Gym, Phone, and Subscription Contracts: Cancellation Rights and the FTC's Rules

Somewhere in your bank statement right now is a recurring charge you meant to cancel. The subscription economy is built on that sentence — on negative option billing, the industry term for any deal where your silence counts as yes: free trials that convert, memberships that auto-renew, plans that keep charging until you perform the cancellation ritual. The law here is genuinely in motion — a famous federal rule was struck down on the courthouse steps in 2025 — but the protections that exist are stronger than most people use, and the cancellation method that always works has never depended on any of it.

Here's the current legal map, the gym-contract special rules, and the playbook.

The federal layer: ROSCA now, "click-to-cancel" in flux

The operative federal law is the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), a 2010 statute the FTC enforces against online sellers. For any online negative-option deal, ROSCA requires three things: clear disclosure of the material terms before billing (that the trial converts, what it'll cost, how often), your express informed consent to those terms, and a simple mechanism to stop the recurring charges. The FTC has extracted nine-figure settlements from subscription sellers under ROSCA, and it remains fully in force.

The famous one is the FTC's 2024 "click-to-cancel" rule — the requirement that canceling be as easy as signing up, in the same medium. Date-stamp this paragraph: in July 2025, a federal appeals court vacated that rule on procedural grounds days before it took effect, and the FTC has since restarted the rulemaking. So as of this writing, "cancel must be one click" is not a nationwide federal command — but ROSCA's "simple mechanism" requirement still is, several states enacted their own click-to-cancel laws that never depended on the FTC's, and endless-runaround cancellation flows remain lawsuit bait under both. Check the FTC's site for the rule's current status before assuming either way; this corner genuinely changes year to year.

The state layer: where the teeth are

Phone and cable: the early-termination-fee layer

Free trials, read like a lawyer

The free trial is negative-option law in miniature, and reading one takes four questions. When does it end — a date, not "in 30 days," because you'll be counting from a signup timestamp you didn't record (fix that: screenshot the confirmation). What converts — full price, and to what term? A trial converting to an annual plan is a very different promise than monthly. What must you cancel by — the day before conversion is safe; conversion day itself is a coin flip in the fine print. And how — if the answer is "call us," in a state with an online-cancellation statute for online signups, the runaround itself may be a violation worth naming in your complaint. ROSCA's disclosure-and-consent rules apply to the whole genre: a trial that hid the conversion terms, or charged without express consent, isn't just annoying — it's the exact conduct the FTC's settlements keep punishing. Card-side hygiene completes the picture: virtual card numbers and bank alerts turn silent conversions into same-day notifications, shrinking every later dispute to one billing cycle.

The cancellation playbook

Two escalation notes. The chargeback — disputing a post-cancellation charge with your card issuer — is a genuine federal right for billing errors, and "charged after documented cancellation" is a clean billing error; it also gets attention, because merchants pay for chargebacks. But it's a scalpel, not a machete: disputing charges on a subscription you never actually canceled just moves the debt, and an unpaid gym contract can land with a collection agency and your credit report. Cancel first, in writing; dispute second. And when a company simply refuses — keeps billing through documented cancellations — that's precisely the fact pattern the complaint machinery was built for: the state AG for mediation and its auto-renewal statute, the FTC for the pattern file, and small claims for the refund with your email thread as Exhibit A.

The compressed version: federal law already requires honest disclosure, real consent, and a simple exit; state law often requires an online exit and gives gym contracts special escape hatches; and the timeless, jurisdiction-proof move is thirty seconds of writing on a provable date. Silence may be how they bill you — it should never be how you cancel.