The Federal Trade Commission has put Uber in its sights again. Bloomberg reported that the regulator is investigating complaints about the Uber One subscription system. The customers alleged that the company registered users for the service without their consent and made it difficult to cancel their subscription. According to documents seen by BloombergThe Commission opened this investigation earlier this year.
“We will continue to respond to any questions the FTC may have about our cancellation policies,” Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen told the newspaper. “Uber One’s cancellation process follows both the letter and the spirit of the law: Uber One members can easily cancel membership in the app — in fact, most of those cancellations take 20 seconds or less.”
In early 2024, the FTC approved a “click to cancel” rule that requires companies to make it as easy to end a subscription as it is to start it. The regulator sued Amazon and Adobe over similar claims about their subscription products over the past year.
This is also not the first time the FTC has investigated a rideshare company. Uber agreed to a settlement with the agency in 2017 over exaggerating drivers’ income questions to encourage hiring. In 2018, the company also reached a settlement regarding data breaches and misconduct in an attempt to close the scope of the problem.
