The cancel button, and the federal rule that was struck down before it took effect
Click-to-cancel was vacated in July 2025, days before it applied. What survived is one federal statute and a state law that is stricter than the rule that died.
by The editors · Published · 6 min read
For about a year the answer to “can they make me phone up to cancel” was going to be a simple no. The FTC's amended Negative Option Rule - the one everyone called click-to-cancel - would have required cancellation to be as easy as sign-up. Then, in the FTC's own words, “On July 8, 2025, shortly before businesses would need to comply with all parts of the Rule, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the amended Rule, holding that the Commission had failed to conduct the preliminary regulatory analysis required under section 22 of the FTC Act”[1]. It was struck down on procedure, not on the merits, and it never took effect.
What survived at the federal level
One statute, and it is narrower than most people assume. The FTC states it plainly in the same document: “ROSCA is the only Federal law primarily designed to regulate negative option marketing, but it is limited to seller transactions effected on the internet”[1]. The Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act makes it unlawful to charge for something sold online through a negative option feature unless the seller, among other things, “provides simple mechanisms for a consumer to stop recurring charges”[2].
Read that clause closely, because the wording is the whole story. Simple mechanisms is a standard, not a specification. It does not say a button, it does not say online, and it does not say it has to be as easy as signing up was. That last idea - symmetry between joining and leaving - is precisely what the vacated rule would have added, and precisely what is now missing.
And the state law that is stricter than the rule that died
California's Automatic Renewal Law does specify a button. A business that lets a consumer sign up online “shall allow a consumer to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, at will, and without engaging any further steps”, and the method must be “a prominently located direct link or button which may be located within either a customer account or profile, or within either device or user settings”[3]. That is a cancel button, written into a statute, with a location requirement attached.
The same law closes the obvious escape route. If a business offers cancellation by phone, it “shall answer calls promptly during normal business hours and shall not obstruct or delay the consumer's ability to cancel”, and where a consumer leaves a voicemail, the business must “within one business day, either process the requested cancellation or call the consumer back regarding the cancellation request”[4]. A retention queue that runs out the clock is not a cancellation mechanism, and California says so in a sentence.
The provision almost nobody knows
Section 17603 of the same code: where a business ships goods under a continuous service agreement or automatic renewal “without first obtaining the consumer's affirmative consent as described in Section 17602, the goods, wares, merchandise, or products shall for all purposes be deemed an unconditional gift to the consumer”, with no obligation even to pay return shipping[5]. Be precise about what that covers: it is the remedy for goods sent without proper consent, not a general penalty for a missing cancel button. It is still the sharpest sentence in American subscription law, and it is worth knowing before a company tells you what you owe.
So what does this mean for you
It means the answer depends on where you live in a way it does not in most of Europe, and that is an uncomfortable thing to write on a personal finance site. If you are a California consumer, the online button is a legal requirement and its absence is a violation. Elsewhere, ROSCA's “simple mechanisms” is what you have federally, and several other states have their own automatic renewal statutes with their own wording. What is true everywhere is that the charge continues while you are working out which applies.
What the delay costs while you find out
Worth doing. $1,080 per hour for 20 minutes of work.
| Currently per year | $360 |
| New per year | $0 |
| Saving per year | $360 |
| Switching bonus, one-off | $0 |
| Switching cost, one-off | $0 |
| In the first year | $360 |
| Your hourly rate for this | $1,080 |
Assumptions behind this calculation
- Above this hourly rate we call a switch worthwhile. That is our judgement, not a measurement.: $50
- A switching bonus counts in the first year only. Folding it into the annual saving promises it every year.
A $29.99 subscription you meant to cancel is $360 a year, and twenty minutes is a generous estimate of the work even when the process is deliberately awkward. That figure is the reason this article exists: the legal position is genuinely unsettled, and the cost of waiting for it to settle is not. Cancel first, and read about the rulemaking afterwards.
Where this article stops
This is a description of published law and not legal advice, and the FTC has reopened the rulemaking - the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published on 13 March 2026[1], so the federal position may well change again. State automatic renewal statutes vary and this article covers one of them. If real money is in dispute, your state attorney general's consumer protection office is the place to take it, and it costs nothing.
What you can do about it
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Cancel in writing, and keep the timestamp
Whatever route you use, produce a record with a date on it: a confirmation email, a screenshot of the confirmation page, the reference number from the call. Almost every dispute about a subscription is a dispute about when you cancelled, and the party with a timestamp wins it.
-
Look for the button before you look for the phone number
If the company let you sign up online, start by looking for cancellation inside your account or profile, and in the device or app store settings where the subscription may actually live. A charge billed through an app store is cancelled there and not with the company, and that catches out a lot of people who think they have cancelled and have not.
-
Do not cancel by disputing the card
Blocking the payment is not cancelling the contract. The obligation continues, the account can go to collections, and you have swapped a subscription you did not want for a collections entry you want even less. Cancel the agreement first; use the card dispute only for charges that continue after a documented cancellation.
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Diary the renewal date, not the cancellation date
Annual subscriptions renew on a date you agreed to a year ago and have not thought about since. Put the renewal date in a calendar with a reminder a fortnight before, at the moment you sign up. That single entry prevents more unwanted years than any rule ever will.
Frequently asked
Does the California rule protect me if I do not live in California?
Not by itself. In practice a company that builds one cancellation flow for all customers often builds the compliant one, which is why the button frequently exists anyway. But that is a business decision you cannot rely on, and it is not a right you can invoke. Check whether your own state has an automatic renewal statute; a growing number do, with meaningfully different wording.
Is click-to-cancel coming back?
The FTC restarted the process and published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in March 2026, which is the first step and not the last one. Anything beyond that would be a prediction, and predicting what a rulemaking will produce is not something this page will do. What can be said is that the vacatur was procedural, which is the kind of defect an agency can cure.
The company says I have to call. Is that legal?
It depends where you are and how you signed up. Federally, ROSCA requires a simple mechanism without specifying which one, so a phone line is not automatically unlawful. In California, if you signed up online, an online termination method is required outright. Either way, a phone line that keeps you waiting or refuses to process the request is a separate problem from which mechanism is offered, and California addresses it explicitly.
This article is not legal advice.
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