioners until March 18, when President Donald Trump fired them. The pair, whose terminations indicated their service at the FTC was “inconsistent” with Trump’s policy priorities, have filed suit against the administration, alleging their firings violate a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that the president cannot fire FTC commissioners without cause, CNN reported.
Even if Bedoya and Slaughter had remained at the FTC, the conservative majority at the commission would be able to pass rules via a 3-2 vote. The decision to delay the click-to-cancel enforcement received a 3-0 vote, with all three Republican commissioners voting in favor of the deadline extension.
“The companies create these traps,” Bedoya and Slaughter’s statement continued. “They’re the ones who made it so hard to get out. They didn’t have to wait to make it easier to unsubscribe. But they did — they waited until the FTC told them to stop. Then, they still got six months to get their houses in order. Why do they get another two months to comply?”
Representatives for the FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Read the full article here
