ACM to investigate barriers to cancellation among telecom operators

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) launches an investigation into whether telecom operators create possible barriers to cancellation with regard to subscriptions. This investigation has been prompted by the many reports that ACM receives from consumers who experience barriers when canceling mobile or fixed subscriptions with their telecom operators. According to the law, consumers, in any case, must be able to cancel their subscriptions in the same way they took them out. This means that if you have taken out a subscription online, you have to be able to cancel it online. In practice, consumers are often more or less forced to cancel by phone. This is not allowed. The cancellation process cannot be made difficult for consumers. In the coming months, ACM will check whether telecom operators comply with these rules.

Edwin van Houten, Director of ACM’s Consumer Department, says: “Consumers must be able to choose the offer that meets their needs best. If they wish to cancel or switch providers, operators cannot make that process more difficult. If you can take out a subscription online, you must be able to cancel it online too.”

Taking out a subscription online means cancelling it online

Telecom operators that offer online subscriptions to consumers must ensure that consumers are able to cancel those subscriptions online just as easily. Companies must inform consumers clearly both prior to and during the agreement about how they can cancel their subscriptions. Concretely, this means:

• This information must be presented together, and must be easy-to-find on the website in a logical location.
• Companies cannot create any barriers to online cancellations, such as steering consumers towards canceling by phone or hiding the information about online cancellations as a result of which consumers need to click unnecessarily often in order to be able to cancel their subscription online.

Tips for consumers

Consumers that wish to cancel their telecom subscriptions and use search engines to find the right information about how they need to go about this can, in this way, unwittingly end up at a cancellation service provider. The top link in search results may belong to a commercial cancellation service provider. Such commercial providers charge for cancelling subscriptions, whereas consumers can do so for free when contacting their telecom operators directly. For more tips about canceling your telecom subscription, please visit:

• Canceling your telecom subscription | ACM ConsuWijzer (in Dutch)