Click-to-Cancel Was Vacated. Build the Easy Exit Anyway.

Six days.

That is how much runway the FTC's click-to-cancel rule had left when the Eighth Circuit threw it out on July 8, 2025. Enforcement had been planned for July 14.¹ Businesses had spent months redesigning cancellation flows, and now the rule they were building for was gone.

If you sell anything on a recurring basis, the temptation is obvious: breathe out, shelve the project, go back to the old "call us during business hours" cancellation page. I think that is a mistake, and not mainly because of the law. The exit is part of the product.

This article is educational and is not legal advice. Talk to an attorney about your own setup.

What did the court actually decide?

It decided the FTC cut a corner. It did not decide that hard-to-cancel subscriptions are fine.

The FTC announced the final rule in October 2024 (I covered it in Click-to-Cancel Is Final). It would have required sellers to make it as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, and to clearly disclose material terms before collecting billing information, get express informed consent before charging, and provide a simple way to cancel and immediately halt charges.³

The court's reasoning was procedural. After an administrative law judge found the rule would cost the economy more than $100 million a year, the FTC proceeded without the preliminary regulatory analysis the FTC Act requires. The panel said it "certainly [does] not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing," but that the procedural deficiencies were fatal, and it vacated the entire rule.¹

Does ROSCA still apply to my online offers?

Yes, according to the law firms that have analyzed the decision. Cooley's summary is that ROSCA still requires clear disclosure of renewal terms before billing information is collected, express consent and a simple way to cancel, and that state regulators can enforce it too.²

The same analysis points out that the FTC will likely keep using its general authority against unfair or deceptive subscription practices, including so-called dark patterns.² In other words, the agency lost a tool. It did not lose its interest.

What the states are doing

State law matters more than many solo operators realize. Cooley notes that California and New York both have automatic renewal laws requiring clear disclosures, affirmative consent and easy cancellation, that California's amendments took effect July 1, 2025, and that a Massachusetts regulation taking effect September 2, 2025 requires the cancellation method to be at least as easy as the sign-up method and available through the same medium.²

If you sell to customers in those states, the vacated rule probably changes less than you hope.

Why build the easy exit anyway?

Because customers decide how they feel about you at the moment they try to leave, and that feeling travels.

Effort is what people remember

A widely cited study from the Corporate Executive Board (the same research behind Onboarding Is Where Refunds Are Born), reported in Harvard Business Review as "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers," argued that reducing customer effort, not delighting people, is what drives loyalty.⁴ Apply that to cancellation: a customer who has to hunt for a phone number to leave is having the highest-effort experience you will ever give them. They will remember it, and they will tell people.

The cost shows up somewhere else

A hidden or exhausting exit does not stop people from leaving. It changes how they leave. They dispute the charge with their bank, a cost I laid out in Telehealth Chargebacks and Disputes. They write the review. They post the screenshot. You lose the customer anyway, plus a chargeback, plus the chance to learn why.

What does a good cancellation flow look like?

Boring and fast. The goal is that nobody ever needs to contact support just to leave.

Fix the front end too

The exit starts at the checkout. State the price, the billing frequency, the renewal date and the cancellation method in plain words near the buy button, before billing details are taken. Disclosing material terms before you take billing information is exactly what the FTC's rule and ROSCA call for.³² If you would be uncomfortable reading the terms aloud to the customer, rewrite them.

What should you do this week?

Do not shelve the project. Reduce its scope to the parts that are good business no matter what the rules turn out to be.

Keep the clear price disclosure. Keep the recorded consent. Keep the self-serve cancel link. Skip anything that was only ever about satisfying a rule you now know is gone. And write down the date you reviewed your flow, because the law in this area is still moving.

I have spent about 11 years watching what happens after the click: what people read, what they ignore, where they leave. In my experience the pattern is consistent: businesses that make the exit easy get honest feedback, and businesses that make it hard get surprise chargebacks and a reputation they did not ask for. If you want a second look at your offer and exit flow, see how I work with coaches.

The court took away a deadline. It did not take away the reason.

Keep building.Ekai