Subscription services for everything from food delivery to beauty products to exercise gear have grown exponentially in the past five years. Such services require consumers to enroll in a program to purchase goods on a consistent basis. They typically automatically renew, often on a monthly basis, and require customers wishing to cancel to take affirmative steps to avoid being charged. Marketers know that consumers often fail to take steps to cancel timely, which only benefits the marketers’ bottom lines.
With the explosion of subscription business models, consumer complaints have skyrocketed as well, with consumers complaining that the terms of the negative option offer – an offer that interprets a consumer’s failure to take an affirmative action as an agreement to be charged – were not clearly explained. For example, consumers have complained that were not told they would be charged each month, were not adequately reminded of how to “skip” being charged each month, that prepaid credits expire without notice, and that it can be difficult to cancel. Thus, subscription businesses have faced increasing regulatory scrutiny and all advertisers that offer products or services that automatically renew should pay close attention.
AdoreMe Settlement
AdoreMe, a subscription lingerie service launched as a rival to Victoria’s Secret, recently agreed to pay $1.38 million to settle the Federal Trade Commission’s charges that the company did not clearly communicate to consumers the terms of its “VIP Membership” program which automatically billed consumers if they failed to “skip” a month within a 5-day window, falsely claimed that store credits could be used “any time,” and made it difficult for subscribers to cancel their memberships in violation of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act as well as the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act.