New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

It's unclear whether this junk fee law will have teeth. In theory, California has the same anti-drip pricing law, but restaurants have a specific carve out [1] which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.

From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

These rules are great but “landmark” seems like puffery, as California has had such rules for quite a while.

Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.

I wonder if the bit about 'junk fees' will include undisclosed hotel fees. I just stayed there last week in a no-frills "hotel" which doesn't include daily room cleaning, has no staff at night, and has no amenities whatsoever, and they charged me a surprise-at-check-in $35 a night resort fee. This fee was not described in the booking.

Funny this should come up today.

I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.

Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.

This is what legitimate government looks like. Leaders actually advocating for the people who are being deceived by those in power instead of helping those in power.

While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.

Is this something that cities can really enforce? Like I get that NYC is a bit of an exception but let's say a 5 person town in Wyoming decides that they want to make this practice illegal and they all vote to do so. It's not clear to me that would mean anything at all.

Nintendo (subscription I have for my switch to access some older a classic games btw) is very good reminding me I have a subscription and whether I want to cancel (or renew). I don't have the email at hand but what I remember is thinking they really desire you to reflect to cancel (rather than a push to renew) if not wanting continued service. Sentiment of politeness and I find a good example what to do.

Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.

I suppose right now there is no federal preemption - but I fully expect gym & similar lobbying at the federal level to get a rule in place to allow preemption challenges.

Will New York City residents be able to avoid AT&T's "Administrative and Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee"?

https://www.al.com/news/2026/07/att-customers-your-cell-phon...

Just want to add to the pile that The New York Times is notorious for its unsubscription shenanigan

I remember trying to cancel NYT subscription a few years back and it was almost impossible. I didn't expect it from such a reputable establishment.

Be careful of Paypal! Go info your subscriptions section and check it out - there's a decade of past ones, including companies in the grave. Some aren't, like Evernote, which renewed automatically for a year on an old email I don't have access to.

The irony with all this, is if a company makes it difficult to cancel their subscription, it's probably not a good product. Antidotically, I've found that making it easy for users to not only cancel, but refund, has given me eye opening things to fix in some products that made it so less people cancelled or refunded. So I try to always err on best user experience.

Probably a great decision, but why/how can it be decided at a local level by a mayor, instead of a federal level?

Wow, only in the US. In every other country, this is not a problem.

> When the Biden administration introduced a junk fee rule in 2024, the US Chamber of Commerce argued it was “an attempt to micromanage businesses’ pricing structures”, and apartment fees were cut from that federal rule after lobbying by the real-estate industry.

This drives me nuts to read, because it’s usually the same pattern.

Rule -> lobbyists descend -> politicians cave -> carve out that takes away the whole point of the rule -> everyone declares victory

How about banning the most deceptive practice that is advertising prices without taxes?

Fantastic, this is brilliant.

I have tried to cancel a newspaper subscription in the UK a few times, which is only possible by telephone, and they have a serious churn-reduction program in place where I end up getting a major discount on the subscription.

Just compel Stripe to do it,* problem 99% solved.

*Direct click-to-cancel with subscription receipt.

Requiring companies to state the actual price you will pay? Makes total sense. What I don't understand, is why thus is not already the case.

Why do hidden fees not fall under deceptive advertising, which is already actionable?

Maybe it should be required to review quality laws in other countries in general. One advantage is that you don't have to pretend or imagine what will happen if it's been tested in the wild.

This is really a banking / credit card thing. CC suppliers put a lot of effort into packaging recurring subscriptions for their businesses because … people forget to cancel. So the real leverage here is not go to each individual website to one click cancel, but just cancel the direct debit / subscription from in your banking or credit card app.

That's pretty much standard in the EU. Nice to see the biggest city in the US catching up.

Another one that belongs on this list: AI-generated photos in housing listings. You can no longer tell what the property actually looks like, and the images conveniently erase the problem spots you'd only catch in person. False advertising is getting completely out of hand.

Is NYC the first just because every city in California does it by state rules? I'm confused.

Completely sensible legislation in my eyes.

Should ban the tips if it’s not included in “hidden fees”, and force restaurants to pay proper wages like other workers.

So this is the end of the New York Times I guess?

A big one I’ve been seeing a lot lately is advertising annual subscriptions as monthly rates. It isn’t $12/month subscription if I have to pay $120 in a lump sum up front. The actual monthly rate is often basically double what they’re advertising.

I don't understand because I'm not American but how does New York the city have such powers? At least where I am, cities aren't really "real" in that they are constructs the provincial government creates (and can uncreate). A city here could never make such a ban.

This should be federal law.

Official release: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani...

Any chance you could lend Mamdani to the UK? We have a vacancy.

Nice. Now just force stores to display actual prices with tax.

And then a million private equity, venture capitalists, management consultants, and other aspiring grifters cried out in terror.

Hopefully they stay silenced.

No mention of the New York Times, or its practices?

Long overdue, enshittification reaching SaaS undermines trust in all tech in the long term.

Did a politician's kid rack up hundreds of dollars on some stupid game?

I still don't know why Apple, oft parading as the people's champion, automatically converts trials to subscriptions.

So many scummy apps exploit this by offering a 1 week trial and saying like "only $4/month!" but charging a 1 year's sub after the trial period ends.

I'm building a SaaS right now and made the "non-deceptive" choices this law wants: cancellation is one click from settings, no retention maze, no surprise renewal, 30-day money-back. What surprised me is how much the tooling assumes you want the dark patterns. Billing platforms ship "cancellation flow" templates that are really retention funnels — discount offer, pause offer, survey, guilt screen, then maybe the button. The default path is the deceptive path; you have to actively rip stuff out to be straightforward.

Which I think explains why this needs regulation at all. Every individual dark pattern is locally rational — it demonstrably improves net retention, so any PM optimizing a dashboard will keep it. The cost (people who feel trapped and tell everyone) never shows up in the same spreadsheet. Markets are bad at pricing "customers who quietly hate you."

The one-click-cancel requirement is the part with real teeth. Junk-fee rules die by carve-out (see California's restaurant exemption), but "cancel must be as easy as signup" is binary enough to actually enforce.

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OH NO THIS IS THE SOCIALISMS!!!!!111

When a Mayor does more for the citizen than the government...

I think there should be a day (e.g. Sylvester), where all subscriptions auto end and renewal should be a proactive choice by the user.