Australia’s Federal Court has found that eHarmony misled consumers about the cost and terms of its dating memberships, in a case the competition regulator brought after receiving hundreds of complaints.
The findings read as a catalogue of the design choices regulators now call dark patterns, applied to a subscription that renewed automatically at a much higher price.
The renewal terms are the most striking part of the judgment. Memberships rolled over automatically for a further 12 months at up to five times what the user had originally paid, and the court found eHarmony failed to disclose this prominently enough.
The word “free” also did work it should not have. eHarmony advertised free dating while users could not actually communicate with anyone without paying, which the court found to be misleading or deceptive.
The site advertised one-month options when six months was in fact the minimum term available, and it stated that early cancellation was possible when it was not.
