Verträge kündigen — Cancelling Contracts

The law changed in your favour, and the letter still matters

German consumer contracts used to be a trap of automatic renewals, and the law has been rewritten in the consumer's favour. Knowing what changed saves both money and argument. Since 2022, contracts of the gym-and-phone kind may still run for an initial term of up to two years, but an automatic extension may only be indefinite with a notice period of one month — the old second full year is gone. And since July 2022, any provider that lets you sign up online must offer a clearly labelled cancellation button, the Kündigungsbutton, that works without logging in or telephoning. If a website demands a letter for something you bought online, it is very likely non-compliant, which is why Lena tells Alex to look. Alongside that sits the fourteen-day Widerrufsrecht for distance contracts, which needs no reason, and the requirement that a cancellation only be in Textform — an email or a web form is enough, a handwritten signature has not been required for most consumer contracts since 2016. So the gym's insistence on a letter is a convention rather than a right. Nonetheless, send the letter if the stakes justify it. What goes wrong with cancellations is almost never the wording, it is proof of arrival: the provider says nothing came, or came late, and the contract rolls on. Hence the two habits worth adopting. Ask for confirmation, and keep it — Lass dir die Kündigung bestätigen. And for anything expensive, Einschreiben mit Rückschein, which produces a signature you can point at. If a provider ignores a valid cancellation, the escalation ladder is short and it works: a written reminder setting a deadline, then the Verbraucherzentrale — the consumer advice center in your state, which gives cheap advice and writes letters that get answered — and for telecoms, the Bundesnetzagentur. Lesson 99 covers complaining in a way that works; this is the paperwork half of it.