Banned in the US? Read the statute.
Thirteen American states have a law written specifically about dating services, and we read each one in September 2026. Here is the honest result: what they actually give a banned user, the one contract argument worth checking, and three claims about US law that are simply not true.
Intake first. Payment after. Not taken on = refunded.
The core finding, stated plainly: no state's dating-service statute gives you a refund because you were banned. Not one. Every cancellation right we found is keyed to a three-business-day cooling-off window, or to death, certified disability or relocation, or to the company's own paperwork failures. A ban is none of those things and no statute treats it as equivalent.
That sentence costs us sales and we are publishing it anyway, because the alternative is you paying somebody to file a claim that was never available. What follows is what is available, which is more than most people expect and comes from a direction almost nobody looks in.
We work out which routes are actually open to you, write the appeal where the app gives you a box for one, and file the routes outside the app in your name, the first inside 48 hours. We never ask for your password. Intake first, payment after.
Get my case built - $149The contract argument: a missing notice can make the contract void
This has nothing to do with why you were banned, which is why it survives when the appeal does not. Four states say the same thing in different words: if the sign-up flow does not carry the state-mandated cancellation notice, in the required place, size and wording, the contract is void and you can cancel at any time.
Civil Code sections 1694 to 1694.4 govern dating service contracts, and since 2018 the definition expressly reaches services "offered primarily online". Section 1694.2 sets out a boldface cancellation-rights notice the contract must contain. Section 1694.4 makes a non-compliant contract void and unenforceable, and lets an injured member sue for three times actual damages plus attorney's fees.
Be realistic about the big apps. Tinder's US terms open with the notice: "California subscribers: You may cancel your subscription, without penalty or obligation, at any time prior to midnight of the third business day following the date you subscribed." Section 8d repeats the right for twelve states. So on Tinder the argument is at most about form and placement: whether the notice appears where, and in the type, the statute requires. That is a narrow, checkable question, and it is the first thing we check on a California case.
C.R.S. section 6-1-731.5 requires every online dating service with Colorado members to have adopted a written safety policy covering "profile suspension and member barring circumstances" and "an appeal process for suspended or barred members". This is the only statute we found anywhere in the United States that requires an appeal process as a matter of law.
The catch, stated honestly: it is enforced by the Colorado Attorney General or a district attorney, with a mandatory 30-day cure period. You cannot sue over a missing appeal process yourself. What you can do is ask the company, accurately and in writing, where its Colorado-mandated appeal process is, and complain to the Colorado Attorney General if there is not one.
A.R.S. sections 44-7151 to 44-7157 carry an explicit "online dating service" definition, a rescission right with a 30-day refund, and unusually they provide both a private right of action at section 44-7155 and Attorney General enforcement at section 44-7156. Actual damages plus attorney's fees, with no treble multiplier found. Illinois, at 815 ILCS 615, carries treble damages and fees like California but we could not confirm that it has been amended to reach online services.
Three things about US law that are not true
Each of these is repeated confidently online. Each is wrong, and each one costs somebody weeks.
"New York law says they have to tell you why you were banned."
General Business Law section 394-c does use the words "fraud ban" and "banned member" by name, and so do the Colorado and Arizona statutes. Every one of those provisions exists to make the platform warn other users about a suspected scammer. None of them gives the banned person notice, an explanation, an appeal or a refund. Read in isolation the words look like your rights. They are not.
"California's auto-renewal law makes your subscription a free gift."
Business and Professions Code section 17603 does turn undisclosed auto-renewal charges into an "unconditional gift", and on the statute's own wording that remedy is for physical goods that get shipped to you. It does not make an app subscription free because the renewal disclosure was defective. Reaching money on a pure digital service means going through a different law, the Consumers Legal Remedies Act. What California does give you, since 2025, is click to cancel: if you could sign up online, section 17602(d) says the app has to let you cancel online, immediately, without calling anyone.
"Texas has a dating app law, so Texans are covered."
Business and Commerce Code Chapter 106 is background-check disclosure paperwork. No cancellation right, no refund right, and the chapter says in its own text that there is no private right of action. A bill that would have added a real cancellation right was filed twice and never passed. A Texan gets nothing dating-specific to work with, which makes the general routes below the whole game rather than a supplement to it.
What we actually run on a US case
In this order, because the order is most of the value. The appeal is the route with published reversal figures behind it, so nothing is allowed to compromise it.
1. The platform's own appeal, filed first
On Match Group's own 2025 EU figures, Tinder reversed 21.2% of account-ban appeals, Hinge 36.1% of appeals, and its EU brands together 61,109 of 191,929, about 32%. The appeal is not the only route that has ended with an account back: in the founder’s own case, Tinder lifted it after a data access request. But it is the route with published numbers. Most apps read one appeal per ban, so it has to be the good one.
2. The state data access request, where your state has one
California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut and Texas all run a 45-day clock, extendable once. A paid company is not barred from acting as your agent on these, any more than it is on a European access request, so we can be the contact. This is the route that produces the ban record itself, and the ban record is what makes everything after it specific instead of pleading.
3. The state Attorney General consumer complaint
Free, and it goes on a record the company reads. New Jersey resolved allegations against Bumble Inc. over criminal-background-screening disclosures in 2024 for a $315,000 civil penalty, and the consent order expressly preserved any individual user's own right to sue separately. That is not a route to your account, and we will not pretend it is. It is evidence that these offices act.
4. The money, on ordinary services-not-rendered grounds
Stop the bleeding first: cancel future billing with the platform or through the App Store or Google Play, which works regardless of the ban and regardless of any dating-specific law. Then the unused period. If the subscription was bought in-app, the store is the counterparty and its own refund process is often the fastest route.
5. Small claims, prepared but filed by you
Most small claims courts bar paid non-lawyer representation, so the filing is yours. The preparation is ours: which court, which corporate entity at which registered address, what the arbitration clause does to the claim, and what the claim is actually worth. Match Group entities sit in Dallas and Delaware; Bumble Inc. is a Texas company with a registered agent, not a Match Group brand.
The case check is free and takes two minutes. It tells you which routes are open on your ban, including the cases where it tells you not to pay anyone.
Asked by Americans, answered straight
No. No federal law and no state law requires a dating app to give you a reason for a ban. Colorado comes closest: C.R.S. section 6-1-731.5 requires an online dating service with Colorado members to have a written appeal process for suspended or barred members, enforced by the Attorney General rather than by you. Everything else that uses the words "banned member", in New York, Colorado and Arizona, is about warning other users, not about your rights.
Not because you were banned, under any dating-service statute in any state. What works instead is ordinary services-not-rendered: cancel the future billing through the platform or the app store, then pursue the unused period. If your state is California, Colorado, North Carolina or Wisconsin, there is a second and stronger angle, which is whether the app's own sign-up flow carries the cancellation disclosure the statute demands. If it does not, the contract is void and the cooling-off window never closed.
No. The certified dispute bodies under Article 21 are open only to residents of the EU and the EEA, and they ask you to declare residency. Any service that files one for an American is spending your money on a submission that will be closed unread.
Thirteen that we found: California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Carolina, Connecticut, Rhode Island (R.I. Gen. Laws chapter 5-78, "Dating Services") and Texas. California's general automatic-renewal law sits alongside them. Tinder's own US terms, section 8d, print a three-business-day cancellation right for twelve states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. We have not yet found the Iowa statute behind that entry. Of the thirteen, only California, New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Arizona have definitions that clearly reach an app rather than a 1990s introduction agency. Rhode Island's definition, which covers "an exchange of names, telephone numbers, addresses, and statistics" and "a photograph or video selection process", may reach an app too; it has not been tested. We found no dating-specific statute in Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Washington, Georgia, Pennsylvania or Virginia, which leaves general unfair-practices law and the routes above.
It covers any legal claim about the ban itself, not only the money. Tinder's section 15a gives "Dispute" "the broadest possible meaning", and it expressly contemplates a Notice about Tinder's termination of your account. What it does not touch is the appeal, your data access request or an Attorney General complaint, because none of those is a claim against Tinder. A legal claim goes through the clause's own steps first: a signed Notice to CT Corporation, c/o Tinder, 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, Delaware 19801, then 60 days to resolve it informally, and only then arbitration or small claims court, which the clause lets either side choose. Completing the Notice step is, in the terms' words, "a condition precedent" to filing. The claim itself is discussed on can I sue Tinder for banning me.
Banned somewhere else?
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and India. Each page reads that country’s own statutes, because the strongest route is never the same one twice.
Where to start
The free check asks fourteen questions and tells you which of the routes above are open on your case and how long is left on each. It takes two minutes and asks for no card. The guide publishes all of it in full, including the parts you can run yourself for nothing, and what we cannot do is the page most services do not write.
Statutes were read directly against their official sources on 17 September 2026, and Tinder's US terms (effective 5 March 2026) and Rhode Island's chapter 5-78 on Monday 28th September 2026. Where a state's position could not be confirmed against a primary source, this page says so rather than rounding it up. Rhode Island's chapter was read from a web.archive.org capture of the state legislature's statute pages.