The Cancel Button That Didn't Cancel: The Care.com Refunds

The Federal Trade Commission announced it was sending more than $8.1 million in refunds to 194,207 consumers harmed by Care.com's deceptive practices, the agency confirmed on June 24, 2025, resolving a case alleging the caregiving platform inflated job listings, made unsubstantiated earnings claims, and used deceptive design tactics to block subscription cancellations.DOCUMENTED

Care, a unit of IAC Inc., paid $8.5 million total to settle the FTC's charges, with roughly $400,000 covering administrative costs and the remainder distributed directly to affected consumers via check or PayPal.DOCUMENTED

Inflated jobs, unsubstantiated pay

According to the FTC's complaint, filed in federal court in Austin, Texas, Care.com enticed both caregivers and families seeking care services to purchase auto-renewing memberships by overstating the number of available "gigs" on its platform and how much caregivers could expect to earn from them. The complaint alleges the company advertised inflated job listings by including postings from non-paying users, creating the impression of far more legitimate employment opportunities than actually existed, and separately promoted specific pay rates, such as "$18/hour," without evidence to substantiate that figure as representative of typical caregiver earnings on the platform.DOCUMENTED

"Care.com used inflated job numbers and baseless earnings claims to lure caregivers onto its platform, and used deceptive design practices to trap consumers in subscriptions," said Samuel Levine, then the FTC's consumer protection chief, in the agency's announcement of the case.DOCUMENTED

A cancellation flow designed to confuse

The FTC's complaint alleges Care.com's cancellation process was deliberately structured to frustrate users attempting to end their paid memberships. According to the complaint, users seeking to cancel had to first locate what the FTC described as an "inconspicuous cancellation flow," then navigate a multipage process the agency characterized as "rife with deceptive design tactics." Among the specific tactics cited: a "Submit" button that misled users into believing their cancellation had been processed, and, separately, a "Cancel" button that in fact stopped the cancellation from proceeding rather than completing it.DOCUMENTED

Perhaps most striking, the FTC's complaint states that Care itself had internally flagged at least one aspect of its own cancellation flow using the internal label "Dark UX Pattern" — language the agency's complaint cites as evidence the company was aware its design choices were manipulative rather than the product of unintentional interface confusion.DOCUMENTED

Who was affected

The FTC's complaint states that approximately 2.9 million U.S. consumers purchased Care.com auto-renewing memberships between January 2019 and March 2022, a population spanning both caregivers seeking employment and families seeking to hire care providers for children, older adults, and pets. Many of these consumers, according to the complaint, discovered only after being billed repeatedly that they had never successfully completed the cancellation process they believed they had followed correctly.DOCUMENTED

The settlement's terms

Care paid $8.5 million to resolve the case, filed as a settlement in federal court in Austin, Texas, requiring judicial approval. Of that amount, more than $8.1 million was distributed directly to 194,207 affected consumers via check or PayPal, with the remaining roughly $400,000 covering administrative costs associated with the payment process. The settlement order requires Care to substantiate all future job-availability and income claims with verifiable data, clearly disclose subscription terms and cancellation instructions, and eliminate interface practices that obstruct or discourage cancellation. Care did not admit or deny wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement.DOCUMENTED

A familiar dark-patterns playbook

The FTC's characterization of Care.com's cancellation design mirrors language and legal theories the agency has applied in a string of subscription-cancellation cases in recent years, from Chegg to Amazon Prime to Instacart, each alleging some combination of a straightforward enrollment process paired with a deliberately confusing or multi-step cancellation flow. What distinguishes the Care.com case is the FTC's citation of the company's own internal "Dark UX Pattern" label as direct evidence of intent, a detail that removes any ambiguity about whether the confusing design was accidental or deliberate.

The nearly 2.9 million consumers who purchased Care.com memberships during the period covered by the complaint, set against the roughly 194,000 who ultimately received refunds, illustrates a common gap in FTC redress cases between the total population potentially affected by a given practice and the smaller subset who can be definitively identified and compensated through a settlement's claims process. For caregivers who left the platform without ever securing steady work despite the advertised earnings figures, the settlement's forward-looking requirement that Care substantiate future claims may ultimately matter more to the labor market than the refunds themselves.REVIEWED

The FTC's specific citation of Care's own internal "Dark UX Pattern" label, rather than relying solely on an external analysis of the interface, reflects a broader evidentiary strategy the agency has increasingly favored in subscription-cancellation cases: internal company documents acknowledging a design choice's manipulative intent tend to carry more weight in settlement negotiations and any eventual litigation than an outside expert's characterization of the same interface alone.REVIEWED

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