Ipsy Cosmetics Subscription Difficult to Cancel California Class Action

Personalized Beauty Discovery, Inc. does business as Ipsy.com, offering cosmetic subscription services. The complaint for this class action alleges that Ipsy falsely advertises its services, claiming that subscribers can cancel at any time, when in practice, it is very difficult to cancel, the complaint says, and the company continues to charge the monthly amount.

The class for this action is all consumers who, from the statute of limitations and the present, bought one or more monthly subscriptions in California, and who were charged without their authorization by Personalized Beauty Discovery, Inc. or Ipsy.com.

Plaintiff Izabella DeForest lives in California. Sometime around August 2019, she signed up for Ipsy’s “Glam Bag” cosmetic subscription. She paid for it with a deduction from the Visa card she shares with the other plaintiff in this case, Dan DeForest. At the time, Ipsy represented that she could cancel the subscription anytime she wanted to.

In November 2019, she contacted the company again to tell them that she wanted to cancel the subscription. However, the company continued to deduct the monthly amount from her Visa card account. The complaint says the DeForests’ “debit card statements reflect charges by [Ipsy] in the amount of $12.93 for at least eight months after [the DeForests] request for cancellation.”

They then tried to cancel the subscription online. However, the website did not appear to offer the option of cancellation. Instead, the complaint says, “it merely offered [the DeForests] the opportunity to pause the subscription for months at a time, after which [Ipsy] would continue to automatically bill them.”

The complaint claims that the company’s “representation, through statements and omissions, that consumers may cancel these subscription services at any time constitute fraudulent affirmative misrepresentations of material fact that would be important to reasonable consumers when deciding between different retailers of like products.”

One of the causes of action is violation of California’s Automatic Purchase Renewals Statute, which sets forth requirements for offers of subscriptions or continuous services. Among them is the requirement to present the terms of the offer in a clear and conspicuous manner before the subscription or purchasing agreement is fulfilled. Businesses are also required to send those who agree to such subscriptions an acknowledgement “that includes the automatic renewal terms, cancellation policy, and information regarding how to cancel in a manner that is capable of being retained by the consumer.”

Other causes of action include violations of the federal Electronic Funds Transfer Act, California’s False Advertising Act, and its Unfair Business Practices Act.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Deceptive Advertising, Misrepresentations or False Statements, Unfair Subscription Practices