NYC is now the first city in America that bans sketchy subscriptions

New York City residents struggling to get out of recurring subscription fees can now submit complaints to the city government. As of Thursday, the city’s click-to-cancel rule has taken effect, which requires businesses to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. That means a gym that lets you join online, for example, can’t make you call or go in person to end your subscription.

It’s the first municipality to see the rule take effect, after an appeals court struck down a federal version for procedural issues. The city expects it to save New Yorkers anywhere from $21.5 million to $162.5 million annually. And to NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel Levine, it’s an example of how state and local governments can hold companies accountable when federal efforts fail.

Levine was the Federal Trade Commission consumer protection chief under Lina Khan, and he tried to usher in the click-to-cancel rule at a national level. He says the experience of implementing the rule in NYC has been “night and day.”

“We proposed this rule this year. We finalized it this year. It’s taking effect this year. This is the speed of government as it should be,” Levine tells The Verge in an exclusive interview. While Levine says he’s proud of his work on the FTC rule and sees it as a “model” for other state and local governments, “at the end of the day, it took more than four years. And then after all of that, it never actually gave Americans the relief they needed.” While the FTC under current Chair Andrew Ferguson has taken an initial step toward potentially reestablishing a similar rule, Levine is betting that more municipalities will do so first. While that leaves fewer Americans protected, it still creates a deterrent for businesses to engage in deceptive subscription practices.

“This is the speed of government as it should be”

In New York, consumers can use a new portal to file complaints if they believe a business gave them unclear subscription terms, delayed cancellation, or failed to inform them the subscription would auto-renew. After filing a complaint, DCWP will review it and could reach out for more information and try to get consumers’ money back and help them cancel relevant subscriptions. If the agency sees a pattern of noncompliance at a certain business, it could prompt further investigation and legal action. Under the rule, businesses could face fines starting at $525 per violation.

The mayor’s Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crew built the portal in 10 weeks; Levine assures consumers that the experience will be far different from the White House’s newly launched America.gov, which he says appears to be “just an AI chatbot layered on top of the federal government’s existing infrastructure.” When consumers submit a complaint to the click-to-cancel portal, Levine says, “they’re not going to be diverted into a chatbot doom loop. We’re going to have actual people whose full-time job is to help them.”

He also says it won’t be like going to a DMV office to renew your driver’s license. “If we want to restore people’s faith in government and the ability of government to deliver, we need to show that government can create excellent products. We need to show that every experience is not going to the DMV. And I mean, no offense to our colleagues at the DMV,” Levine says. “People have really bad associations with interacting with the government, and sometimes that deters them from filing complaints. You can have the best laws in the world, but at the end of the day, if your eyes and ears, the people you’re working to protect, don’t want to actually deal with the government and tell us what happened, those laws are not going to be effective.”

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.