After making amends in its dispute with Novo Nordisk over the sale of compounded GLP-1s, telehealth company Hims & Hers is tied up in yet another legal battle.
The Federal Trade Commission, along with Utah and California, sued Hims & Hers on Wednesday, arguing that the telehealth company unlawfully shared consumers’ health information with third-party advertising platforms and deceived customers about its billing and cancellation practices.
Hims & Hers is a direct-to-consumer company that provides treatments online for weight, anxiety, sexual health and other conditions.
The FTC alleged that Hims & Hers has misled “hundreds of thousands of consumers” by charging them for unwanted medication subscriptions without their consent. The company’s online medical intake forms made consumers believe that when they submit their form for review by a medical provider, they are not required to purchase the provider’s recommended treatment.
The complaint also alleged that Hims’ advertising and intake forms falsely imply consumers can speak with a medical provider for free to decide whether a treatment is right for them.
“Contrary to Hims’ representations, Hims routinely charges consumers for prescription treatments and enrolls them in subscription plans for those treatments almost immediately after receiving consumers’ medical intake forms,” the FTC’s complaint states. “Consumers have virtually no opportunity to review the provider’s recommended treatment, much less consent to it. Accordingly, consumers have suffered, and continue to suffer, significant injury by being forced to pay for medical treatment that they did not consent to or wish to purchase.”
In addition, the FTC alleged that Hims & Hers has caused customers to experience unwanted refill charges by not “clearly and conspicuously” disclosing the dates on which they will be charged for refills. The company has also made it difficult for customers to cancel their subscriptions, the FTC argued. Before 2023, customers could only cancel by contacting customer service over the phone, email or chat. After adding an online cancellation option in 2023, Hims & Hers still made it difficult to cancel by hiding the cancellation button, according to the FTC.
Lastly, despite promising consumers that the Hims & Hers platform is private and secure and that sensitive health information is only accessible to the company’s providers, Hims & Hers provided this information to advertising platforms like Meta and Snap, the FTC alleged.
“The FTC’s complaint lays out a troubling scenario—consumers unknowingly locked into recurring subscriptions and the disclosure to third parties of consumers’ most private health information without their consent,” said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “The FTC will not hesitate to act on behalf of consumers deprived of their ability to choose which products they want and whether to keep their most sensitive health information private.”
The FTC alleges that these practices violate the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, which ban deceptive billing and subscription practices. Utah argues that these violate the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act, while California alleges they violate California’s False Advertising and Unfair Competition Laws.
In a statement, Hims & Hers denied the allegations.
“This lawsuit disregards substantial evidence we provided the FTC during its nearly three-year investigation, ignores established state laws and industry standards in telehealth, and contorts the law to try to manufacture claims,” the company said. “This is not enforcement grounded in consumer protection; it is an effort to generate headlines at our expense. We are confident in our position and will vigorously defend ourselves against these baseless claims.”
This comes after another legal controversy involving Hims & Hers. Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, sued Hims & Hers in February due to its sale and marketing of compounded GLP-1s. However, it dropped this lawsuit in March, and Hims & Hers is now only selling compounded GLP-1s on a limited scale.
Photo: deepblue4you, Getty Images
