Why Is It So Hard to Cancel Subscriptions?

You can sign up for a subscription in 30 seconds. Three clicks. Credit card. Done.

But when you try to cancel the same subscription? Suddenly, it’s like navigating a maze designed by someone who really doesn’t want you to find the exit.

You’ll need to dig through buried settings, click through multiple retention offers, fill out surveys explaining why you’re leaving, and sometimes even call during business hours to talk to someone who’s literally trained to convince you to stay.

This article breaks down why companies make subscription cancellation so difficult, what the law says about it, and most importantly, how you can protect yourself.

The Obvious Incentive: Money

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth that explains everything else: making cancellation difficult is incredibly profitable for subscription companies.

Research by economists Liran Einav, Ben Klopack, and Neale Mahoney found that when consumers can’t easily cancel unwanted subscriptions, it boosts company revenues by a staggiering 87% compared to what they’d earn if cancellation were straightforward.

Yes.. 87%. That's not a typo—companies can nearly double their subscription revenue simply by making it harder for you to leave.

Companies know this pattern well, and they have designed their systems to capture these “passive” subscribers who either forgot about the service, found cancellation too frustrating, or simply gave up trying after hitting too many obstacles.

The Financial Impact of Difficult Cancellation

Dark Patterns: The Tactics Companies Use to Keep You Subscribed

Dark patterns are deliberately deceptive design tactics that manipulate users into taking actions they didn’t intend to take.

An FTC study examining 642 subscription websites and apps found that dark patterns were used by the vast majority of them. Separately, a Princeton University study analysing over 11,000 shopping websites discovered deceptive tactics on 10% of them.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are widespread industry practices, and here are the most common patterns they use to prevent you from cancelling your subscription:

1. The Roach Motel: Easy to Get In, Nearly Impossible to Get Out

The name comes from the old Black Flag insect trap slogan: “Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.” This dark pattern makes signing up incredibly easy while making cancellation excessively difficult.

Real examples of roach motel tactics include Amazon Prime, where users must navigate through multiple confusing pages with unclear language just to cancel their membership.

In fact, research found that in 70% of cases, subscription providers didn't even provide information on how to cancel their service, and 67% failed to disclose the deadline by which consumers needed to cancel to avoid being charged for another billing cycle.

This isn't oversight—it's strategy.

2. Confirmshaming: Making You Feel Guilty for Leaving

Confirmshaming uses guilt-inducing language designed to make you feel bad about your decision to cancel.

Common confirmshaming messages include phrases like "We're sorry to see you go" paired with sad imagery, "Are you sure you want to lose these exclusive benefits?" positioned right before the final cancel button, "Don't miss out on content your friends are enjoying," and "You'll lose access to everything you've saved."

Studies have shown that confirmshaming actually works. Research by Strahilevitz found that users who saw confirmshaming messages signed up for questionable programs 20% of the time, compared to below 15% for the control group that didn't see these messages.

3. Obstruction: Deliberately Making Cancellation Tedious and Confusing

Obstruction tactics make the cancellation process unnecessarily tedious through multiple steps, hidden options, or confusing navigation that deliberately wastes your time and tests your patience.

The cancel button might be buried five levels deep in account settings under a vaguely labelled section. Button placement can also be deliberately confusing, with “confirm change” buttons that actually upgrade your plan to an annual subscription instead of cancelling it, while the real “confirm cancel” button is hidden at the bottom of the page, where it's easy to miss.

4. Forced Continuity: The Silent Charge You Never Saw Coming

Forced continuity automatically transitions users from free trials to paid subscriptions without providing a clear warning or offering an easy way to prevent the charge. Your credit card gets charged silently when the trial period expires, often without any advance notification that the billing is about to begin.

The FTC study discovered that 81% of subscription sites and apps prevented users from turning off auto-renewal during the initial signup process. This "sneaking" tactic was identified as the most common dark pattern encountered in their comprehensive research.

Users enter their payment information, thinking they're just verifying their identity for a free trial, not realising they've actually authorised automatic billing that will start without any additional confirmation.

5. Nagging: Wearing You Down With Endless Retention Offers

Nagging involves repeatedly asking consumers to reconsider their cancellation decision through an exhausting series of retention offers and alternative options.

A typical nagging flow might include several screens asking "Would you like to pause your subscription instead of canceling?" followed by "How about a 50% discount for the next three months?" then "Why not switch to our cheaper basic plan?" continuing with "Are you absolutely certain you want to lose access to these features?" and finally "Please take a moment to complete this survey about your experience before you go."

Hulu's cancellation design is a prime example of nagging, adding multiple extra steps that encourage users to switch between different subscription tiers or schedule a temporary pause that will automatically restart their subscription later.

6. Hidden Costs and Misleading Information About Cancellation

Many services fail to disclose that cancellation must happen before a specific date in the billing cycle, or that you'll be charged for an additional month or year even after you click the cancel button.

The FTC study found that 67% of subscription providers failed to clearly communicate the deadline by which consumers needed to cancel to avoid being charged again, leaving users confused about when they needed to take action and often resulting in unexpected charges for periods they thought they'd already cancelled.

Dark Patterns By Industry

The Impact on Consumers

These dark patterns and difficult cancellation processes have a measurable, significant impact that goes far beyond mere inconvenience for consumers trying to manage their subscriptions.

Time wasted on cancellation attempts adds up substantially across millions of consumers. Research in Australia found that 48% of people spent significantly more time than they intended when trying to cancel a subscription, with 75% reporting some form of negative experience during the process.

The financial loss to consumers is considerable.

The average household wastes $219 annually on unwanted subscriptions, according to research from West Monroe Partners. A significant portion of this waste comes directly from subscriptions that people actively tried to cancel but couldn’t figure out how, or from services where the cancellation process was so frustrating that people gave up partway through and resigned themselves to just continue to pay.

How to Protect Yourself From Dark Patterns

Automation can eliminate much of the frustration from subscription management. Services like Chargeback use AI agents to automatically detect all your subscriptions by scanning your email and financial accounts, monitor free trials so you never forget about upcoming charges, and actually handle the cancellation process for you by navigating through dark patterns, dealing with retention offers, and working through confusing interfaces on your behalf.

The average cancellation time when using Chargeback is less than an hour, compared to the several hours of frustration many people experience trying to cancel subscriptions manually.