FTC sues Uber over claims the company makes subscriptions hard to cancel

The Federal Trade Commission has decided to take formal action against ride-hailing service Uber over what it describes as "deceptive billing and cancellation practices." The FTC's lawsuit, filed on Monday, specifically takes issue with the Uber One service, which lets subscribers earn cash back on rides, get free deliveries and avoid cancellation fees.

According to the FTC, Uber made it easy for subscribers to join Uber One, but much harder to cancel. "Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel," the commission claims. The company also reportedly charged some users before their bill their free trial was up, and misrepresented the savings Uber One offered by not taking its subscription fee into account.

The lawsuit says that Uber's actions violated the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, which "requires online retailers to clearly disclose the terms of the service they are selling, obtain consumers' consent before charging them for a service and provide a simple way to cancel a recurring subscription." 

Uber intends to fight the lawsuit and believes that the FTC has misrepresented the facts in some key ways. The company says that it "does not sign up or charge consumers without their consent" and that subscription cancellations can happen in-app, at any point. Uber does acknowledge that subscriptions previously had to be cancelled 48 hours before a charge through the company's support team, but that's apparently no longer the case.

Despite the best efforts of tech executives, the Trump administration has maintained a level of animosity towards tech companies. New FTC chair Andrew Ferguson suggested that censorship would be a major concern for the FTC under President Donald Trump, but the commission is still moving forward with an antitrust case against Meta, for example. The possibility for the (technically) independent organization to be wielded as a weapon by Trump feels a lot more likely without any Democrat members.

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