• by Tanya Gazdik , April 22, 2025

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a suit against Uber Technologies accusing it of signing up some Uber One subscribers without their knowledge and making deceptive claims about the service.

The service costs $9.99 a month and offers discounts on fees associated with Uber's ride-hailing and food-delivery apps. Uber falsely claimed that users would save about $25 a month through the service and deceived them about how easy it was to cancel, the FTC said in the lawsuit filed in San Francisco.

"The FTC alleged the company charged customers for Uber One, a service for fee-free delivery and discounts on rides, without their consent and made it too difficult for them to cancel, despite the company’s ‘cancel anytime’ marketing,” according to CNN Business. 

The lawsuit alleges that customers trying to cancel an Uber One subscription may see as many as 23 screens and require at least 32 actions in Uber’s app, and then still be unsure if they have ended the recurring charge, according to PaymentsDive. 

“Americans are tired of getting signed up for unwanted subscriptions that seem impossible to cancel,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a press release.

“The complaint is the first FTC action against a major tech company since President Donald Trump began his second term in January,” notes NBC News. “The FTC has several ongoing lawsuits against tech’s megacap companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon. Some cases were brought during President Joe Biden’s presidency, but Trump’s FTC was aggressive during his first term, most notably going after Meta.”

This isn’t the first time Uber has tangled with the FTC.

“In 2017 the ride-hailing company settled the FTC's allegations it had made deceptive privacy and data security claims,” according to Reuters. “The following year it agreed to pay $20 million to settle the FTC's claims it exaggerated prospective earnings in seeking to recruit drivers. The company fended off criminal charges in 2022 in a settlement where it admitted that its employees had failed to notify the FTC about a 2016 data breach that affected 57 million passengers and drivers.”