EcoCart Lawsuit Alleges E-Comm Merchant Unlawfully Tacks Hidden Junk Fees Onto Transactions

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims that EcoCart unlawfully “sneaks” hidden, ambiguous additional charges, referred to as “Green Shipping Protection” and “Carbon Neutral Order” fees, onto orders placed on websites that utilize the e-commerce retailer’s services.

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The 29-page fraud lawsuit contends that EcoCart surreptitiously charges consumers so-called junk fees by automatically preselecting an option built into a downloadable widget, which retailers are required to install for EcoCart’s services, that adds the apparent greenwashing fees by default. In other words, the case says, consumers technically have the option to turn off the option for the additional fees, but the box built into EcoCart’s widget is small and “purposefully designed to go unnoticed by consumers.”

The suit argues that EcoCart engages in this conduct as a way to increase profit both for itself and the retailers that use its services. Per the complaint, most customers will unknowingly purchase these add-ons when they are automatically turned on, even when an e-commerce website promises free or flat-price shipping.

“By unfairly obscuring consumers’ true shipping costs, EcoCart deceives consumers and gains an unfair upper hand on competitors that fairly disclose their true shipping charges,” the class action lawsuit summarizes. “To wit, most major e-commerce sites do not assess such a fee.”

EcoCart’s conduct is widely known as “drip pricing,” the complaint relays, where the advertised price is lower than what the consumer actually pays at the end of check-out.

“Thousands of e-commerce customers like Plaintiff have been assessed hidden charges for which they did not bargain due to EcoCart’s deceptive and unfair tactics,” the complaint states.

Furthermore, there is little to no indication of how the money for the additional fees will be allocated or how they are calculated, per the suit. The filing continues to say that the “Green Shipping Protection” charge provides minimal additional protection for orders beyond the widely implemented standards across the industry, and there is no way to verify if the “Carbon Neutral Order” charge actually makes an order carbon neutral, or what processes the money was spent on.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), retailers have developed increasingly more deceptive tactics to guarantee higher prices for consumers, and the commonality of this practice has led to legislation affirming that price-altering schemes —like pre-checked widgets— are not synonymous with consumer consent.

“EcoCart violates federal guidance by adding its ‘Green Shipping Protection,’ ‘Carbon Neutral Order,’ and similar fees as line items after the consumer “add[s] to shopping cart,” and by failing to disclose the nature of these fees,” the complaint declares.

The plaintiff, a California resident, purchased a pair of running shoes from an online retailer in February 2025 that promoted zero shipping fees. Though his receipt confirmed that Athletic Propulsion Labs, the company from which he bought the shoes, did not issue shipping fees, there was a $1.76 “Caron Neutral Order” fee unknowingly tacked on as an additional shipping charge.

The EcoCart junk fees class action lawsuit looks to represent all consumers who paid for a “Green Shipping Protection,” “Carbon Neutral Order,” or any other similar fee for a service provided by EcoCart during the applicable statute of limitations period.

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