Yes for recurring subscriptions the control should be firmly under the consumers control. Perhaps there should be a special recurring transaction type on credit cards akin to those in PayPal.

Startup idea? I would totally pay for / use a service that managed and paid all of my subscriptions to various things that also made it so that I could cancel any of them at any time with a single click (okay maybe 2 clicks) on their website and hear nothing more about that account.

Privacy.com

I think my bank does this, when I called for another reason this week there was an option on the phone menu to stop a recurring payment.

I've done this using my credit card company (not the bank) and they were very helpful. I explained why I wanted them to stop the recurring payment and they asked if I wanted to dispute any of the older charges, took less than 5 minutes. I call the 'fraud/disputes' phone number on the back of my card for this and I think that is not the bank, I think it's Visa / Mastercard themselves.

I bet processes like this are why subscriptions like gyms are starting to require your _bank account info_ rather than just a card.

Or just reject the payment the next time they try, that would be fine by me.

you can do that already. just issue a chargeback and poof.

Do that to a gym and they'll sue you for not paying out your contract.

A gym is not a recurring payment, it's a facility access contract defined for a period of time. You agreed upon price for the year, broken down into monthly payments. You are obligated to pay that full amount b/c you agreed to it when you signed the contract at the beginning of the membership.

You don't have such contracts with recurring payment products.

No, quite a few gyms advertise “no contract” month-to-month payment schemes that still require a specific cancellation process.

For example, Planet Fitness has “no commitment” memberships, but you still have to explicitly cancel.

> You may cancel according to our policy: Per the agreement, in order to cancel a membership, one must either go to your home club in person to fill out a cancellation form, or send a letter (preferably via certified mail) to the club, requesting cancellation. Please note: Memberships cannot be cancelled via fax, phone, or email.

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/51m0e0/com...

And your bank will probably get upset at you too.

Any banks that offer this service? I would switch my primary banking service for this.

You can kind of get close to this using merchant-specific card numbers from privacy.com (not affiliated). If you want to cancel a subscription, you just deactivate the number associated with that subscription.

All of them. if you don't like a subscription and don't care about burning a bridge, issue a chargeback.