The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would have begun imposing the rest of its “click-to-cancel” rule on May 14th, mandating that subscriptions must be as easy to cancel as they are to begin. But now, says the agency on TechCrunch, it will not enforce the rule until July 14th.
Also referred to as the Negative Option Rule, the large part of click-to-cancel is that it prohibits businesses from requiring customers to hop through hoops that vary from the process to enroll in an account. If you can enroll online, you should be able to cancel online, as well. As the FTC highlights, the initial May 14th deadline was itself a delay for that and adjacent provisions.
The agency explains that it decided to delay enforcement even further after “a new evaluation of the burdens that requiring compliance by this date would place.” The FTC voted 3-0 to delay, but as TechCrunch points out, two of a standard five commissioners did not participate in the vote. That’s because they were illegally dismissed by Donald Trump in March.
Perhaps good news for shoppers, though, the FTC explains that as of the new deadline, “regulated entities must be in compliance with the entirety of the Rule because the Commission will start enforcing it.” That being said, it doesn’t dismiss revising any of the provision of the rule, saying that it’s “open to modifying the Rule” if implementing it “brings to light any issues.”