Find every recurring charge — including the ones no statement line will name — cancel them so they stay cancelled, and use the rights that actually exist. Not the one you have read about. That one was struck down.
Einav, Klopack & Mahoney, Selling Subscriptions, American Economic Review, May 2025 — payment-card network data covering roughly 30% of subscribers, 870,358 account-service pairs, August 2017 to December 2021.
If you have looked into this before, you have probably seen that cancelling now has to be as easy as signing up. It was widely reported. It was called click-to-cancel. It was struck down six days before it started.
Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, 142 F.4th 1060 (8th Cir., 8 July 2025). Complaint figures: FTC, Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, published 13 March 2026, Project No. P060242. The FTC recodified the pre-2024 rule text on 12 February 2026; it covers only prenotification plans, not ordinary subscriptions.
Cancellation is possible but buried across screens, each offering something else. In the FTC's case against Amazon over Prime, the cancellation flow was internally code-named “Iliad”. Amazon settled in September 2025 for $2.5 billion.
A discount, a pause, a month free. Sometimes genuinely good value — and it almost always restarts the relationship, then expires quietly back to full price.
Ten seconds to sign up online, phone only to cancel, business hours, one time zone. Exactly what the vacated rule would have banned — and what several state laws now do ban.
You cancel, you are told it is done, nothing arrives. Six weeks later the charge appears and you have nothing to show for it.
Most of this is not about willpower. A business model where the revenue comes from people not noticing has every incentive to keep them not noticing.
Twelve months of statements, not three — the ones that hurt are annual. Then the app stores, the ones bundled with something else, and the payment methods you have stopped looking at.
Cancelling in the wrong order costs money. Trials by deadline, annuals by whether you have already paid for the year, and anything you might dispute left until last.
Six steps that take ninety extra seconds and decide every dispute that follows — including how to create your own confirmation when theirs never arrives.
Credit card, debit card, ACH or app store. One word on your inventory decides which law applies, which deadline runs, and which letter you send.
Twenty minutes that converts every renewal from something that happens to you into a decision you make — which is the exact mechanism the research measured.
Instant download. PDF and DOCX, so the letters can be edited rather than retyped.
Twelve chapters in four parts — find them, cancel them, what to do when cancelling does not work, and how to stop it recurring. Three sourced figures.
One sheet, one row per recurring charge, with the four columns that decide what happens next — and a total that is yours rather than an average.
The sheet that wins disputes. Including the column almost everyone skips.
Cancel in writing; create your own confirmation when none arrives; confirm a phone cancellation; revoke authorisation; instruct your bank to stop payment; the written billing-error notice; the complaint narrative; the final escalation; and a platform refund request.
Cancelling by phone when that is the only route, escalating when they will not process it, identifying an unknown charge with your bank, placing a stop payment, opening a card dispute, a trial about to convert, and a charge you never authorised.
California, New York, Illinois and Colorado now require things the vacated federal rule would have required — including online cancellation for online sign-ups. How to find and use yours.
Twenty checks across finding, cancelling, escalating and keeping it solved.
Five prompts that genuinely help — turning a statement into an inventory is the one job an AI is good at here — and a blunt list of what not to ask it, starting with your rights.
Eight lookups, fourteen terms in plain English, and honest answers to the nine questions people actually ask.
A great deal of advice online still describes click-to-cancel as your right. Citing a vacated rule to a company hands them the easiest possible reply. This book was checked against the court's opinion, not against the news coverage.
You have seen the numbers — $219 a month, $273 a month. Every one traces to a company selling research, consulting, or subscription software. There is no independent estimate. So there is none in here.
A peer-reviewed study in the American Economic Review, built on payment-card transaction data rather than a survey, measuring what actually happens when renewal stops being automatic.
The single most expensive mistake in this subject. Blocking the payment while the subscription is still live can leave a balance that grows and goes to collections.
While the federal rule was being vacated, several states passed laws that do much the same job. If you are in one of them, you have more than most advice will tell you.
CFPB complaints get a response 99% of the time and money about one time in ten. Worth doing. Not a jackpot. You should know which before you spend the afternoon.
Part One is an hour and gives you the complete list, including the ones your bank statement cannot itemise.
Chapter 8 and the letter in C6. If you paid by credit card there is a 60-day clock running — start there.
Chapter 8 is how to stop the payment without them — and the warning about what that does not do.
Chapter 3 and script D6. Deadline order, today.
Chapter 10 is twenty minutes and it is the part that means you never do this again.
No document can offer that. This tells you which right you have and how to use it properly.
This is education about a consumer process. Where an amount is large or a company is pursuing you, the book says to get advice.
The method travels. ROSCA, Regulation E, Regulation Z and the state auto-renewal laws do not.
Most people find the price of this book in the first twenty minutes of Part One.
One-time payment. No subscription — which felt like the minimum we could do.
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An explanation of a consumer process. Not legal advice, not financial advice, and buying it creates no professional relationship.
Whether a company refunds you depends on facts, timing and their own policy. What the book changes is whether you are using the right route inside the right deadline.
The federal rule was vacated in July 2025 and the CFR text rolled back in February 2026. Every claim in the book is dated, and the book tells you to check the primary source.
There is no independent estimate of what households waste on subscriptions. Rather than borrow a vendor's number, the book says so and gives you a method for finding your own.
This edition has just been released. Rather than publish testimonials from people who do not exist, these spaces are held for the first genuine reader reviews. On a product about companies quietly charging you for things, that seemed like the only defensible choice.
If this helped you find something you had forgotten, we would like to hear how — and to publish it with your permission, in your own words.
We will not publish claims about how much anyone recovered, because that depends on things no document controls.
Reserved for someone who used the letters. The billing-error notice in particular is the one we would most like to hear about.
There was going to be. The Eighth Circuit vacated it on 8 July 2025, six days before its compliance date, and it never took effect. The FTC opened a fresh rulemaking in March 2026 at the earliest possible stage — there is no proposed rule and no date. The book explains why citing the vacated rule to a company actively hurts you.
It is not reliable and it can backfire. Card networks run account-updater services that hand merchants your new number automatically, and if the contract is still live the balance can keep building and go to collections. Chapter 5 covers this.
If you paid by credit card: the written billing-error notice, within 60 days of the statement, to the billing-inquiries address. It has the clearest legal footing and no dollar or distance limits. Template C6.
No — and this is the most common mistake in the whole subject. Deleting the app removes the software and leaves the billing entirely intact. Chapter 6 is where to actually cancel.
Realistically one to two billing cycles, because the statutory clocks are 60 days from the statement. Beyond that you are asking for goodwill rather than exercising a right — worth asking, but the book is clear about the difference.
They can genuinely surface charges you missed. Two things to weigh: they usually need read access to your bank account, and they are frequently subscriptions themselves. The inventory in the book does the same job in an hour and costs nothing.
A 51-page PDF plus an editable DOCX of the same content, so the letters and worksheets can be filled in rather than retyped. Instant download after checkout.
Every figure is cited to a named publisher with a date — a peer-reviewed AER paper, the FTC's own filings, the court's opinion, the CFR. The book also says plainly which numbers it deliberately does not contain, and why.
Email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase for a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
Open it, do the first twenty minutes of Part One, and see what your twelve-month statement actually contains. If it is not what you expected, email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase and you get a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
That asymmetry is the entire business model, and it is worth between 14% and more than 200% of a subscription company's revenue. An hour with a statement and the right letter is what turns it back into a decision you make.
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