Frey Brothers “Free Trials” Create Subscriptions Class Action

Frey Brothers, Inc. makes products for laundry, home, and personal care. One way that it markets its products is through free trial offers. But the complaint for this class action alleges that Frey’s free trials are misleading and that its fine print describes these not as “Free Samples” but as “Sample to Subscription.”

Two classes have been defined for this action:

• The California Class is all persons in California who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.
• The Consumer Fraud Multi-State Class is all persons in Connecticut, Kansas, Arkansas, Wyoming, North Dakota, Virginia, New Mexico, and Utah who bought the product during the applicable statutes of limitations.

Visitors to Frey’s website, the complaint alleges, are invited to “Try Frey for FREE!” A button below this says, “Learn More.” When consumers click to learn more, the complaint claims they are told they may “Try Us For Free,” “Try Laundry Care for Free,” or that a trial is “Free! Just pay $1 Shipping.”

A screen shot in the complaint shows another of the website pages asking, “What would you want to try!” and then offering either “Let’s try Laundry Care” or “Let’s try Personal Care.” Both lead to pages that offer “free” samples for just $1 for shipping.

Elsewhere on its website, the complaint alleges, Frey promises that the sample offer has “No catch, no fine print.”

The complaint alleges, “Throughout the order process, the only mention of anything ‘non-free’ appears beneath the ordered products, ‘Personal Care Kit Ships in 18 Days.’”

There’s one more mention, but the complaint alleges, “After [Frey tells] consumers over and over they can try Frey for ‘free’ by paying a nominal shipping fee, most consumers will not pay close attention to the small box in the lower right corner of the checkout page which states, ‘Your Upcoming Subscription,’ which ‘Ships in 18 Days’ and charges $49 ‘Every 10 Weeks.’” The fine print below also mentions an automatically renewing subscription and credit card charges.

The consumer who signs up for a free trial is thus enrolled in a subscription program which begins charging them eighteen days after they have requested the free trial. This kind of enrollment, the complaint alleges, is called negative option marketing, because the consumer’s silence or lack of affirmative action to reject the goods or services is taken to mean acceptance.

The complaint reproduces a number of online complaints pertaining to Frey’s “free trial” offer that quickly turns into a subscription. The postings indicate that many consumers had no idea that they were actually signing up for subscriptions.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Automatic Subscription Renewal or Continuous Service Agreement, Deceptive Advertising, Fraud