In a move proponents say will save constituents up to $162.5 million annually, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other New York City officials on Friday unveiled a “click-to-cancel” rule aimed at ensuring people can end online subscriptions as easily as they start them.
Days after entering office in January, Mamdani signed a pair of executive orders, “Combating Hidden Junk Fees” and “Fighting Subscription Tricks and Traps”—his 9th and 10th mayoral edicts—to protect consumers and make it easier “for New Yorkers to know the real price of what they are buying and to stop paying for the services they no longer want.”
Following up on the orders, Mamdani and New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel A.A. Levine proposed a rule “requiring transparent, all-in pricing that bans hidden junk fees, alongside a final ‘click to cancel’ rule that guarantees consumers can cancel subscriptions as easily as they sign up for them.”
We badly need this, too. I’ve been through several layers of run-around with T-Mobile after we switched carriers. They assured us that if we went through the process to port our phone numbers the account would be shut off automatically after the next billing cycle. But we kept getting bills. Tried to call and talk to someone, but they wouldn’t let us access the account without a security PIN. Which we never set up. “Sorry, we can’t help you.” Finally went into the local store and talked to the manager there. It turns out that the last time they “upgraded” our family plan they granted us an additional line for free, which we never used. Since we didn’t port that number it was still on the account, and they were still billing us for it even though it was never active. So after 3 months we finally got them to shut it down and close the account.