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Comment by jkaplowitz | Hacker News Reader

What EU-wide law requires it to be as easy to cancel as to sign up? I’m sitting in Germany right now and I’m unaware of any such law - though it might very well be recent and not fully transposed into German law, or might be situational or not widely complied with.

It’s a good idea though, absolutely.

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There is a law that requires that subscriptions can be cancelled online within "the click of a button" with automatic confirmation. (since 2022) If no such option to cancel is implemented by the provider the minimum contract duration is void and you can cancel immediately.

German reference: https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/vertraege-reklamation/kue...

Good news! Annoyingly financial services, including insurance, are an exception. But this handles many cases.

We have the regulation in Germany, but afaik it's not EU-wide. The "Gesetz über faire Verbraucherverträge" basically says that if something can be subscribed to easily online, then the company also has to provide an easy unsubscribe. It goes into detail how such a button should look like, how labelled, what data the confirmation page has to list and how fast the confirmation has to be (immediate).

I believe the EU law sets the minimum required conditions for contracts (fair, not abusing the customer), but the individual EU-countries can implement more consumer friendly rules.

It's horrendus in Germany trying to cancel a mobile phone subscription, internet service, gym membership or the likes. You have to jump through hoops like sending a registered physical letter, 3 months before the end of the service period for it to be considered a valid cancellation ("Kündigung"). Without this, you're forced into paying for another year.

EU regulation is badly needed to cut out this anti-consumer nonsense.

This is no longer true, it is limited to a one month period (after a possible 2 year minimum contract to offer "special discounts") in advance and every contract can be cancelled online.

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