The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Uber for its subscription policies. The FTC is assessing whether the company broke consumer protection laws by allegedly automatically signing people up for its Uber One subscription and making it hard to cancel.
This has been reported by the Bloomberg News.
FTC opened an investigation into the company earlier this year after receiving multiple complaints about the issue. Uber told Bloomberg that the cancellation process of their platform “follows both the letter and the spirit of the law.” They also claimed that if customers want to, they can cancel the subscription in 20 seconds or less.
The FTC has been cracking down on companies that offer subscription services to make it easier to cancel.
Last October, they finalized a new “click-to-cancel” rule that could image everything on the internet. However, this rule is being challenged in court by a group representing big advertising and internet companies.
Earlier this year, the regulator also sued Amazon and Adobe for similar claims around their subscription services.
This is also not the first time that the FTC is looking into the ride-sharing company. In 2017, Uber agreed to a settlement with the agency around the question of exaggerating driver income to encourage recruitment. In 2018, the company was also fined for a data breach and misconduct in trying to cover it up.
After Donald Trump won the presidential election in the US, the agency reportedly tried to get the company to agree to a settlement. However, the lawyer of the company said that the settlement involved an “enormous monetary amount.”
That is why they didn’t settle. Only time will tell how this investigation will go.
