SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The San Francisco-based law firm of Gaw | Poe LLP announced today that it recently filed a class action lawsuit against Fenix International Ltd., the parent company of OnlyFans.com. The lawsuit alleges that Fenix fails to comply with California law when it automatically renews the “trial subscriptions” its customers sign up for, without adequately notifying those customers that their credit card will be automatically billed when the trial subscription ends.
California’s so-called “Automatic Renewal Law” requires that when a merchant enrolls customers in a trial subscription, and where that subscription will automatically renew unless the customer proactively cancels it, the merchant must clearly and conspicuously disclose those future charges. The complaint alleges that OnlyFans’ sign-up and enrollment process fails to clearly and conspicuously warn enrollees that their credit card will be billed monthly until they affirmatively cancel. The lawsuit seeks to have the illegal charges returned to all California customers who paid them.
“In my opinion, OnlyFans intentionally obscures the fact that its customers’ credit cards will be automatically billed at the end of the trial period, by making that disclosure only in the tiniest of font that no reasonable person would scrutinize,” said Mark Poe, an attorney for the proposed class and a partner in Gaw | Poe LLP. “If they legitimately believed that their customers wanted to sign up for repeated monthly billings, why not just make that point clear, instead of trying to hide it?” he added.
Fenix International Ltd., the parent company of OnlyFans, has not yet responded in detail to the allegations. It recently “removed” the case from state court in Palm Springs to the federal district court for the Central District of California. In doing so, Poe said, Fenix acknowledged that there is more than $5 million at stake in the litigation.
Gaw | Poe’s investigation of OnlyFans’ billing practices is ongoing. The firm invites anyone else who may have been improperly billed at the end of their trial subscription to send an email to contact@gawpoe.com, to share what they know about these practices.
About Gaw | Poe LLP
Gaw | Poe LLP is a San Francisco Bay Area boutique law firm focusing on business litigation, antitrust litigation, and appeals. Founders Randolph Gaw and Mark Poe are nationally recognized litigators who graduated from the same class at Stanford Law School. The firm has been recognized by The National Law Journal for obtaining the 37th largest verdict in the country for 2016. For more information, please visit http://www.gawpoe.com.
