An Act Expanding Consumer Protections.
SB 1248 is a broad consumer-protection bill that would require businesses to advertise prices more transparently and would tighten rules around subscription-style contracts. For consumer goods and services, including event tickets, food and beverage purchases, and lodging, the bill generally prohibits businesses from advertising a price that excludes mandatory fees, charges, or costs that the consumer must pay. It creates exceptions for taxes, clearly disclosed mandatory gratuities, certain variable charges like shipping or delivery, small identity-verification charges that are promptly refunded, and transactions already covered by specified existing statutory schemes.
The bill also substantially revises Connecticut’s automatic-renewal law. It expands disclosure requirements for automatic renewals and continuous services, requires affirmative consent before charging for renewals or ongoing services, mandates annual reminders, and requires businesses to provide an easy online or telephone method to cancel or stop recurring services. It also addresses free trials, promotional pricing, and material changes to contract terms, and it makes violations unfair trade practices under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The bill would amend and expand multiple areas of Connecticut law, including the unfair trade practices statutes, the state’s automatic-renewal statute, landlord-tenant law, and the criminal lockout statute. It would create a new price-transparency rule for consumer goods and services and classify violations as unfair or deceptive trade practices. It would also revise section 42-158ff to impose more detailed disclosure, consent, reminder, and cancellation requirements for automatic renewals and continuous services, with an effective date of July 1, 2026. In housing, it would require advertised rents to include most recurring fees, require a standardized rental terms summary form, regulate the order in which tenant payments are applied, and authorize civil penalties and attorney’s fees for violations. Finally, it would update the criminal lockout statute to conform to the revised definition of tenant.
The available vote history suggests the bill had majority support in committee, passing the General Law Committee on a 15-7 joint favorable vote. The bill’s title and structure indicate a consumer- and tenant-protection focus, and the committee result suggests the proposal was generally well received by supporters of stronger disclosure and anti-fee rules. No transcript excerpts are available, so the record does not show detailed public debate or amendments, but the committee vote indicates meaningful support alongside a notable minority of opposition.
The main points of contention are likely to be the bill’s broad restrictions on fee-based pricing and its new obligations on recurring-service businesses and landlords. Businesses may object to the requirement that advertised prices include most mandatory fees, the affirmative-consent standard for renewals, annual reminders, and the operational burden of cancellation mechanisms by phone and online. Landlords may also oppose the rent-advertising rules, standardized summary form requirement, payment-application hierarchy, and civil penalties. The exceptions built into the bill—such as for taxes, gratuities, utilities, pet fees, and certain service charges—suggest lawmakers were trying to balance transparency with practical business concerns, but the 15-7 vote indicates there was still some disagreement over the scope and compliance burden.