Documentation menuCancellation button

Cancellation button

The cancellation button under § 312k BGB for subscriptions and other continuing contracts.

Since 1 July 2022 every business that lets consumers conclude continuing contracts (subscriptions, memberships, SaaS plans, insurance, telecoms) on a website must offer a cancellation button on that website.

What the law asks for

Requirement	How Inverse covers it
A button labelled "Verträge hier kündigen" or similarly unambiguous	`<InverseLink kind="cancellation">`
Leads directly to a confirmation page, permanently available and easy to reach	The page with `<CancellationForm>`, no login needed
Page asks for type of cancellation (and the reason for an extraordinary one), identity, contract, the date the contract should end, and an electronic address for the receipt	Fields `cancellationType`, `reason`, `name`, `contractRef`, `effectiveDate`, `email`
A confirmation button labelled "jetzt kündigen"	Step 2 of `<CancellationForm>`
The consumer can save the declaration with date and time of submission	Step 3 shows a copy and offers it as a download
Acknowledgement on a durable medium without delay, with content, date and time of receipt and the time the contract ends	`renderReceipt` with `endsAt`, sent by your `sendReceipt`

Courts read these rules strictly. A login wall in front of the form, a button called "Abo verwalten", or a confirmation page that tries to keep the customer with offers have all been found to break them.

End date in the receipt

The receipt should say when the contract ends. If you can work it out at once, pass resolveEndDate:

import { contractEndDate, createInverseHandler, toIsoDate } from "@sweberdev/inverse";

export const POST = createInverseHandler({
  company,
  onDeclaration: save,
  sendReceipt: send,
  resolveEndDate: async (record) => {
    const contract = await findContract(record.data.contractRef);
    if (!contract) return undefined; // the receipt says you will follow up
    return contractEndDate({
      received: toIsoDate(new Date(record.receivedAt)),
      notice: { months: 1 },
      termEnd: contract.termEnd,
      requested: record.data.effectiveDate,
    });
  },
});

contractEndDate returns the end of the current term if the notice period still fits, otherwise the day the notice period runs out (contracts renewed by law after 1 March 2022 can be cancelled with at most one month's notice), or the requested date if it is later.

If you return undefined, the receipt says that you will tell the consumer separately. Do that soon: the confirmation of the end date is still owed.

Which contracts

The consumer does not have to be logged in, so they may not know which plan a contract number belongs to. Accept what they enter, store it, and match it afterwards. contractRef can be an e-mail address, a customer number or a contract number.