Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 15, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced a $7.5M settlement with education technology provider, Chegg, settling allegations that Chegg violated the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (“ROSCA”) and the FTC Act by making it difficult for consumers to cancel subscription services and deceiving consumers by failing to honor cancellation requests.

Chegg offers a variety of online subscription services to high school and college students such as study tools, homework help and writing assistance. The FTC alleges that parents and students had to navigate through numerous clicks and pages that were not intuitive to locate the cancellation option online, then had to follow another series of complicated and confusing pages to complete the cancellation process. The FTC further alleges that, once the subscription cancellation process was complete, Chegg often continued to charge the subscription fees for months.   

Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “It harms the American people when companies fail to provide simple mechanisms to cancel recurring charges as Congress required in the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. As part of our effort to reinvigorate the agency’s fraud program, the FTC will continue enforcing ROSCA against online sellers where they violate this important statute.”

The settlement funds will be used to provide refunds to consumers impacted by Chegg’s alleged difficult and deceptive cancellation practices. In addition, under the settlement, Chegg is required to maintain simple cancellation mechanisms and is prohibited from making misrepresentations regarding its cancellation process.