Coursera Under Fire Over Alleged Subscription Auto-Renewal Practices

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A proposed class action lawsuit accuses Coursera, Inc. of unlawfully subscribing consumers to recurring paid programs and later charging them without authorization when the subscription renews automatically.

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The 48-page lawsuit claims that the online education platform has “systematically” violated California’s Automatic Renewal Law by failing to disclose the terms of its automatically renewing program—including information about its cancellation policy and how to cancel—in a “clear and conspicuous manner” before or after checkout and subsequently charging subscribers without their consent.

“At the check-out screen, Plaintiff and customers were misled into believing that they signed up for a free service only to incur a charge,” the suit summarizes.

Coursera’s online learning platform, whose plans can be bought via one-time payment for individual courses or monthly or annual subscriptions, “intends to mislead” consumers when they sign up for the “free trial,” the case alleges. The defendant’s presentation of its auto-renewal terms, which are displayed in a small, hard-to-read print below the payment details, “fall[s] well short of the mark from being conspicuous,” the complaint argues.

According to the filing, many consumers who believe they are paying for only one course are surprised to find that they have been “routinely” charged recurring payments.

“A $49 fee for a single course quickly turns into several hundred dollars of fees,” the lawsuit says.

In other cases, consumers who have signed up for a “monthly free trial” of Coursera Plus—which offers the first month for $39 and then costs $49 for each subsequent month—are startled to find they have been charged a monthly renewal fee because they seemingly overlooked the fine print below the offer that reveals that only the first seven days are free, the suit relays.

The plaintiffs, each San Francisco residents, individually signed up for a free trial with Coursera and were later surprised to find that, after the trial ended, the defendant had “automatically converted their free trial into a paid, automatically renewing subscription,” the case alleges.

Per the complaint, Coursera did not adequately disclose its auto-renewal terms to the plaintiffs, nor did it seek their consent to these terms or provide a description of its cancellation policy.

After enrolling in what they believed was a free trial, two of the plaintiffs were allegedly later charged the monthly subscription fee of $49. However, a third plaintiff in the same situation was purportedly later charged Coursera’s annual subscription fee of $399—once in July 2020 and again in July 2021, the lawsuit claims. This plaintiff informed Coursera several times that she did not authorize the payments and asked for a refund, which the defendant denied, the suit relays.

The plaintiffs say they are not alone as more than 300 complaints about Coursera’s allegedly unlawful subscription practices can be found on review website Trustpilot, where the defendant’s rating is just 1.7 stars, the case explains. Coursera also purportedly has an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, the complaint says.

The lawsuit looks to represent any Coursera customers in the United States who were automatically enrolled in and charged for at least one month of membership at any time within the applicable statute of limitations period.

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