Match Group is facing a new lawsuit in Santa Cruz County, California, over allegations that it violated consumer protection regulations.
The case is seeking $10 million in damages and claims that Match.com is deliberately misleading users, by making the billing and cancellation processes unnecessarily complicated.
A press release from the local District Attorney’s Office explains: “Match.com engaged in a pattern and practice of designing a signup and cancellation process intended to hook in consumers and make it difficult for them to extricate themselves from the contract.
“They used actions that included misleading billing characterizations, nonconspicuous auto-renewal disclosures, elimination of required cancellation disclosures, and imposition of a long and tedious cancellation process.”
It has teamed up with California’s Auto-Renewal Taskforce to put together the legal action and accompanying investigation.
The county filed a similar lawsuit against eharmony in 2018, claiming it didn’t clearly explain the automatically charged subscription fee. The dating platform settled by paying just under $1.3 million.
In September, the US Department of Justice closed an investigation into Match.com’s business practices. It was accused of conning users into signing up for premium memberships by not adequately removing fraudulent accounts.
Singles were reportedly shown notifications from fake accounts, although the actual messages were hidden behind a paywall.
Read more here.