New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.
It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.
> Rule from Mamdani administration ... targets ‘junk fees’
> The city is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”, according to a release shared with the Guardian.This is going to be tough to enact, anywhere in the USA, even New York. There is nothing quite as American as "not knowing what you're going to pay for something until you have to pay." Whether it's your doctor bill, restaurant bill with tips and service fees, your hotel stay with a hidden resort fee, or just general purchases where tax is computed at the very end right before you pay... We are culturally so used to this abuse.
You don't know it won't work if it's not actually tried and as noted there's no particular reason to think it can't work.
You followed the link to the poll in the article, right? I haven't seen poll numbers that high on any poll in my lifetime. It shows people of all political affiliations know what junk fees are, and they are all hungry to have them banned.
Keep in mind that Mamdani's first "press conference" was nearly[1] all questions from influencers. I'm sure they are hungry to publicly record themselves encountering a junk fee should this rule pass, starting with the fitness influencer.
1: I counted one journalist ask a question. For free fake internet points, name that journalist. (Hint: it was a three-part question, and it wasn't a soft ball.)
You would probably need to have the doctor print you a list and then after the appointment contact the hospital/provider to find out... which could be a huge delay in getting the tests done and involve a lot of extra travel time. And I can only imagine the effort required to shop around for the cheapest place to have your blood drawn that also orders from the cheapest lab for whatever tests and that also takes your insurance.
The best I get is my PCP will be like "I want to do this test for this reason but it is usually more expensive so I won't order it if you're worried about cost".
For anything not covered, where a tenant does damage thats what the bond is for.
Renter insurance should be optional.
Actually I’m surprised that landlord insurance is not already occurring, imagine a building with 100 apartments, I’m sure the bank would ask the landlord to have a single cover over 100’s of little crappy policies.
If renter insurance is required by regulations, this is likley another good target for policy change.
Americans really do get screwed in so many ways.
You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.
Landlords/owners have their own fire and liability insurance (ultimately paid for by the tenants as part of their rent); it's unnecessary to demand that the tenants provide their own. Renter's insurance is for the tenant's protection, not the landlord's.
My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.
I generally agree, obviously for a "burn the place down" incident the renter's policy is going to be rather inconsequential, and likely not even actionable.
But for more "medium" stuff like "flood the unit below me because I left the bath on and left for work" where the liability is in the low $10k's, that's where I see landlords (and their covering policies) wanting the renter's insurance to kick in and cover.
I personally find it a bit slimey - if you're a landlord this is just part of the risk of being a landlord. If you don't have the capital to cover such incidents, then you should simply not be a landlord. Sorry.
Trying to squeeze an extra few dollars per month out of tenants is ridiculous, but seems to be the way everything is going when you get hyper-financialization and PE type firms buying multiple buildings.
However, it is landlord and location dependant - it's pretty much the norm in NYC, for example (see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/11bl350/does_your_a...).
Absolutely. I assumed the parent was talking about the US because that's the only place in the world I've encountered this.
In NZ we are not required to have third party medical cover because everyone is already covered by yearly car registration fee.
In the past (and still today but less so), that literally meant black people. Now it mostly means poor people of all races.
It's been shown over and over that it's practically an American cultural value to accept lower benefits to yourself in trade for denying benefits to what you see as an undeserving group.
I used my insurance company I already had.
But even if it is true, I think the price of the insurance (or at least some reference value for comparison, assuming there are multiple competing offers) should be included in the sticker price.
For the same reason, purchase-money lenders (in a buy-vs-lease situation) typically require the debtor to hold a comprehensive insurance policy until the vehicle is paid off. It protects their interest.
Also, renters insurance is cheap, I haven't rented in more than a decade but when I rented I was only paying less than $100/year for it.
I just looked it up and currently the average premium for renters insurance is $15 to $22 a month.
Your building would be fine if you found a renter’s insurance that didn’t cover your own goods (which would cost like $3/year less).
I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.
https://sushiconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sc_... "3.5% Living Wage Surcharge added to each bill which allows us to provide the service you have always enjoyed!"
https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."
Notice how you never see things like "Business License Fee" or "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge" listed out as separate line items on customers' bills. Those are things restaurant owners have to pay, too, so why don't they get their own charges to customers? Why does only "Living Wage" get a line item on the customer's bill?
Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.
Although I will admit service is notoriously bad over here but in honesty that's secretly how we all want it.
Isn't this the thing the government is saying in California? They passed a law requiring restaurants to pay the same minimum wage as jobs where workers don't get tips, on top of the tips, essentially making it the law that people in tipped occupations have to be paid more than what can be paid to people doing any other kind of work.
Unless the point is to get customers to stop tipping because a) the workers are now guaranteed the same minimum wage as anyone else even if they don't and b) they can't afford the tip on top of the prices that now have the higher minimum wage priced into them anyway.
"Fuel surcharge" on flights. Which should be illegal: the cost of hedging fuel cost risk should be included in any ticket price.
A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver (who pays for the fuel). If true I would find that interesting.
I did a bit of a dive on this and I think it’s not correct. I have a low threshold for hating them, after the reports of how females staffers were treated a few years back, but this new thing seems to be untrue.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128042303/uber-introduces-f...
Unfortunately you’ve spoken too soon on this one. I recently had an energy surcharge added due to the “Iran war” (as explained by the server) added to every check.
These are arguments for including the fees that make the customer __still pay the same higher price__, implying that the whole point is that they won’t notice. And reporters don’t seem to even register the absurdity of those remarks or question them in any way.
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-restaurants-junk-fees...
https://www.kqed.org/news/11992412/californias-junk-fee-ban-...
Airline baggage fees are probably the prototypical case for this. Airlines that did not display the lowest price during flight searches got outcompeted by those that did. This led the entire industry to change since it took an entire decade long marketing campaign centered around it (Southwest) to try to stay even.
Consumers make irrational choices all the time, and this is one of them. They absolutely notice the final bill and complain while continuing to patronize businesses that engage in such behavior.
Consumers would need to reward honest pricing if they wanted this to change. Or vote for regulation.
I just did trip with family where our allowance was 8 suitcases of 184 kg total weight. Buying same on a budget carrier we used on our leg would cost more than flights itself.
The restaurant fee isn’t a fee for something “extra”, it’s just a blanket extra charge on everything.
It’d be like the airline sold you a ticket for $500, but as you step off the plane at the destination they say “actually it was $550”, because it said so in the fine print.
I run Union electrical jobs and I don’t list out every fringe benefit they receive on an itemized invoice. It’s $163/hr with everything baked in.
If restaurants want to pay a living wage, charge more money for food.
A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.
They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
And the group is big enough that people will be having side conversations while one side of the table talks to the server, which also slows things down.
More likely to have such a person in a group of 8 than in a group of 1 maybe but that's meaningless.
> for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.
And group members helping each other never saves the restaurant any time?
> They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.
Appetizers they would likely have never ordered if they did not have people to share them with.
> They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.
So they're even bringing new customers that would have never given the restaurant any money on their own.
Wasn’t the argument for tips that tipped workers had a low minimum wage, but CA now has a minimum for tipped workers of $16.90 (actually the same minimum wage for non tipped workers too)?
I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.
To me this is clearly deceptive practice.
In Germany and Croatia, there is no % at all, the prices are final and include all taxes and fees by law and no one will bat an eye if you pay straight cash - however I personally always tip around 10%, simply because I was happy about that when I worked in hospitality myself.
Paying in cash is still common at German restaurants though.
Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.
Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.
Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.
DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.
I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.
Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.
The 3% credit card charge on the other hand... but I'd rather pay cash than confront the poor cashier.
I will just respond with a 1-star review.
> What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee?
Just about what would happen if you refuse to pay the bill, most likely you'll end up being shared on some Facebook group or worse.
Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.
And the “house rules” still require you to clean the place before you leave.
I thought the HN crowd at least pretended to be somewhat better.
The rule is that you have to be polite about it all.
Ever speed on the way to/from work? That's a worse offense than a strictly-compliant website - you're increasing danger for yourself and others and breaking a law, precisely for your own benefit.
I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.
Tech workers had a time where unionization and getting a voice in our companies was very much on the table, and the biggest voices among us shouted down the others in the name of rockstar salaries and free beer at the office. The "top contributors" at huge companies were scared shitless that they might have to accept a wage too much like the REST of their software engineer coworkers. The horror.
Are we also going to start putting LLM engineers to the fire because they're accelerating the enshitification of our world? Probably not.
You never lied or went along with something dubious? At least this person is being honest and reflective.
…no?
Certainly not where it impacted more than just me and one other person.
Why would that be normal?
Have you been fired from a job for standing on these ironclad principles?
Had my place to sleep as a young person threatened, for doing the right thing in the family business.
I don’t even feel good about Santa…
But all of us have compromised at some time or place, I have in some places and faced consequences for not doing so in other places. If you haven't compromised yet, then wait until you have a family to take care of.
I prefer being honest about the times I did compromise and took OPs comment in that vein. A true psycho would see nothing wrong and also not be reflective about it.
I’ve also kept from having a family until I’m able to have one without directly* harming someone else to do it.
I’m reflecting. Mostly on what others have, materially, that I do not, but also what I have that they cannot.
Environmental externalities of the existence of my entire country/society notwithstanding - before this goes off into the weeds further.
Yes, "just following orders" was not an excuse for the holocaust but we're talking about a subscription here. I for one appreciate the honesty.
> so I think protecting his feelings is not necessary.
No, just the barrage of completely lacking-of-empathy responders need your white-knighting. It’s a good thing you’re here for them.
Wild to compare implementing dark UX patterns to working at a concentration camp. Why not blame the electorate for voting poorly?
They didn't here because for them as representatives of NYC that's all they are speaking to.
Technical pedantry like this just displays poor language and social skills.
I think it's silly for a municipality to lie (by omission?) in their own press announcements.
Again: this is NYC’s official website. It might (as a stretch) be a “lie by omission” on a national newspaper’s website, but this is a website that is solely dedicated to NYC itself.
In a world where the California law exists, and the New York Times has been used as an example of the success of that law for years already, claiming some sort of moral victory with the "landmark" qualifier is objectively wrong.
Does any of this matter? No, but I like arguing about it.
(I like arguing too. Nothing wrong with that. I think in this case it suffices that they’re regulations in different states with relatively different political histories, even if the political valence of the two is somewhat similar. I would agree if this was a “landmark” change for Irvine, CA.)
The advent of dumpsters was similarly hailed there, though almost no other cities in the US throw their trash on the sidewalk.
Even if the seller in X does not have a presence in Y, and so you might think Y has no jurisdiction, purposefully conducting business within a state is sufficient to allow Y to assert jurisdiction in regards to that business.
I've found the person who lives in California lol, no it does not work that way.
"Minimum contacts" is a good term to include in searches if you want to learn more on this.
[0] Note: I am not a lawyer. Near the end of law school I decided I'd rather be a programmer with a decent knowledge of law than a lawyer with a decent knowledge of programming.
Edit: I see others with similar thoughts from further down the scroll
California still S-tier for protecting its land and people.
[1] https://kr.law/news/article-detail/new-yorks-new-automatic-r...
> Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-...
I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.
Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.
Cancelling then being charged anyway is something else. Something akin to being robbed IMHO.
"What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799966
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.
Some British media / reddit 'users' did the same over-the-top congratulatory puffery for some laws passed in the UK.
Like hello, Parliamentary supremacy and a whopping majority, the Lords who will at most suggest a few tweaks for anything that's been sold well, a Prime Minister who was a Barrister - passing laws is the easy part!
Call something the Renter's Rights Act for example and people lose their minds falling over congratulating the Government and Parliament before it even passes.
(In defence of some of our media, they did write one or two articles about all the people who got kicked out prior to the law coming into effect - just a couple of weeks before it coming into effect...)
We're software devs - we should know writing code (particularly now) is frequently the easy part. Tests, deployment, versioning, monitoring, logs, effect on revenue etc, bit trickier.
Who is deceiving who now? And I'm not sure who is in power here...
I am sympathetic to a perspective that says this is not the responsibility of a mayor of a single city... But also; who else is going to do it?
Normal people have very little say over the politicians that govern them in larger electoral regions like states or provinces, and maybe this can signal to other levels of government that they should implement similar rules... If it works.
If there's anybody from the mayor's office reading this, how about that all banks must provide their services at minimum on a browser through a web app and cannot mandate the use of a smartphone.
With a population of 8.5 million if NYC was a state it would be the 13th largest so I'm quite all right with the city going beyond the normal purview of a city government.
Do you mean good government? Or well-functioning? Any government that is formed legally is legitimate.
Government should represents and advocate for the best interests of the entire population. It should legislate for both people and companies to behave fairly towards each other.
Consider the gym membership. You join and sign a one year contract. The terms are that you can cancel after that period, but if the gym hides or dark-patterns the cancel procedure, are they really offering you the contractually agreed upon ability to cancel? They are not.
We all know what fair is. Just because companies (and sometimes individual people) have outsized power against their customers, it does not give them the moral right to abuse that power.
So, I believe in this case Mamdani is engaging in both good and well-functioning governance. And that to me is morally legitimate.
Edit: but also, who cares? Literally no solution to anything on earth works for EVERYONE
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison.
If it were a state passing the law then they could sue for enforcement in federal court but I don't think a city could?
A small town in Wyoming could do the same and could sue (and probably win) against businesses that do business in that small town and break the law. What most likely happens in that case is that small Wyoming town ends up blacklisted by that business.
Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
A lot of this push to higher and higher and preselected tip options comes from POS software providers (Square et al) and credit card companies. They make money on transaction volume. Higher transaction -> more fees
I've seriously gotten tip fatigue and have been working to move back to a sane standard. I've noticed the places that have these crazy tips, also pay their staff well.
> Subject: Information about Your Automatic Renewal
> This is an automatically generated email from Nintendo for customers who have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership set to renew automatically.
> Dear [user],
> Your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership will automatically renew soon.
> ...
> Deadline to turn off automatic renewal: [1 month from now]
It also does this right when you first sign up for automatic renewal except the deadline is [1 year from now].
Why would EU rules apply?
Nintendo is just a decent company compared to most others.
They don't like disputes so it's preemptive.
It does feel like it’d be “better” if good behavior came from the company’s intrinsic behavior but laws like this help (re)establish norms that encourage those sorts of actions.
Likewise, it’d be better if kids say please and thank you because of a genuine sense of gratitude, rather than just to avoid parental nagging—-but that nagging helps develop appreciation for others’ actions.
https://www.al.com/news/2026/07/att-customers-your-cell-phon...
Thankfully, I had a bank that used technology from this century, including a disposable credit card number. I stopped paying and that lead them to them calling me.
I (a non-American) had a NYT subscription through the iOS app some years back and cancelling it (like any other subscription through the App Store) was as as simple as:
- Open Settings
- Tap my account
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the New York Times option (or whatever it’s called)
- Tap Cancel
While the gate keeper aspect of Apple may not be good in many ways, at least we get this kind of benefit from it.
No?
Tough shit!
Anecdotally
I’m sure they know the exact stats, and are getting more cash as a result of their BS.
Good site, trash business practices.
I'm not saying it's right, but the reality is that probably half the gyms would close immediately if this is enforced.
how: by declaring it a law in that area
Course, one should never underestimate the value of a benevolent dictator...
However, in this case it’s because NYC law is typically allowed under NY state law to be stronger (but not weaker) than any corresponding state law.
For example, you couldn't do this in Massachusetts. A city would first have to petition the state for a new law allowing the city to pass such a local law.
This drives me nuts to read, because it’s usually the same pattern.
Rule -> lobbyists descend -> politicians cave -> carve out that takes away the whole point of the rule -> everyone declares victory
Sounds like they are giving you two months free if you pay with a lump sum in advance.
$15/month * 12 months = $180
$12/month * 12 months = $144
$120 / 12 months = $10/monthThe issue is really that taxes in most places are not uniform in application, not necessarily just because of geography, but also all of the specific carve outs and exceptions and so on that America tends to have, e.g., SNAP and WIC often don't pay sales tax. So its actually hard to know what someone is going to pay without communicating with them personally beforehand.
*Direct click-to-cancel with subscription receipt.
[1] https://collegeplaceapartments.managebuilding.com/Resident/p...
I have tried to cancel a newspaper subscription in the UK a few times, which is only possible by telephone, and they have a serious churn-reduction program in place where I end up getting a major discount on the subscription.
Why do hidden fees not fall under deceptive advertising, which is already actionable?
Look to something that works to modify behavior: credit reports. Make it easy to report an actor for malfeasance, assume they are guilty until proven innocent, and force them to defend themselves to the agency. Since we invent these tools for evil, we may as well use them for good.
Useful info for any later negotiation. They've revealed they are:
A: Dishonest
B: Not too bright
"7 dollars sorted." for example.
I still don't know why Apple, oft parading as the people's champion, automatically converts trials to subscriptions.
So many scummy apps exploit this by offering a 1 week trial and saying like "only $4/month!" but charging a 1 year's sub after the trial period ends.
Yes.
Hopefully they stay silenced.
Which I think explains why this needs regulation at all. Every individual dark pattern is locally rational — it demonstrably improves net retention, so any PM optimizing a dashboard will keep it. The cost (people who feel trapped and tell everyone) never shows up in the same spreadsheet. Markets are bad at pricing "customers who quietly hate you."
The one-click-cancel requirement is the part with real teeth. Junk-fee rules die by carve-out (see California's restaurant exemption), but "cancel must be as easy as signup" is binary enough to actually enforce.