The FTC puts off enforcing its ‘click-to-cancel’ rule

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was set to start enforcing the remaining provisions of its “click-to-cancel” rule on May 14th, requiring that subscriptions be as easy to cancel as to start. Now, the agency says it won’t enforce the rule until July 14th, as TechCrunch reports.

Also known as the Negative Option Rule, the big component of click-to-cancel is that it forbids companies from making customers jump through hoops that differ from the process to sign up for an account. If you can sign up online, you must be able to cancel online, too. As the FTC points out, the original May 14th deadline was already a deferral for that and related provisions.

The agency says it chose to push enforcement back even further after “a fresh assessment of the burdens that forcing compliance by this date would impose.” The FTC voted 3-0 for the delay, but as TechCrunch notes, two of a typical five commissioners were absent from the vote. That’s because they were illegally fired by Donald Trump in March.

Perhaps on the bright side for consumers, the FTC says that starting on the new deadline, “regulated entities must be in compliance with the whole of the Rule because the Commission will begin enforcing it.” However, it doesn’t rule out changing any of the regulation’s provisions, writing that it’s “open to amending the Rule” if enforcing it “exposes any problems.”