Beware Of Automatic Subscription Renewals

Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions to improve their physical fitness, and many of these resolutions fizzle out quickly.  Depending on the first move you make toward your fitness goals, abandoning them may or may not cause you a long-lasting financial setback.  For example, if you stick to your goal of going for a walk every day, but you give up after a snowstorm blows through town on Epiphany, the financial consequences will be negligible.  If, on the other hand, you shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a stationary bicycle but only use it a few times, the debt can follow you around for years.  Strictly from the perspective of dollars and cents, though, buying a piece of exercise equipment only to have it gather dust has a less deleterious effect on your finances than enrolling in a gym membership, since those are almost impossible to cancel.  Some states have laws curbing the practice of automatic subscription renewals, but thus far, Pennsylvania is not one of them.  If subscriptions that resisted your efforts to cancel them are a major contributing factor to your debt problem, contact a Philadelphia predatory lending lawyer.

Subscription Services Have Free Rein to Rip Off Customers in Pennsylvania

How often have you clicked on a news story only to find that you had to subscribe to the website to read the whole thing?  Many of these sites have a free trial period, but they require you to enter your payment card information anyway before you can access that think piece or true crime saga with the fascinating introductory paragraph.  Most people forget to cancel the subscription before the trial period expires, but whenever they do get around to canceling it, they find that the cancellation process is so convoluted that they give up, and the website keeps charging their card every month.  The only thing worse is the gyms that tell you to show up in person to cancel, even if you have long since moved out of town.

The National Consumers League is pushing for laws in as many states as possible to require companies that offer subscription-based services to make it simple for consumers to cancel their subscriptions.  Ideally, the laws should also impose penalties on companies that fail to comply.  So far, 20 states and the District of Columbia have laws against predatory subscription charges, but Pennsylvania is not one of them.  The best thing that Pennsylvania consumers can do for the time being is to cancel those pesky subscriptions and then contact a consumer law attorney about getting out of debt.

Contact Louis S. Schwartz About Fighting Back Against Predatory Subscription Charges

A Philadelphia consumer law attorney can help you if you are struggling with debt because of predatory subscription payment schemes that make it next to impossible to cancel your subscription, even if you have not used the service in years.  Contact Louis S. Schwartz at CONSUMERLAWPA.com to set up a free, confidential consultation.

Sources:

protocol.com/policy/auto-renewing-subscription-laws

faegredrinker.com/-/media/files/collateral-pieces/automatic-renewal-laws-in-all-50-states-march-26-2019.pdf?la=en&hash=1F734465AF91AE805BF0257188C606A5A4D529EE