Screenshot via Suzanne Kantra/Techlicious generated by ChatGPT
The Federal Trade Commission, along with California and Utah, sued the telehealth company Hims & Hers on Tuesday, accusing it of charging customers for prescriptions they never approved and sharing their health information with Meta and Snap.
Hims & Hers has advertised "free consultation" forms for hair loss, weight loss, and erectile dysfunction treatment online since at least 2019, according to the FTC's complaint. The company told customers filling out those forms that they would "only be charged if prescribed."
But the FTC says most customers never got a real conversation with a medical provider. Instead, a provider would write a prescription without any communication, and Hims & Hers would immediately charge the customer's card and enroll them in a recurring subscription, often before the customer even learned what medication had been prescribed.
The complaint also says the company made cancellation difficult for years. Customers reportedly had to click through a maze of screens, none of which used the word "cancel," and then answer survey questions before their subscription would actually stop. The FTC says Hims & Hers didn't roll out a simple, one-click cancel button to most states until 2023, and even that version buried the option behind an "add/remove items from order" button.
On top of the billing complaints, the FTC alleges Hims & Hers told customers their health information was "100% online, private, and secure" and would only be seen by their medical provider, while actually sharing customer data with advertising platforms including Meta and Snap, along with pixel trackers from Microsoft, Google, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, and others.
"The FTC's complaint lays out a troubling scenario: consumers unknowingly locked into recurring subscriptions and the disclosure to third parties of consumers' most private health information without their consent," said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the agency's announcement.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks a permanent injunction, refunds for affected customers, and civil penalties.
If you have an active Hims or Hers subscription, check your account now for the next billing date rather than waiting for a renewal notice. Log in and confirm exactly what you're subscribed to and how to cancel it, since the FTC's complaint suggests the cancellation flow may still take several steps to complete.
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