31 August 2026 By Nathan Isterling, Chief Information Officer, Otivo
A recent Federal Court ruling has put subscription traps back in the spotlight. But the most useful lesson isn't about one dating platform. It's about the recurring charges hiding in ordinary bank statements — and the handful of decisions that bring them back under control.
Most subscription creep will never end up in court. It looks far more ordinary than that. The streaming service nobody's opened in months. The cloud storage upgrade bought during a phone change. The fitness app that outlived the fitness kick. The software licence that renews quietly once a year. None of it looks alarming on its own, and that's exactly why it works.
Then one day you look properly — not at this week's balance, but at the pattern. The same merchants turn up month after month. Others surface once a year and disappear again. A service you thought you'd left is still billing you. Something that seemed trivial when you signed up has quietly become a standing claim on your future income.
The Federal Court's eHarmony decision shows what can happen when the terms of that ongoing relationship aren't clear enough. The Court found misleading or deceptive conduct relating to automatic renewal, claims about membership duration and cancellation, and advertised monthly prices that left out a mandatory fee, among other representations. It also found the company had failed, in relevant instances, to display the minimum total subscription price as a single price alongside monthly pricing. The ACCC brought the case after receiving hundreds of complaints.
The case is unusually visible. The behaviour underneath it isn't.
Consumer research suggests cancellation friction is widespread. CPRC found that 75% of Australians with subscriptions had struck a negative experience when trying to cancel, 32% had felt pressured to stay subscribed, and one in 10 had ended up continuing to pay for something they no longer needed or wanted.
There's a wider household budget context too. ABS data for January 2026 showed spending on services rising, with digital streaming among the categories contributing to the increase. That doesn't prove households are wasting money on subscriptions, but it does show how deeply recurring digital services are now embedded in ordinary spending.
One consumer who gave evidence in the eHarmony proceedings described believing she'd finished with the service, only to face a later renewal and a dispute over the resulting charge. The broader takeaway matters more than that single experience. Stopping your use of a service, deleting a profile and actually ending the billing agreement aren't necessarily the same thing.
Now picture an ordinary household. A video service on one card. Two overlapping music subscriptions across family accounts. An old cloud storage plan on another card. An annual app renewal nobody remembers agreeing to. No single payment feels decisive. Put them all on one page, though, and four separate habits become four financial decisions.
That's what a subscription audit does. It makes the invisible visible.
Find the charges before you judge them
The first rule is not to start with cancellation. Start with discovery.
Review at least 12 months of transaction history so annual renewals have a chance to appear, and check everywhere recurring payments can originate — transaction accounts, credit cards, app stores, digital wallets and online payment services. MoneySmart specifically recommends checking your accounts regularly, and notes you can ask your bank for a list of your direct debits or recurring payments.
Then group the recurring charges by merchant and ask four questions.
Do I still use it? Not whether you might use it again someday, but whether it currently delivers value.
Is it duplicated? Two services may solve much the same problem, or a feature you pay for separately may already be bundled somewhere else.
Has the plan drifted? Check whether the price, tier, inclusions or renewal arrangement still resemble what you originally chose.
Would I buy it again today? This is usually the cleanest test. Forget that you already have it. Faced with today's price and today's terms, would you actively press "subscribe"?
The ACCC has previously flagged warning signs around subscriptions, including ongoing costs that aren't prominent enough, important terms buried in fine print and restrictions that make cancelling difficult.
Cancelling without creating another problem
There's an important difference between ending a subscription contract and stopping a payment instruction.
For direct debits from a bank account, MoneySmart says you can ask your bank to stop the payments. Once the bank receives your request it must stop them and forward the cancellation to the service provider's bank. For recurring credit card payments, MoneySmart advises contacting the service provider and then your bank, and keeping copies of your correspondence.
But stopping the payment doesn't necessarily erase the obligation underneath it. If you're still committed for a minimum term, or you owe an amount under the agreement, blocking the debit may simply leave the contractual dispute unresolved. That's why MoneySmart warns that where direct debit is a condition of the service, you may need to deal with the contract itself and, where appropriate, seek advice.
A sensible cancellation sequence looks like this. Cancel through the provider's stated process. Save the screenshots or emails confirming the cancellation and its effective date. Turn off any renewal setting where relevant. Then check your next statement. If another charge appears, raise it promptly with the provider and with your bank or card issuer.
Where a business won't resolve the problem, the ACCC recommends contacting the business first and setting out the outcome you want. State and territory consumer protection agencies can provide further assistance, and some industries have an ombudsman or specialist dispute body. You can also report concerning business conduct to the ACCC, although it doesn't resolve individual consumer disputes — those reports help inform its broader compliance and enforcement work.
That distinction is worth holding onto. Complain to get your own issue fixed. Report systemic conduct so the regulator can see the pattern.
What changes under Australia's new subscription rules
The timing of the eHarmony judgment matters, because Australian consumer law is already moving towards regulating subscription practices far more explicitly.
Parliament passed the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 in July 2026, with the new unfair trading and subscription reforms due to take effect from 1 July 2027. The legislation sets out dedicated requirements covering the information given when a subscription contract is offered, the information supplied during the life of a subscription, and the method consumers are given to exit.
On cancellation, the enacted legislation is unusually direct. A supplier's exit method must be easy to find, straightforward, and limited to the steps reasonably necessary to end the contract and protect the subscriber's interests. Where the contract was entered into online — or where the supplier offers online sign-up for the same type of subscription — an online exit method must be available.
The reforms also provide for notices containing key subscription information at prescribed stages of the relationship. Parliamentary materials give examples such as notifications before a free trial expires, when a subscription is due for renewal, or when prices change. The precise prescribed information and timing, though, are matters for regulations. In other words, the principle is legislated, but you shouldn't assume every detailed reminder rule is already operating in August 2026.
None of which means subscription conduct is unregulated today. Existing Australian Consumer Law provisions already prohibit misleading or deceptive conduct and impose pricing requirements, among other protections — the very provisions at the centre of the recent Federal Court finding. And the ACCC has expressly made subscription traps and other manipulative "dark patterns" a 2026–27 enforcement focus.
So there's no reason to wait for 2027. Better rules can reduce friction, but they can't decide which subscriptions deserve a place in your budget. That part stays with you.
The clean-up worth doing now
A useful subscription isn't a financial mistake. A service you watch every night, software that helps you work, storage you genuinely need, a membership you value — that's money well spent.
The problem is the subscription that no longer faces a decision.
Which is why the best question in a subscription audit isn't "can I afford this payment?" It's "knowing what I know now, would I sign up for this again today?"
Take one hour. Pull up a full year of transactions. Put every recurring payment on one list. Keep the services that earn their place, downgrade the ones that are bigger than you need, and cancel the ones you wouldn't willingly buy again. Then check that the cancellations stick.
And do something deliberate with whatever cash stops leaving your account. It might strengthen an emergency buffer, help reduce debt, cover a rising household bill, or simply give the monthly budget more breathing room. The point isn't deprivation. It's turning money that was leaving by default back into money you control.
Sources and assumptions
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — Federal Court finding. Court finds eHarmony engaged in misleading conduct in relation to automatic renewal and pricing of its subscriptions, 25 August 2026. This is the principal source for the Court's findings, the ACCC's allegations history and the status of penalties and redress.
- Federal Court proceeding. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v eHarmony, Inc (Federal Court of Australia, decision delivered 25 August 2026). The article describes the findings at a consumer level rather than reproducing individual pricing examples or named consumer evidence. The ACCC's official case summary is used as the principal account of the judgment.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — enforcement priorities. ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb's 2026–27 priorities address and accompanying ACCC material identify subscription traps and other dark patterns in digital markets as an enforcement focus.
- Federal Register of Legislation and Parliament of Australia. Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Act 2026 and parliamentary analysis of the subscription-contract provisions, including disclosure, in-life notices and straightforward cancellation.
- ASIC MoneySmart. Guidance on identifying, monitoring and cancelling direct debits and recurring card payments, including the distinction between stopping payment and dealing with an underlying service contract.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — consumer complaints. Official guidance on contacting a business, seeking help through state or territory consumer agencies and reporting systemic concerns to the ACCC.
- Consumer Policy Research Centre. Let Me Out – Subscription trap practices in Australia, August 2024, including research on cancellation difficulty and consumers who continued paying for unwanted subscriptions.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. Monthly Household Spending Indicator, January 2026, used only to provide broader context on household service spending and digital streaming.
- Supplied edited copy. Used as the starting point for the subscription-audit framing, narrative direction and practical four-question test. References to the originating publisher, named author and specific monetary examples have been deliberately excluded.
- Assumptions. Research confirms the Federal Court decision was delivered on 25 August 2026, resolving the date that was initially treated as potentially unspecified. As at 31 August 2026, the ACCC's official material states that penalties, consumer redress and other orders are to be determined later, so this article does not speculate about their outcome. The anonymised household scenario is illustrative rather than a claim about a particular person. No specific dollar amounts from the court case, the supplied material or individual examples have been included. The discussion of the reforms commencing on 1 July 2027 distinguishes enacted statutory requirements from details that still depend on regulations.
Disclaimer
The information in this communication is current as at August 2026 and has been prepared by Otivo Pty Ltd ABN 47 602 457 732, AFSL and Australian Credit Licence No. 485665. This content is general information only and has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. It is not personal financial or taxation advice and should not be relied on as such. Before acting on any information, you should consider its appropriateness having regard to your personal circumstances. This material must not be reproduced in whole or in part, or posted on any social media platform, without the prior written consent of Otivo Pty Ltd.