Your subscription cancellation rights in Oregon

What the statute says

Oregon regulates automatic renewal and continuous service offers in ORS 646A.295: offer terms must be presented clearly and conspicuously before the agreement is fulfilled, the consumer’s affirmative consent is required before any charge, an acknowledgment the consumer can retain must state the terms and how to cancel — for free trials, before the consumer pays — and material changes require notice; goods sent without the required consent are deemed an unconditional gift.

Unlike Florida’s service-contract statute, Oregon’s law reaches the ordinary digital subscription: it covers automatic renewal and continuous service offers generally, which puts the monthly streaming plan, the app subscription and the box-of-things-by-mail all inside it.

The four pillars, practically

Disclosure where you can see it. The renewal terms must be clear and conspicuous and sit next to the consent request — not in a linked document. If you learned about the renewal from your card statement rather than the sign-up screen, that is exactly what the provision forbids.

Consent before the charge. A charge for a renewal or continuous service without your affirmative consent to those terms is unlawful. Pre-checked boxes and buried clauses are what this is aimed at.

A record you can keep. After you accept, the company must give you an acknowledgment containing the terms and cancellation instructions in a form you can retain. For free trials it must say how to cancel — and let you do so — before you ever pay. Keep that acknowledgment; in a later dispute it is the document that defines what you agreed to.

A usable exit. The company must provide a cancellation mechanism — a toll-free number, an email address, or another cost-effective, timely and easy-to-use route — and must have described it in the acknowledgment.

The unconditional-gift rule

Oregon’s most distinctive remedy applies to physical goods: products sent under a continuous service agreement or renewal without the required consent are deemed an unconditional gift. You may keep them, use them or dispose of them, and you owe nothing — not the price, not even return shipping. For subscription boxes and send-until-you-cancel schemes, that single rule settles most disputes.

What Oregon does not require

Honesty about the gaps: Oregon’s statute predates the newest generation of laws and does not mandate annual renewal reminders or California-style click-to-quit symmetry. Notice is owed for material changes to terms you accepted, not for every ordinary renewal cycle. The discipline of tracking your own renewal dates is not made redundant by this statute.

The order to work in

1. Find your acknowledgment. If you never received one containing the terms and cancellation route, say so in writing — that is a defect in the company’s compliance, and it strengthens every later step.

2. Use the described cancellation mechanism and keep proof. The statute obliges them to provide it; your job is to use it in a documented way.

3. For unconsented charges, dispute with statute in hand. State that consent to the renewal terms was never obtained as ORS 646A.295 requires, and dispute the charge with your card issuer if the company does not resolve it.

4. For unconsented goods, keep them. Cite the unconditional-gift provision and decline any demand to pay or return-ship.

Escalating

The Oregon Department of Justice’s consumer protection section takes complaints, and the FTC covers the federal ROSCA layer. Dates, the acknowledgment (or its absence), and written cancellation records decide these disputes.

This page gives general information, not legal advice. Statutes are summarised; the wording that binds is the current text of the law itself. For a contested case, a consumer-protection office or a licensed attorney in your state is the right address.

Source: ORS 646A.295, Oregon Legislature, checked September 9, 2026. · How we verify legal content