Canceling free trials just got a whole lot ease. You're in California. What's going on? I'm rich DeMuro. This is rich on Tech. A new California law that went into effect on July first makes it easier to cancel subscriptions and those free trials that you sign up for. It's called California Senate Bill three one three, and it requires that companies make it easy to cancel services that you
sign up for online. This is pretty big because how many times have you been tempted to sign up for something like a free trial, but you kind of stop short at the sign up page because you don't want to have to deal with the headache of the cancelation process. In fact, there are entire websites dedicated to helping you cancel subscriptions, like get human, which provides the phone numbers to call as well as the instructions, but it's still
kind of complicated and time consuming. The new law says that California customers who accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online must be able to cancel the service online as well. This makes a ton of sense. I've always said, if you sign up one way, you should be able to cancel that same exact way. Now, don't get me wrong, lots of online services do make it easy for you to pause or cancel your subscription and
a few clicks. But this new law is going to take care of all of those other services that kind of make money on the fact that you don't feel like waiting on hold forever or finding the right eight hundred number to cancel. The new law also says that companies must accept a pre written termination email to cancel the service, and they can't dispute it. Basically, once you send that email, it's done, they have to cancel it. Now.
Keep in mind this is only for California consumers at this point, but other states might see this law and take note and then follow suit. It makes a lot of sense in our on demand economy. Easy to sign up for, easy to cancel, and it really puts a little more pressure on companies to provide a great service because they want to keep those customers. By the way, a couple things to know. One service I love for keeping track of all of my subscriptions is called true bill.
What you do is you sign in with your credit card and debit card information. Then it spits out and keeps track of all of your recurring bills. You can literally see, Okay, I pay fifteen dollars a month for Netflix, I pay nine ninety nine for YouTube, whatever it is. They'll keep an eye on all your monthly rates and if they go up, they'll also tell you. Plus you also see exactly how much you spend each month on all these services, which is kind of scary when you
add it all up. And that's the other side of all this. Subscriptions are so easy to sign up for these days, and lots of them require a recurring bill on our credit or debit cards, so you might not notice an increase in fees automatically because you have to really check your statements. I don't know about you, but I don't get an email every month when Netflix bills my card. So another place to look is also your iTunes account. I talk about this in my book one
hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone. Apple makes subscribing to things really easy, but when you have to find that subscription section to go to cancel it, it's kind of tough to find. But it's a good idea to go in there and see what you're being billed for on a monthly basis. You can find it by going into the iTunes store on your phone, scroll all the way down to your Apple ID where it has your ear Tap that, then tap view Apple ID.
You put in your password or use your face, and then you scroll to the middle of this page where it says subscriptions and you can see all the stuff that you have going on in there. You can learn more about that tip in my book. Just go to richon tech dot tv slash book. Thanks so much for listening. Hopefully you get those subscriptions under control and they're much easier to cancel in California. I'm Rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.