Your subscription cancellation rights in South Carolina

What the law says

South Carolina’s 2024 law (Act No. 159, §§ 38-78-55 and 37-6-120) makes an automatic renewal provision in a covered service contract unenforceable unless the consumer received written or electronic notice 30 to 60 days before the cancellation deadline, conspicuously disclosing that the contract renews unless cancelled, the amount that will be charged on renewal, and cancellation details including a toll-free number, an email address, a postal address where the seller bills directly, or another cost-effective, timely and easy-to-use cancellation mechanism — and a separate, older rule for health and fitness facilities allows automatic renewal only one month at a time, opted into by the customer’s initials next to a bold fourteen-point disclosure.

The design follows the Georgia–Florida family — a service-contract law with a definitional threshold (renewals of more than a month keeping the contract alive past six months) — but the 2024 notice adds a detail its neighbours lack: the renewal amount belongs in the notice. A reminder that names the price defeats the quiet-increase pattern in the covered sector.

The enforceability lever

The remedy is structural: without the compliant notice, the renewal provision is unenforceable against you. That converts a missing or defective notice from a grievance into a position — the renewal simply does not bind, and a written dispute can say exactly that, citing the section that applies to your contract type.

The fitness rule

For health and fitness facilities, the older § 44-79-60 goes further than most states: contracts cap at set terms, an automatic renewal option may run no longer than one month at a time, and it is enforceable only if disclosed in bold fourteen-point type on the front page and initialed by you as an opt-in. Price changes in an auto-renewed contract need their own 30–60-day written notice. A South Carolina gym that rolled you into anything longer, or without that initialed opt-in, is on the wrong side of the statute — pair this with the practical sequence in our gym playbook.

The gap, honestly

The 2024 law is a service-contract law; the monthly streaming or app plan typically renews below the definitional threshold and outside the covered categories. For those, the position is the familiar one: federal ROSCA, the state’s unfair-trade-practices law, the contract and your records — the no-statute guide carries that playbook.

The order to work in

1. Classify the contract. Covered service contract? The notice-or-unenforceable rule applies. Fitness contract? The one-month-and-initials rule applies. Ordinary digital subscription? The general layers apply.

2. Find or miss the notice. For covered renewals, search for the 30–60-day notice with the renewal amount; its absence is the whole argument.

3. Escalate with the section named. The South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs takes complaints; a dispute that names the applicable section and attaches the missing-notice timeline is the one that resolves.

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: Act No. 159 (S.434), South Carolina General Assembly, checked September 9, 2026. · How we verify legal content