Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California’s “click to cancel” Assembly Bill 286 into law to make it easier for consumers to opt out of subscriptions. The bill, introduced in April 2024, forces companies that permit online or in-app sign-ups to allow for online or in-app unsubscribing as well.
"AB 2863 is the most comprehensive ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation in the nation, ensuring Californians can cancel unwanted automatic subscription renewals just as easily as they signed up — with just a click or two,” said California Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo.
Time to set my VPN to California
Will this actually work or will companies go off your billing address? I guess you could probably technically get a proxy address in California for billing. Regardless, this should just be a national law.
Companies that do business in CA will likely follow the law for all of their customers. It’s far more expensive to try to have two systems and possibly handle a CA resident incorrectly.
Correct. This happens on a global scale too: it’s why everything is using GDPR compliant cookie dialogs now.
You underestimate the capacity for corporate pettiness
And how bad is the architecture of their legacy systems.
I assure you they won’t. It’s not going to be that expensive to only show an option if you’re in California. Companies already do this with other things like privacy related stuff.
If the company is already a scumbag company that makes it impossible to cancel, this will only stop them where they have to follow a law.
The reason you see all the pop ups for cookies nowadays is because of GDPR, a European law. It absolutely does work like this. It’s vastly cheaper to run one system then 2 systems. It’s the same reason California emissions laws become defacto laws for the rest of the country.
GDPR has a weird quirk of applying to all EU citizens whether or not they’re currently in the EU. Cars are physical things and it is harder to make different models. A check of “Is California billing address? Show button. No? Don’t show button.” would be trivial to implement and would probably result in enough money to make it worth it.
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It’s expensive if you screw up and handle a CA resident wrong. It’s also easy to get fined, and easy for the fines to scale up.
Colorado and California have laws that say you have to list salaries on job postings. As a result, many job posting say “not eligible for residents of Colorado or California” on them, even when the posting is specifically looking for people from those states l.
I’m wondering if this new law has that loophole where companies can just say “hey, we told people from California that our service wasn’t for them. It’s not our fault that they still signed up for it.”
If they don’t mind not doing business in CA then they are probably fine.
Apple: Hold my doesn’t-cure-cancer fruit smoothie!
Doubt they’ll go by IP location, but there may be a workaround depending on the service.
For example, California already has a similar law around cancelling gym memberships initiated online. Planet Fitness customers can just set their “home gym” to one in California to get access to one-click cancellation, even if their billing address is in another state.
I’d like to say that companies will just make this the standard for everyone, like they did with California emissions standards for cars, but the reality is that it will be very difficult to take action against a company that doesn’t have their headquarters in California. This isn’t like GDPR where a large federal government will fine you into oblivion if you fail to comply while doing business in their jurisdiction. A lot of companies will probably just ignore this.
Well shit… that’s an amazing idea.
Would a company only show the button when they have to? Or would they be a nice company, and just add the button for everybody? :D
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Neither. They’ll ignore the law completely because the $3.50 fine they’ll have to pay (in the extremely rare chance anyone powerful enough notices in the first place) will be worth it to them and the ones that aren’t based in California will never see real consequences for ignoring the law.