In this day and age, the headache-inducing process of trying to cancel a subscription is a widely shared experience. It seems that with every click, you get nowhere, and it can sometimes feel like more pain than it’s worth. In an effort to make this process easier for New Yorkers, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has put a new “click-to-cancel” rule into effect that makes subscriptions as easy to cancel as they were to sign up for.
“In our city, we’re drawing a clear line: if you can sign up with a click, you must be able to cancel with one,” Mamdani explains.
Effective October 1, the rule means that services like gyms, streaming platforms, and other subscriptions can no longer put users through unnecessarily time-consuming processes when they try to cancel. Businesses must offer a straightforward cancellation system using the same method customers used to sign up. New York City is the first municipality in the U.S. to enforce a rule like this, and for busy New Yorkers who already have a lot on their hands, it could be game-changing.
The consequences for businesses that don’t follow the click-to-cancel rule are steep. A first violation can result in a $525 civil penalty, while a second rises to $1,050 and a third or subsequent violation can cost $3,500. Businesses may also be required to reimburse customers for charges made after they first tried to cancel.
The hope is that all of this will add up to some major savings for New Yorkers. According to an estimate from the Roosevelt Institute, the rule could save residents between $21.5 million and $162.5 million each year.
This isn’t the first time that a rule like this has come around. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission approved a nationwide click-to-cancel rule, but its enforcement was delayed in May 2025. Two months later, a federal appeals court vacated the rule after finding that the FTC had failed to complete a required economic analysis. In March 2026, the FTC reopened the issue and asked for public input on how subscription and cancellation practices should be regulated, but it has yet to announce a replacement rule.
The rule will likely have a particularly noticeable impact on businesses like gyms, but the issue goes far beyond them. Amazon, for example, agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC in 2025 over allegations that it enrolled customers in Prime without their consent and made subscriptions unnecessarily difficult to cancel. Of that amount, $1 billion was a civil penalty and $1.5 billion was set aside for consumer refunds.
New York City’s new rule is attempting to stop those kinds of subscription headaches before they happen. At the very least, New Yorkers may finally be able to cancel a membership without having to hunt down a phone number, wait on hold, or click through page after page just to stop paying for something they no longer want. If a company isn’t complying, NYC residents can file a complaint on the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection website.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has put a new “click-to-cancel” rule into effect that makes subscriptions as easy to cancel as they were to sign up for.
Source: NYC’s “Click to Cancel” rule is now in effect
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