Class Action Lawsuit Claims True Blue Car Wash Enrolls Customers in Memberships Without Consent

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims that Rainstorm Car Wash and Clean Freak Car Wash have illegally registered customers into automatically renewing, difficult-to-cancel subscriptions without their knowledge or consent.

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According to the 42-page lawsuit, the businesses are owned by defendant True Blue Car Wash, which runs more than 70 car washes across four states, and offer either a one-time individual wash or monthly subscription for regular washes. However, the class action suit alleges that both offers are deceptive to consumers given that paying for either option results in the customer being locked into an automatically renewing membership that is “difficult or impossible to cancel… on [the car washes’] website[s] and in person.”

“Specifically, customers that fall prey to Defendant’s scheme believe they are only purchasing a single car wash but are instead enrolled in a car wash membership by Defendant,” the lawsuit summarizes.

With regard to online membership purchases, the lawsuit contests that the Rainstorm and Clean Freak websites do not clearly and conspicuously disclose to consumers that the membership renews automatically every month—or the cancellation process—before the membership purchase is completed.

The filing claims that there is a similar lack of appropriate disclosures about the renewal and cancellation policies even when memberships are bought at brick-and-mortar Rainstorm and Clean Freak car wash locations. Further, the suit alleges that it is the companies’ policy to not train employees to make these legally necessary disclosures, despite being instructed to sell as many memberships as possible.

In all membership signup situations, the car washes not only obscure their automatic renewal policy, but also never disclose the fact that the price paid per month will, after an initial promotional period, increase to a much higher amount, the complaint alleges.

Moreover, when a customer wishes to cancel their membership, there is no clear or conspicuous place on the websites through which to cancel, the filing says. Instead, the method by which to cancel a car wash subscription is intentionally obscured behind unclearly labeled website tabs, a drop-down menu and a request for membership-identifying information the consumer may not be sure they provided to the company in the first place, the case relays.

Should a consumer be able to complete the cancellation process, they would then find that their request for cancellation can be approved, denied or ignored by the defendants, the suit claims. According to the complaint, several consumers have reported that they called the car wash location they visited in an attempt to push the request through to approval only to be told to cancel online or that their membership was already cancelled, only to be charged again for it later.

The class action lawsuit against True Blue Car Wash and subsidiaries Rainstorm and Clean Freak seeks to represent the following classes of consumers:

• Anyone in Illinois who was auto-enrolled in a Rainstorm Car Wash membership and charged at least one renewal fee within the applicable statute of limitations period;
• Anyone in Indiana who was, within the applicable statute of limitations period, enrolled in a Rainstorm Car Wash membership and had their monthly membership fee increased or were charged for the membership after having already cancelled it within the applicable statute of limitations; and
• Anyone in Texas who was, within the applicable statute of limitations period, enrolled in a Clean Freak Car Wash membership and had their monthly membership fee increased or were charged for the membership after having already cancelled it.

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