New York’s automatic renewal law, codified at General Business Law Section 527-a, requires any business that sells a subscription, membership, or continuous service on auto-renew to disclose the renewal terms clearly before you sign up, get your active agreement to those terms, send reminder notices before longer subscriptions roll over, and make canceling at least as easy as signing up was. When a business ignores those rules, unordered goods become yours to keep, unauthorized charges can be refunded, and the Attorney General can sue for penalties and restitution.
What the Business Must Tell You Before Charging
Before a business collects your payment information or asks you to click “agree,” it has to lay out the key terms of the auto-renewal in a clear and conspicuous way. Under GBL 527, that means larger or contrasting type, or symbols and marks that draw your eye. Audio disclosures have to be loud and clear enough to actually understand.
The disclosure has to cover four things: what the product or service is, what it costs and how often you’ll be billed, the deadline or frequency for opting out, and how to cancel. Fine print at the bottom of a checkout page or terms hidden behind extra clicks don’t satisfy the statute. The information must appear before you consent or hand over billing details.
Consent has to be affirmative. A pre-checked box doesn’t count. You need to take a deliberate action, like checking an unchecked box or clicking an “I agree” button, that shows you actually saw the renewal terms and accepted them. After you consent, the business has to send an acknowledgment that repeats the renewal terms, explains how to cancel, and gives you a cost-effective cancellation channel: a toll-free number, an email address, or something comparable. If the business bills you directly rather than through a third party, the acknowledgment also has to include a postal address.
Price Increases
If the business wants to charge more than the amount it originally disclosed, it has to either get your consent to the new price or let you cancel within at least 14 days of the higher charge and receive a pro-rata refund for the rest of the term. Quietly raising the rate and continuing to bill you is not allowed.
How Cancellation Has to Work
This is where the statute has teeth. Cancellation must be as simple as the sign-up was. If you subscribed online, you have to be able to cancel online. If the business accepts sign-ups through multiple channels, it has to offer cancellation through all of them. In-person sign-ups still have to be paired with an online or phone cancellation option where practical.
The law also spells out tactics a business cannot use to hold onto you:
- Hanging up on you when you call to cancel
- Giving false information about how to cancel or what happens if you do
- Misrepresenting the consequences or costs of canceling
- Unreasonable delays in processing your request
A representative is allowed to offer you a discount or explain what you’ll lose by leaving. What they cannot do is use those offers to block, delay, or refuse the cancellation once you’ve asked for it.
The Renewal Reminder
If your subscription had an initial paid term of a year or longer and renews for a paid term of six months or longer, the business must send you a reminder before the cancellation deadline. The notice has to go out at least 15 days but no more than 45 days before that deadline, and it has to include cancellation instructions.
The reminder must come through whatever communication channel you selected, whether that’s email, text message, an app notification, or another option the business supports. If it never arrives, the business has violated the statute.
When the Law Doesn’t Apply
GBL 527-a exempts five specific categories of business. If your subscription falls into one of these, the statute’s protections don’t reach it:
- Businesses operating under a franchise issued by a political subdivision of the state
- Entities regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services
- Security alarm operators
- Banks and credit unions, including bank holding companies and their subsidiaries or affiliates, whether licensed under state or federal law
- Sellers and administrators of service contracts as defined under the Insurance Law
Everything outside those five categories is fair game for the statute.
What You Get When a Business Breaks the Rules
If a business ships you physical goods under an auto-renewal without your affirmative consent, those goods are treated as an unconditional gift. You can keep them, give them away, or throw them out, and you owe nothing, including return shipping.
For unauthorized service charges, the Attorney General can seek restitution for affected consumers and obtain an injunction ordering the business to stop the illegal conduct. A court doesn’t need proof that any particular consumer was harmed to issue that injunction; the violation itself is enough.
Civil penalties come on a sliding scale. A standard violation carries a penalty of up to $100, and up to $500 when multiple violations flow from a single act. A knowing violation carries up to $500, and up to $1,000 when multiple knowing violations flow from a single act. Those numbers look modest one at a time, but they compound quickly across a subscriber base of any size, and they sit on top of any restitution ordered.
How to Push Back on an Unauthorized Renewal
Your fastest route to a refund is usually your credit card issuer. The federal Fair Credit Billing Act gives you 60 days from the date the billing statement was sent to dispute the charge in writing. Your notice has to identify you and your account, state the amount you believe is wrong, and explain why you think the charge is a billing error.
The FCBA dispute runs in parallel with the state law. Even if the 60-day window has passed, you can still file a complaint with the New York Attorney General’s office, which investigates consumer complaints, issues subpoenas, and brings court actions to stop violators. Small claims court is another option for straightforward refund disputes.
What Attorney General Enforcement Has Looked Like
Recent cases show what triggers action. In 2025, the Attorney General secured $600,000 in penalties from Equinox along with refunds for consumers who had trouble canceling gym memberships. In late 2024, the AG won a lawsuit against SiriusXM over New York customers trapped in unwanted subscriptions. In December 2023, the AG obtained $740,000 from Cerebral, an online mental health provider, over a burdensome cancellation process.
The common thread isn’t a missing disclosure. It’s a cancellation process built to wear people down. That lines up with where the statute puts its weight: making it easy to leave has to match how easy it was to join.