New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top consumer watchdog has one gripe about New Yorkers – he would like them to complain more. “We get about 30,000 complaints a year,” said Samuel AA Levine, New York City’s new commissioner of consumer and worker protection. “I’d really like to get the number up.”
From downtown Manhattan, he has renewed a war on junk fees and deceptive subscriptions that he started in Washington DC as the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection director during the Biden presidency, banned hotels’ hidden charges, and cracked down on delivery companies’ “design tricks” that lower wages and predatory debt collection. Since January, his office has sued self-storage companies and won millions from Uber Eats and Amazon.
June could see a new “click to cancel” rule that would make New York the first municipality in the US with a law on subscriptions that are maddeningly difficult to get out of.
The United States has suffered a decades-long “epidemic of corporate lawbreaking with very few repercussions”, Levine told the Guardian in a recent interview from his office, decorated with a caustic New York Post editorial that features Levine and Mamdani eating Munchkins as they announce an $1.8m settlement with a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee over worker violations.
Critics, and corporate law firms, are raising alarms about New York’s new “aggressive enforcement posture”, warning that Levine is a local analogue to a state attorney general or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
“Corporations that rip people off need to face consequences. I don’t think that’s radical. I think it’s common sense,” said Levine.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
In the broadest sense, why do you think American consumers are so unhappy right now?
Because everyone’s trying to screw them.
Do you think that companies in the United States have too much power right now?
I think certain companies have too much power. I think small businesses have too little power.
But you’ve had such lax merger enforcement over the last four decades since the Reagan administration. You look at most industries today, there are three, maybe four players.
And any policy you want to get done in Washington, those players effectively have a veto over.
Consumers describe feeling increasingly under attack by companies that are not acting in good faith. Wall Street and other pressures have long pushed executives to squeeze as much money as they can out of customers. What specifically do you think has changed recently?
I think it is digital interfaces. They had subscription traps in the 90s, right? I remember those music services, where you got 10 free CDs … BMG Music.
But subscriptions became much more appealing in the last 15 years [for companies]. Venture capital loves it, investors love it. You have automatic recurring billing, which is much more common now than 15 years ago, and enrollment online.
The whole move from owning products and services to subscribing to products and services. You used to buy software at a store as you know and there’d be a little CD and you install it. Now you download and subscribe – Office 365, you’ve got to pay $100 every year just to keep Microsoft Word running, a huge expense for the city, by the way. All of that was enabled by digital interfaces.
Over time, companies realized that the way these interfaces are designed can have a profound impact on consumer behavior.
Once you start having billions of interactions to analyze, as large companies do, you can really start to see patterns. And of course, AI is a turbocharger.
Corporations are using words like “aggressive” to describe your first few months in office. How would you describe your meetings with businesses?
I want an open door and for companies to want to talk to us. I have said to them, I want businesses here to thrive.
There are complaints they have about New York City that are very legitimate. The cost of doing business in the city is very high. Operating a small business in New York City is very challenging. The price of everything is going up.
Most business leaders say they recognize that when there are dishonest companies, not playing by the rules, that it hurts consumers, but it also hurts the reputation of that industry.
And it hurts honest competitors, too. They want a level playing field.
There are folks who think the department should have a softer tone, that we should be friendlier, that we shouldn’t take an aggressive stance on lawbreaking. And I just fundamentally disagree with that.
If people break the law in New York, you park on the wrong side of the street, you’re going to face some pretty severe consequences. I believe the same thing about corporate law.
I think if anything in this country we’ve had for decades an epidemic of corporate lawbreaking with very few repercussions.
You’ve had a steady but now accelerating decline in white-collar prosecution at the federal level. I think that just underscores the need to say “Companies are not above the law. Corporations that rip people off need to face consequences.”
I don’t think that’s radical. I think it’s common sense.
From a practical point of view, how would the click-to-cancel rule work?
If you’re a company that does business with New Yorkers, you have to make your cancellations simple, that’s the proposal. That’s the same approach we took on hotel junk fees.
Not only did that apply to hotels based in the city, it applied to hotels that were advertising to New Yorkers in the city. That’s our jurisdiction.
We’re not going to wait for DC. We’re going to be the first city in the country to have our own click-to-cancel law if this rule is finalized.
How are you going to enforce it?
Aggressively.
We have a lot of options. First of all, anybody who calls 3-1-1 in New York City with a consumer complaint gets routed to us. We will not just take your complaint and put it in a file cabinet. We have a team of mediators.
We will reach out to the company, see if we can get your money back, get your subscription canceled. If we see a pattern of complaints, we can bring enforcement actions, both in our city court and in state court to get people their money back and force companies to pay a civil penalty to the city.
We get about 30,000 complaints a year. I’d really like to get the number up. I want New Yorkers to think of us when you’re being ripped off.
US consumers who face recurring subscription issues often tell me they ignore them because they think it will take too long to fix, and the time isn’t worth the money saved.
See, I’m a crazy person. I will spend hours to get $5 back. I’m absolutely irrational about it.
Why?
It’s the principle of it. I mean, this is one of the reasons I’m in this business. I really don’t like companies nickel-and-diming people. And I take it personally when I’m being nickel-and-dimed.
And no matter how small the amount, I will fight it.
The FTC’s national click-to-cancel rule was struck down by a federal judge. Why will this one stick?
That rule was struck down on procedural grounds … because the court found that the FTC needed to do another round of notice and comment.
The FTC authority to write rules is it has to find an “unfair and deceptive” practice prevalent in the economy. The court did not question that. And that is why I think the Trump administration is now saying they’re going to issue a new rule.
[New York City] can write rules to prohibit “deceptive or unconscionable” practices. What we assert in our rulemaking is that trapping people in a subscription or lying to people about the terms of a subscription is both. I think we’re on very solid ground on that.
Why do you think there was such huge pushback on click-to-cancel when you introduced it at the FTC?
It was an onslaught by every industry group because this is hugely profitable. “Subscriptions people don’t want” is a billion-dollar business. We had the cable companies, the telecommunication companies, the alarm companies, the Chamber [of Commerce fighting it].
Capitalism really works fabulously when it comes to creating a seamless enrollment experience. You just go on a website and they’ll get you enrolled in 30 seconds, it’s incredible! And then suddenly when you want to cancel … they use dark patterns and other design tricks to generate deliberate friction. It’s deeply manipulative.
These companies do A/B testing to see what is more likely to inhibit cancellation. This is a deliberate business strategy of ripping people off.
What else do you hope to tackle this year?
Junk fees, which is related. We’ve already done quite a bit on this. We have the strongest-in-the-nation hotel junk fee rule. We did compliance warnings to most of the industries we license. We did a number of lawsuits … for opposing junk fees.
I think you can expect to see over the months to come additional policy initiatives around eliminating hidden fees in New York City and additional coordination with other agencies that are looking to do the same.
I really see 2026 as this is when we have the most momentum. This is when we have to do the most good for New Yorkers.
Do you see you partnering with the Trump administration?
If they’re willing to work with us and we can do good work together, I would be open to it.
I think it remains to be seen whether they really invest the resources necessary to be effective in those spaces. But if they want to elevate good outcomes over politics, then we’d be happy to work with them.
