The thermal degradation of virgin and HCI-treated PVC in powder form, as well as of PVC films of different thicknesses, has been studied as a function of time and temperature. The rate of dehydrochlorination was determined conductimetrically and from the polyene sequence distributions as obtained by UV spectroscopy. Increases in the rate of dehydrochlorination, ranging between 30 and 45%, were observed at all temperatures for the samples pretreated with HCI, while the corresponding activation energies were found to be lower by about 20%. For the PVC films, the rate increased with thickness, i.e., with longer residence time of evolved HCI within the sample. The results offer insight regarding the autocatalytic role of evolved HCI.