Attorney General Ellison files lawsuit against Uber for making it exceedingly difficult to cancel subscriptions
Ellison accuses ride share company of deliberately creating ‘zombie subscriptions’ and other deceptive business practices
December 15, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Attorney General Ellison today filed a lawsuit against Uber for making it exceedingly difficult to cancel its monthly subscription service, Uber One, as well as for deceiving consumers about both the savings offered by Uber One as well as when consumers would actually be billed by Uber One.
“You shouldn’t need a PhD to figure out how to cancel a monthly subscription, yet that is exactly what Uber has done with their Uber One service,” said Attorney General Ellison. “Uber deliberately made their Uber One cancelation process long, confusing, and frustrating in the hopes that consumers would give up and let Uber keep taking their hard-earned money. Far too many Minnesotans have lost money to zombie subscriptions they either thought they canceled or didn’t realize they signed up for in the first place, and that’s unacceptable. I’m suing Uber to stop these predatory business practices and force them to do right by the people of Minnesota.”
The Free Trial Period and Deceptive Savings Offers
Uber advertises a free trial period for Uber One, generally lasting between a few weeks and a few months. When a consumer signs up for the free trial, Uber claims they will be billed at the conclusion of the free trial unless they cancel. This is false. Uber actually bills people before the end of the free trial period. Furthermore, if a consumer cancels during the free trial period, they immediately lose access to Uber One, rather than losing access at the end of the free trial. This incentivizes consumers not to cancel until right before the free trial ends, at which point Uber will have already billed them.
Uber also advertises that customers will save $25 per month by joining Uber One. This is false as well, as Uber does not include Uber One’s $9.99 monthly cost when calculating users’ monthly savings.
Canceling Uber One
In the lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison further alleges that Uber makes it extraordinarily difficult for consumers to cancel an Uber One subscription, which frequently results in consumers paying for months or years of a service they do not want.
To cancel an Uber One subscription, consumers must:
1. Open the app and click the “Account” button
2. Scroll down the account menu and click the “Uber One” button.
To reach that button, consumers must scroll past buttons labeled "Payment", "Settings", and "Manage Uber Account", none of which allow them to cancel.
3. Scroll down the “Uber One” screen to the bottom of the page and click “Manage Membership”
4. On the “Manage Membership” screen, users must scroll to the bottom of the page and click “End Membership”
For a significant period of time, the "End Membership" button was not visible to any consumers in the final 48 hours of their billing cycle, leaving them with no way of knowing how to cancel their subscription.
5. Once users have clicked “End Membership”, they are met with a survey question about why they are canceling Uber One, which they must fill out in order to proceed. At the bottom of the survey, they are presented with a “Keep Uber One” button, prominently displayed in a bright gray textbox, and a “Continue” button presented in a black textbox with dark gray text, faded into the black background.
6. After completing the survey, users are presented with an option to pause their membership instead of canceling it. The “Pause Uber One” button is once again prominently displayed in a bright gray textbox, while the “No thanks” button is in a subdued text box.
On the pause membership screen, Uber flips the placement of the button that allows users to proceed with cancelation. On the previous screen, the button to click to proceed with cancellation is on the top, whereas on this screen, the button to click to proceed with cancellation is now on the bottom.
This design interface steers the consumer who wishes to cancel away from the action they are trying to take: If a consumer intuitively clicks in the same place on both screens to move through the cancellation process, they will inadvertently abandon cancellation and merely pause their membership instead.
7. If the consumer correctly taps “No thanks”, they are then met with a screen offering them 90% off their next month of Uber One. Finally, at the bottom of this screen, they will find a button labeled “End Uber One” that actually cancels their subscription.
If a consumer was attempting to cancel Uber One within 48 hours of the time their billing date, however, they will be met with a different screen repeating the $25 monthly savings claim and informing them they must contact support to cancel their subscription. The screen has no instructions on how to actually contact support.
Clicking “Close” brings consumers back to the survey question mentioned above, trapping consumers in a loop until they manually leave navigate away from the cancelation process.
From there, consumers must figure out exactly how to contact support to cancel their subscription. To contact support, consumers must:
8. Go back to the Uber app’s home screen
9. Click “Account”
10. Click “Help”
11. Click “Membership and Loyalty”
12. Click “Uber One”
13. Click “Uber One Membership Cancellation”, which brings consumers to the following screen with instructions on how to cancel their membership:
However, if consumers follow those instructions to cancel their membership, they will end up caught in the same loop described above. If a consumer instead reads down the page, they will see a note that says, “If you are less than 48 hours before your next renewal, please contact Support.” There are no instructions on how to contact support, leading some consumers to exit the page and look for a “Support” button.
14. Consumers must stay on this page and scroll to the bottom of it, where they will find an empty text input field appears under the heading “Share details”
15. Consumers then must manually enter their request to cancel Uber One and hit submit. They will be met with a screen simply saying "Thanks! We got your message", which does not indicate their request was granted or provide instructions on what to do next.
Consumers must then wait for an Uber customer service representative to actually cancel their subscription, which could take hours or even a full day. By this time, they may already have been billed for the next month.
Attorney General Ellison alleges that Uber’s deceptive pricing and deliberately difficult cancelation process violates the Minnesota Consumer Fraud Act, Minnesota Deceptive Trade Practices Act, as well as the federal Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison seeks restitution, as well as penalties, costs, and an injunction against Uber for these alleged violations.
Consumers in Minnesota who have struggled with predatory monthly subscription services are encouraged to file a complaint with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office using this online complaint form. The Office can also be reached by calling (651) 296-3353 (Metro area) or (800) 657-3787 (Greater Minnesota).
Attorney General Ellison filed today’s lawsuit alongside Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, who led the coalition, as well as the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as the District Attorney for Alameda County.
