America is trapped in a nightmare of never-ending subscriptions

The 59-year-old could no longer afford the monthly fee, so a year after he signed up, he went back to the gym's website to cancel it. But it didn't have an option for members to cancel online, so he called the gym and was told he had to come in person. So he went to the gym, but even then he couldn't cancel — he recalls the employees telling him that they didn't "have the ability to stop it or do anything on it" because only his gym's parent company was authorized to cancel his membership. "In the meantime," he says, "they're still charging my account."

Mattison, who lives in Ohio, said the whole reason he chose this gym was that it didn't have a binding contract — he assumed that when he no longer wanted to pay for a membership, he'd be able to get out of it. After the parent company's customer-service reps told him they couldn't assist him online or over the phone and did not offer him an alternate route, Mattison reached out to his bank, which ultimately canceled the card he'd used to pay for the membership and told him plenty of customers had trouble getting out of similar services.

"The bank even said that they see this happening a lot," Mattison said, referring to customers having trouble with cancellations. "They said the good news was that I only gave them a card number instead of my actual account number. Then it's a lot more hassle."

While Mattison was glad to have found a solution, it took three months to get free. He described it as "the worst experience I've ever had with any type of membership." And he's not alone — companies have gotten increasingly savvy at trapping customers in what are known as "dark patterns," drawing them in with a shiny new product or discounted subscription that ends up being burdensome to get out of. The tactics companies use to keep people on the treadmill of recurring charges can range from slick, attractive product design to deceptive fraud. And in a world where people seldom read the fine print, consumers don't have much recourse when they find they can't cancel something they no longer want. In a 2022 survey from C+R Research, respondents estimated they spent an average of $86 a month on subscriptions, but when they were asked to individually break down their monthly payments based on their bank statements, they were, in reality, spending an average of $219. Additionally, 42% of respondents indicated they'd forgotten they were continuing to pay for products they no longer used.

In an attempt to combat these practices, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday finalized a rule known as "Click-to-Cancel" that addresses the issue. The rule, which goes into effect in 180 days, would require most businesses to make the cancellation of subscriptions just as easy as the sign-up process, as well as protect customers from other dark pattern tactics.

While the new rule is a strong stab at solving the issue, companies have spent years perfecting their methods of roping in new customers. Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, a consumer-law professor at New York University, told me that most people, no matter how smart they think they are, are vulnerable to traps such as hidden fees, misleading website layouts, or confusing terms and conditions.

"There's lots of biases that consumers have," Marotta-Wurgler said. "They care more about the immediate rewards than the cost, and a lot of these services are created or designed to exploit these biases to really dangle the shiny object that they want and then just to hide the cost later or when consumers might forget."

"This is all by design. This is a way that companies can make a lot of money," Witte said. "These automatically recurring subscription plans and free-trial conversions, they basically capitalize on people not consenting actively to something over and over again. When you've forgotten that you signed up for it, it's a lot easier to just keep charging and charging and charging."

These dark patterns usually involve two steps. First, the company makes it easy or desirable to opt for the recurring charge. Marotta-Wurgler pointed to Amazon's "subscribe and save" feature, in which the online retail giant offers a discount for agreeing to have a certain product delivered monthly. The website makes the subscription the default option during checkout, causing many consumers to enroll without realizing it.

Second, the company keeps people subscribed using "negative options," or contracts in which it interprets a consumer's silence or failure to act as an agreement to continue purchasing the product. These frequently take the form of subscriptions that automatically renew unless the consumer cancels, and it's a primary way people find themselves paying for a service they didn't realize they were still being billed for.

Some consumers have submitted public comments to the Federal Trade Commission about their frustrations with subscription cancellations. "I and many others have continuously been charged without consent for renewal of products," one person wrote. "The charging should be abundantly clear from the start, as ultimately whether or not the consumer wants to pay should be the consumers choice and not the business."

The prevalence of these tactics and of consumer anger prompted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue guidance last year saying that companies were at risk of violating federal law should they fail to clearly disclose the terms of a negative-option service or make consumers jump through hoops to cancel a subscription. A CFPB official told me that the agency had seen "a lot of problems" with vague disclosures and rage-inducing cancellation processes in which consumers have to repeatedly speak with customer-service representatives for unreasonably long periods, preventing them from articulating their intent to cancel a subscription because they oftentimes cannot remain on hold long enough to do so.

In some cases, these issues have led to litigation — the bureau sued TransUnion in 2022 over allegations that the credit-reporting agency "used an array of dark patterns to trick people into recurring payments and to make it difficult to cancel them." These tactics, the bureau alleged, included crafting a website with misleading buttons to give consumers the impression that they could access a credit score for free; instead, clicking the button would sign them up for recurring monthly charges using credit-card information they'd provided to verify their identity. TransUnion said at the time that the bureau's claims were "meritless and in no way reflect the consumer-first approach we take to managing all our businesses." A decision on the case is pending.

Consumers are lured into subscriptions across all industries — and Marotta-Wurgler said that without enhanced regulation, such as a requirement to disclose terms of a subscription upfront rather than conceal it in the fine print, companies have few incentives to change their ways.

"When we're talking about consumer protection, the burden is always on the consumer," she said. "So the consumer needs to make the choice, and it's on the consumer to know what they're signing up for."

Some business leaders oppose stricter regulations like the FTC's new Click-To-Cancel rule because they're concerned that making it easier to get out of subscriptions could cause consumers to accidentally miss out on products they still might want. The Association of National Advertisers argued in a public comment to the Federal Trade Commission that "if sellers are required to enable cancellation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancellations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click." The association added that accidental cancellations could cause customers to miss out on essential items, like food, and it would be burdensome for the customer to once again have to go through the sign-up process to renew their subscriptions. Witte dismissed this sort of thinking as short-sighted, arguing that companies could benefit from making their interfaces more consumer-friendly. "Actual affirmative consent from a consumer," Witte said, would establish trust between the consumer and the company, boosting loyalty. The FTC's new rule would make this sort of assent a reality: companies now have to adjust their sign-up processes so consumers explicitly confirm they want a subscription that automatically renews and understand the terms before they are charged, and companies have to be able to prove that consumers knew what they agreed to before they signed up.

"The FTC really wants to make sure, with this rule, that consumers are getting what they want and what they understand and what they agree to, and that businesses are serving consumers that want their product, not people who have just forgotten about a subscription or have had too much trouble getting out of it," Witte told me.

While there are federal laws designed to prevent companies from lying in their advertising, Cuban argued that it would be "a waste of time" to take any legal action against the company, like sending them cease-and-desist orders, because the companies frequently close and open different legal entities to stay ahead of these claims. Some customers who were deceived by the ads have emailed Cuban asking for help getting out of the subscription. He forwarded me examples of a few of the emails he received: One customer said the gummy ad claimed that all "Shark Tank" investors had endorsed the product, but she ended up being charged an additional $200 for a product the company added alongside the 30-day supply, prompting her to immediately email the company to cancel the order. "This higher transaction will cause my checking account to be over and will cause my rent and utilities to bounce," she wrote. Cuban recommended everyone who signed up for the service to call their bank to cancel the charges.

When dark patterns tip into outright scams and fraudulent subscription practices, the experience of being deceived can take a toll on consumers financially and mentally. Witte said consumers often feel like these situations are their fault. In retrospect, customers think they should have noticed red flags or read the fine print before entering their credit-card information. But companies have sophisticated technology to prevent you from looking into any red flags such as subscription pop-up windows that advertise the perks of a product but do not disclose the fine print.

"It's easy for consumers to look back and use their hindsight and say, 'Man, I really wish I had seen that or looked more carefully at this,'" Witte said. "But it's not always just about consumer awareness, and I think it really is much more about the product of manipulative design process."

"It's just been a constant battle," she told me. "I'm working full time, I'm going to school for my MBA, so I have no time. So I'm hoping they just canceled it because if not, I'm just paying for something and still not able to get anything out of it."

There could be some relief on the horizon — the Click-to-Cancel rule is a key step that could result in tangible benefits for consumers, Witte said — but she noted that it does not include a requirement for companies to send consumers annual notices about their subscriptions and provide them with an opportunity to cancel, which would have been an effective safeguard. The FTC is likely being as cautious as possible to avoid lawsuits against the rule, she said.

Marotta-Wurgler described the initiative as a step in the right direction. "Companies have been able to get away with this because we've been playing Whac-A-Mole for a very long time," she said.

Marotta-Wurgler argued that requiring structural changes in business practices, like implementing a bolstered federal standard for disclosing terms, would help prevent consumers from being lured into dark patterns. More attention at the state and federal levels would also help. Along with litigation from the CFPB, state attorneys general have pursued legal action against big companies over hard-to-cancel subscriptions. Last year, Letitia James, New York's attorney general, sued SiriusXM over claims that the radio company trapped customers in subscriptions and maintained a complicated and burdensome cancellation process. SiriusXM called the allegations "meritless" and asked for the case to be dismissed. The case is still pending.

Industries have mastered techniques to maximize their profits by crafting their business models in confusing ways that can lure customers into a subscription without realizing it. With government attention, there's potential for change — but in the meantime, the burden is on the consumer to be vigilant or risk losing money.

"It can be really time-intensive and confusing and burdensome, and that's frustrating to people. So it's not just about losing money, but it's also wasting a lot of time," Witte said. "That doesn't have to be that way."

Ayelet Sheffey is a senior economic policy reporter on Business Insider's economy team.