eHarmony Found Liable for Subscription Traps in Australian Federal Court
The Australian Federal Court has ruled that dating website eHarmony engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct through 'subscription traps' — pricing and renewal setups that make it hard for customers to cancel or avoid being charged again. Justice Christopher Horan delivered the judgment on Tuesday, finding that the US-based company breached Australian consumer law in six different aspects of its operations up until July 2024. The ruling follows legal action initiated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) — the country's primary consumer protection regulator — in 2023. The Guardian
The ACCC filed suit against eHarmony over claims related to its offer of free dating on the platform and over information consumers were given about subscription costs and renewal terms when buying a premium membership. The regulator alleged eHarmony engaged in misleading conduct when customers signed up to paid premium memberships, which may have given consumers misleading information about what they were paying for. The case proceeded to a Federal Court trial expected to run through early June 2025. ACCC The Guardian
Justice Horan found that eHarmony's conduct included representations that a basic free membership allowed users to communicate with other users for dating purposes — when, in reality, free members could not fully interact. He also found misleading representations about pricing in monthly versus yearly payments and about automatic renewal information. The court determined that eHarmony's website conveyed the dominant message that premium subscription plans were for finite periods when they were, in fact, automatically renewed at a non-discounted price. Think of it like signing up for what looks like a one-year gym membership, only to find the company has been quietly charging you again each year at full price. The Guardian
Between 5 November 2019 and 6 June 2024, 1.3 million users from Australia registered for a basic eHarmony membership, and 258,956 paid for a premium membership. About 20% (44,856) of paying users had their membership automatically renewed in the period, and 7,148 users had their subscriptions automatically renewed on two or more occasions. Both parties agreed that eHarmony did not refund users for cancelled subscriptions. The Guardian The Guardian
Justice Horan said he considered it unlikely that all or most of the automatic renewals involved a conscious decision by the member. He stated that automatic renewal of a premium subscription on a non-refundable annual basis at a higher, undiscounted price was a significant matter that should have been disclosed more prominently and earlier in the purchase process. The evidence before the court included individual consumer cases. One eHarmony user deleted the app a couple of months after signing up and was then charged $478.80 on her credit card, with eHarmony referring her case to a debt collection agency after she cancelled the card. Another customer reported a similar case with $598.80 referred to debt collection, saying the incident had taken a 'huge toll' on him. The Guardian
The ACCC and eHarmony were asked to develop agreed or competing proposals for court orders at a later date. An eHarmony spokesperson said the company evaluates and evolves its practices, cooperated with the ACCC throughout the process, has made several changes to the platform to improve transparency of its offerings, and is carefully reviewing the judgment and considering its options. ACCC commissioner Luke Woodward said the ACCC is concerned about subscription traps in digital services and that the ruling highlighted the need for clarity in ongoing subscriptions. The Guardian
The broader context here is that the judgment reflects the ACCC's sustained focus on subscription traps as an enforcement priority in digital services. The court's finding that automatic renewal at a non-refundable, undiscounted annual price required more prominent and earlier disclosure establishes a clear benchmark for how subscription-based platforms operating in Australia must structure their purchase flows. Roughly one in five paying eHarmony users in Australia was caught by automatic renewal, and the absence of refunds for cancelled subscriptions meant consumers bore the direct financial cost of the misleading representations.
The case also illustrates the mechanism through which Australian consumer law addresses opaque pricing structures in cross-border digital services. Justice Horan's determination that the 'dominant message' conveyed to consumers mattered more than the technical availability of renewal terms somewhere on the site places the onus on platforms to ensure their user interface communicates the true cost and duration of subscriptions without requiring users to seek out fine print. The pending proposals for court orders will determine the financial and operational consequences for eHarmony, and may set a reference point for future enforcement actions against other digital subscription services operating in the Australian market.
