Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Disclosing auto-renewal may require lots of explicitness, Streamlabs discovers

Leventhal v. Streamlabs LLC, No. 22-cv-01330-LB, 2022 WL 17905111 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 23, 2022)

Leventhal, on behalf of a nationwide class, alleged that Streamlabs LLC deceives consumers into signing up for a subscription product that carries an automatic monthly fee of $5.99. Streamlabs allows streamers collect donations from viewers through third-party payment processors (such as PayPal). Streamlabs Pro allows donors to add GIFs or other effects (such as hearts, stars, or confetti) to the messages that accompany the viewers’ donations. “The plaintiff in this case added a GIF to a donation and contends that Streamlabs’ subsequent disclosure to her — that adding a GIF or effect required joining Streamlabs Pro for $5.99 per month — was deceptive because it suggested that it was a one-time fee and did not disclose that the $5.99 monthly fee would renew automatically, in violation of California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) and Unfair Competition Law (UCL).” The court found that she’d stated a plausible claim.

California’s Automatic Renewal Law (ARL) requires conspicuous disclosure of subscription terms and a consumer’s affirmative consent to automatic renewal, but Leventhal lives in New York. Nonetheless, the allegations, if true, plausibly plead that Streamlabs deceived consumers with its disclosures about the $5.99 fee.

At the time of her donation, the streamers’ donation page looked like this: 


essentially the same thing but in white

The page has a place to specify a donation amount, a place to send a message to the streamer, the message “Donate at least 1USD to use a GIF,” thumbnail pictures of GIFs and effects (with the word “Pro” next to them), and a green “donate” button to submit the donation. It says nothing about subscription fees.

The current donation page looks like this:

Instead of thumbnail pictures, it has a red box with “Extras Pro $5.99/mo” and slide buttons that allow a viewer to add a GIF or effect.

For both versions of the donation page, when a viewer clicks “Donate,” a “Donation Confirmation” page pops up:

 

In a red box, it shows a $5.99 charge for Streamlabs Pro. Underneath the red box, there is a notice: “You will be charged $5.99 per month by joining Streamlabs Pro …. Click here for more information.” The $5.99 charge and the notice have smaller and lighter font than the bolded font used for the donation amount. It does not say the charge will be renewed automatically each month until the viewer cancels the subscription. If viewers click “Click here for more information,” the resulting page “explains the benefits, monthly cost, [and] cancellation and refund policy of Streamlabs Pro subscription[s],” but it does not explicitly “disclose that Streamlabs will keep charging Streamlabs Pro subscribers $5.99 per month on their credit or debit cards until the subscribers cancel the plan.”

The plaintiff did not discover her recurring monthly charges for ten months, when PayPal emailed her about them. She “did not even have an account with Streamlabs at the time.” She created an account with the email linked to her PayPal account to try to cancel the subscription, but “she could not find a way to cancel the subscription.” Eventually, a Streamlabs representative responded that they would cancel her Streamlabs Pro account, refunded her $5.99 for the most recent subscription month, and refused to refund the rest. The representative also said that “to avoid being automatically signed up for Streamlabs Pro, she should ‘make sure to not toggle on Pro effects or GIFs’ when she donates.”

The complaint further alleged that, by “at the latest[ ] early 2019,” Streamlabs knew about consumer complaints from threads on Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube where customers complained about their unknowing enrollment in the subscription service and Streamlabs’ refusal to contact them about refunds and cancellation of the subscriptions. E.g., one person complained they were charged for two months for “unk[n]owingly [ ] being a Streamlabs Pro member. I didn’t even know it existed at all?! All I have been using Streamlabs for so far has been opening it up, and starting streams. Not even click[ing] anything that allowed me to be charged.” (The court discusses several other such statements as well.)

It is plausible that a reasonable consumer (including tech-savvy consumers) could be deceived by the process illustrated in the Statement and conclude that the $5.99 per month fee was a one-time fee. The disclosures did not say that the fee was an automatic monthly fee. There is evidence of actual consumer confusion, by the plaintiff and the consumer reviews. Similarly, for the standalone fraud claims, the allegations are sufficiently specific that Streamlabs’ process misled consumers that the $5.99 per month fee was a one-time donation, not an automatic monthly fee.

The complaint also plausibly pleaded UCL unfairness. Under the balancing test used in consumer cases, the court “must weigh the utility of the defendant’s conduct against the gravity of the harm to the alleged victim.” The complaint sufficiently alleged that the deception about the subscription outweighs its benefits, given that consumers “don’t believe they are enrolled in and, therefore, don’t use” the subscription. The court allowed her to plead the equitable UCL claim in the alternative to her money damages claim.

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