FTC Sues Lens.com Over Alleged Hidden Taxes and Fees at Checkout

FTC, Nevada and Utah Sue Lens.com, Alleging Hidden Taxes and Fees Doubled Contact Lens Prices

The Federal Trade Commission and consumer protection agencies in Nevada and Utah filed a joint federal complaint on October 2, 2026 against Lens.com, alleging that a mandatory Taxes and fees charge hidden below the fold at checkout routinely doubled advertised contact lens prices. Nothing has been decided.

Information last verified on October 13, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Complaint filed October 2, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. These are allegations only. No court has found any violation, and the defendants have not been shown on the public record to have answered as of October 13, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This is a single federal case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. The FTC Act, ROSCA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley counts are not limited to any one state and are pleaded as to the conduct alleged nationwide. The Nevada Deceptive Trade Practices Act counts are pleaded as to sales to Nevada consumers, and the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act and Utah Automatic Renewal Contracts Act counts are pleaded as to Utah consumers. Nothing in this case changes the law of any other state.

What Happened

On October 2, 2026, the FTC, the State of Nevada through its Bureau of Consumer Protection, and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection filed a joint complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, captioned Federal Trade Commission, State of Nevada, Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Utah Division of Consumer Protection v. Lens.com, Inc., Speed Commerce, LLC, and Cary Samourkachian, Case No. 2:26-cv-03232. The FTC's own press release states that the Commission vote authorizing staff to file was 2 to 0, and that the case will be decided by the court.

Three defendants are named. The complaint describes Lens.com, Inc. as a Nevada corporation in Las Vegas that sells contact lenses nationwide, and Speed Commerce, LLC as a Nevada limited liability company that provides finance, IT, sales, warehousing and order fulfillment services to roughly 150 clients including Lens.com, and that manages customer service through a third-party call center in the Philippines. The complaint alleges that Cary Samourkachian is the sole owner, officer and employee of Lens.com and the manager and sole owner of Speed Commerce, and that the two companies operated as a common enterprise so that each is liable for the acts alleged.

The pricing allegations

The complaint's core allegation is a gap between the advertised price and the amount charged. According to the complaint, Lens.com promoted specific prices through Google sponsored product listings and on its own product pages. The complaint reproduces a February 24, 2026 search result showing a Lens.com price of $18.29 for a 90-pack of Proclear 1 Day lenses, alongside a product page displaying the same $18.29 figure in bold red text and a site badge reading NO HIDDEN FEES.

The agencies allege the charge that followed was neither disclosed nor avoidable. As the complaint puts it:

Defendants hide the "Taxes & fees" line item "below the fold" on an interim purchase screen. On the viewable portion of the screen, Defendants encourage consumers to click "Continue" to proceed with the checkout process.

Complaint para. 7.

The complaint walks the purchase flow screen by screen. A shopper selects quantities, enters prescription and provider information, and reaches a Shopping Cart screen that, in the pleaded February 2026 example, showed $73.16 per eye for a one-year supply of eight boxes, or $146.32 in total after rebate. Clicking through to the shipping screen, the complaint alleges, presents a prominent red Continue button inside a bordered area, with the only itemized Order Summary sitting further down the same page, outside that border and outside the visible window.

That Order Summary, as pleaded, showed a subtotal of $366.32, a Taxes and fees line of $273.44, shipping of $9.95, a total of $649.71, and a Total After Rebate of $429.71 reflecting a $220.00 mail-in rebate. The complaint alleges that the next screen, where billing information is collected, omits the Taxes and fees line entirely and shows only an Order Total and a Total After Rebate. Completing that purchase, the complaint alleges, would have produced a charge of $649.71, which it describes as more than four times the advertised total of $146.32 plus $9.95 shipping. The complaint alleges this flow "is the typical consumer experience" on the site.

The labeling allegations

The second strand is about what the charge was called. The complaint alleges that the label itself misleads:

A reasonable consumer would understand the reference to "Taxes" to mean state sales taxes that the merchant is legally required to collect from consumers in connection with the transaction. In reality, the "Taxes and fees" charge does not include state sales taxes.

Complaint para. 9.

To support that, the agencies allege Lens.com sold into states with no state sales tax, naming Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon, and into states that exempt contact lenses from sales tax, naming Virginia, Florida and New Jersey, while charging the lump sum anyway. The complaint quotes a tooltip explaining that "Taxes are tax recovery charges for tax obligations where applicable and the fees are compensation for servicing your order," and reproduces customer service transcripts in which representatives told shoppers the charge was "not a sales tax nor state tax" and that they could not provide a breakdown of it.

The AutoRefill allegations

The complaint alleges that Lens.com has sold lenses through AutoRefill subscription plans since at least April 2024, at three-month, six-month or annual intervals, promoted with claims including "Save 5% OFF every future AutoRefill order" and homepage copy stating that the subscriber is "in Control" and can "cancel at anytime." According to the complaint, a subscriber moves through the same checkout flow and encounters the same undisclosed Taxes and fees charge before billing information is taken.

On cancellation, the complaint alleges that neither the subscribe-and-save pop-up nor the AutoRefill terms pop-up explains how to cancel or by when, that the terms pop-up says only that clicking Submit Order authorizes recurring charges, and that the cancellation instructions live on a separate AutoRefill page reachable through a Help menu at the bottom of the site, outside the purchase flow. The complaint alleges subscribers are notified by email about 30 days before a shipment and must act at least 7 days before the order is placed, and that a February 27, 2025 notification email disclosed neither the cost of the refill nor the method of cancellation.

Knowledge and scale

The complaint alleges that internal records hold thousands of consumer complaints about the fees, that further complaints went to the Better Business Bureau and Trustpilot, and that internal complaint data showed "processing/total cost" complaints consistently ranking among the top three complaint categories by volume. It alleges that an August 31, 2022 internal presentation sent to Samourkachian acknowledged that the checkout process revealed the total cost only to shoppers who scrolled below the Continue button, proposed a clearer presentation, and that the purchase flow was not materially changed afterward. The complaint also alleges the conduct continued after the Commission served a civil investigative demand in August 2025, and that the defendants made hundreds of millions of dollars through the practices alleged.

None of this has been tested in court. The FTC's own case page lists the complaint as the only filing and the matter as pending.

What the Law Actually Says

Four bodies of law carry the nine counts. Understanding each one matters, because they do different work and carry different remedies.

Section 5 of the FTC Act

Section 5(a)(1) of the FTC Act is short: "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." 15 U.S.C. 45(a)(1). There is no list of forbidden fees and no all-in pricing mandate in the statute. Liability turns on whether a practice is deceptive or unfair.

For unfairness, Congress wrote the test into the statute. Section 5(n) bars the Commission from declaring a practice unfair "unless the act or practice causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition." 15 U.S.C. 45(n). That three-part structure is why the complaint's below-the-fold allegations matter legally and not just rhetorically: a charge a shopper cannot see before paying is the textbook argument that an injury was not reasonably avoidable.

Count I of the complaint is a deception count. It alleges three representations: that lenses could be bought at the advertised prices, that Lens.com charged no hidden fees, and that at least part of the Taxes and fees charge went to state sales tax. Count I pleads each as false or misleading. The complaint asserts that misrepresentations and deceptive omissions of material fact are deceptive acts under Section 5(a); that is the agency's framing of settled doctrine, not statutory text.

ROSCA, the law that actually governs online subscriptions

The Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, 15 U.S.C. 8401 through 8405, was enacted December 29, 2010. Its operative provision, Section 4, makes it unlawful to charge a consumer for goods or services sold online "through a negative option feature" unless the seller does three things, which the statute lists:

1. "provides text that clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms of the transaction before obtaining the consumer's billing information";
2. "obtains a consumer's express informed consent before charging the consumer's credit card, debit card, bank account, or other financial account for products or services through such transaction"; and
3. "provides simple mechanisms for a consumer to stop recurring charges from being placed on the consumer's credit card, debit card, bank account, or other financial account."

15 U.S.C. 8403. ROSCA borrows its definition of a negative option feature from the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, where it means a provision "under which the customer's silence or failure to take an affirmative action to reject goods or services or to cancel the agreement is interpreted by the seller as acceptance of the offer." 16 C.F.R. 310.2(w).

Two features of ROSCA are doing quiet work here. First, the disclosure duty is time-bound: it attaches before billing information is obtained. That is why the complaint's screen order matters, and why Count II lists three specific items it says were not disclosed in time, namely the existence and amount of the Taxes and fees charge, the cancellation deadline, and the cancellation method. Count III pleads the consent failure separately.

Second, remedies. Section 5 of ROSCA provides that a violation "shall be treated as a violation of a rule under section 18 of the Federal Trade Commission Act." 15 U.S.C. 8404(a). Rule violations open the door to the consumer redress provisions of Section 19 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 57b, which the complaint invokes alongside Section 13(b). In plain terms, the ROSCA counts are the part of this complaint built to produce money.

The click-to-cancel rule is not in force, and this case does not rely on it

This point is easy to get wrong, so it is worth stating precisely. The FTC adopted amendments to its Negative Option Rule in November 2024, widely called the click-to-cancel rule. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated those amendments on July 8, 2025 in Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, 142 F.4th 1060, holding the Commission had failed to issue the preliminary regulatory analysis required by Section 22 of the FTC Act.

The FTC then conformed its books to that decision. A final rule published February 12, 2026 and effective the same day restored the Negative Option Rule "in the form it existed before the 2024 Rule became effective," including changing the name back to Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans. 91 Fed. Reg. 6507. As currently published, 16 C.F.R. part 425 contains only section 425.1 and a reserved section 425.2, and the FTC's own advance notice of proposed rulemaking published March 13, 2026 states flatly that "Prenotification plans are the only negative option practice currently covered by the Commission's Negative Option Rule." 91 Fed. Reg. 12318. That notice sought comment, with a deadline of April 13, 2026, on whether to modernize the rule. The FTC's rule page lists nothing further after March 13, 2026, so no replacement rule appears to have issued as of October 13, 2026.

So there is no general click-to-cancel requirement in federal regulation right now, and the complaint does not charge one. It charges ROSCA and Section 5, which are statutes and were never affected by the vacatur.

The FTC's junk fee rule does not reach contact lenses

A related point of frequent confusion. The FTC does have a hidden-fee rule: the Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. part 464, published at 90 Fed. Reg. 2066 and effective May 12, 2025. But its scope is narrow by design. The rule defines a covered good or service as "(1) Live-event tickets; or (2) Short-term lodging, including temporary sleeping accommodations at a hotel, motel, inn, short-term rental, vacation rental, or other place of lodging." That is the whole list. Contact lenses are outside it.

That is why the pricing claim here is a Section 5 deception count rather than a rule count. The Commission said as much when it adopted part 464, explaining that the deception the rule reaches "is already unlawful under the FTC Act" and that the rule's added value was more efficient monetary relief.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley count

Count IV is the least intuitive. Section 521(a)(2) of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. 6821(a)(2), prohibits obtaining or attempting to obtain "customer information of a financial institution" by "making a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a customer of a financial institution." The complaint's theory is that card and bank account numbers entered at checkout are customer information of a financial institution, and that the price and no-hidden-fees representations were the false statements used to obtain them. Section 522(a) lets the FTC enforce Section 521 through the mechanism of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which in turn routes the violation back through the FTC Act as a rule violation. It is a real statutory path, and it is also an aggressive one that the court has not evaluated in this case.

The state consumer protection counts

Nevada contributes three counts. NRS 598.0915(9) makes it a deceptive trade practice to advertise "goods or services with intent not to sell or lease them as advertised." NRS 598.0923(1) covers a person who, in the course of business, "knowingly" either "(b) Fails to disclose a material fact in connection with the sale or lease of goods or services" or "(c) Violates a state or federal statute or regulation relating to the sale or lease of goods or services." Count VII uses subsection (1)(c) to fold the alleged federal violations into state law, which is why the knowledge allegations about the 2022 internal presentation carry weight beyond color. On remedies, NRS 598.0999(2) allows a civil penalty of up to $15,000 per violation where a court finds a person willfully engaged in a deceptive trade practice, recoverable by the Attorney General or another official the statute names, and NRS 598.0999(1) allows up to $10,000 per violation for breaching a resulting court order.

Utah contributes two. Count VIII is brought under the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act, Utah Code 13-11-4, which the complaint quotes as prohibiting a supplier from engaging in a "deceptive act or practice in connection with a consumer transaction," whether the deceptive act occurs before, during or after the transaction. Count IX is brought under the Utah Automatic Renewal Contracts Act, which the complaint quotes as requiring a person providing a product or service under a contract with an automatic renewal provision to give notice "at least 30 but not more than 60 days" before renewal, clearly and conspicuously disclosing the renewal date, the total renewal cost and cancellation options. Utah Code 13-70-201. Among the relief requested, the plaintiffs ask the court to declare the automatic renewal provisions void under that act, and to award Utah fines, civil penalties, attorneys' fees and expenses.

The full prayer seeks a permanent injunction against future violations of all six statutes, monetary and other relief, Nevada civil penalties, Utah fines and penalties, the Utah voiding remedy, and any additional relief the court finds just.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The structural lesson of this complaint is that hidden-fee enforcement does not wait for a hidden-fee rule. Part 464 covers tickets and lodging, full stop, and the click-to-cancel amendments are vacated. An agency with neither of those tools available for an online lens retailer still has Section 5 and still has ROSCA, and both are statutes rather than rules, so neither is exposed to the procedural defect that undid the 2024 rulemaking. Businesses watching the Eighth Circuit's decision as a reprieve on subscription compliance should read Counts II and III closely, because they ask for the same three things the vacated rule asked for: disclosure before billing, express informed consent, and a workable way out.

The second lesson is about where the alleged deception lives. Nothing in this complaint turns on a false statement about the lenses themselves. It turns on screen architecture: what sits inside a bordered box, what sits below a fold, which of two order summaries carries a line item, and where in a sequence a dollar figure first appears. That is a pleading built for Section 5(n)'s "not reasonably avoidable" element, and it tells designers something concrete. A fee that exists in the document object model is not the same as a fee that is disclosed, and a second summary screen that omits a line the first one carried is an evidentiary problem, not a layout preference.

The labeling claim is the sharpest piece of the complaint, and it is the one that would be most awkward to defend if proven. A seller can lawfully charge a service fee and can lawfully build it into the price. Calling that fee a tax is a different act, because a tax carries an implicit claim about who imposed it and where the money goes. Charging a line called Taxes to a buyer in a state that levies no sales tax at all, as the complaint alleges happened in New Hampshire and Oregon among others, converts a pricing argument into a straightforward misrepresentation about a verifiable external fact. The complaint also quotes the company's own representatives conceding the charge was not sales tax, which is the kind of internal admission that narrows the available defenses.

Naming an individual defendant is also worth noting without overreading it. The complaint devotes a full section to Samourkachian's alleged role in approving pricing and fee presentation and in reviewing complaint data. Individual liability in FTC consumer protection cases is an established practice, not a novelty, and it shapes settlement incentives in a closely held company. Whether the control and knowledge allegations are proved is for the court.

Finally, the policy direction. This case lands into a broader convergence rather than a vacuum. Illinois enacted an all-in pricing requirement with its Junk Fee Ban Act, effective January 1, 2027, and New York City's municipal click-to-cancel rule took effect on October 1, 2026, alongside adopted city rules on hotel junk fees and restaurant surcharges. The FTC has also brought checkout-design cases in adjacent markets, including its $35 million resolution with the travel app Hopper over pre-selected charges. The practical compliance picture for any online retailer is that federal deception law, state deception law and new state and municipal pricing statutes are all pointing at the same screen, and the federal rulemaking gap is not where the risk is concentrated.

How This Affects You

Nothing in this case entitles anyone to a refund today. There is no judgment, no settlement, no claims process and no administrator. Treat any website or message that offers to file a Lens.com claim for you as suspect.

What this case does illustrate is a checkout pattern worth knowing in general, whatever the retailer.

Read the whole page before clicking Continue. A prominent button is not the bottom of the page. On a phone especially, scroll to the actual end of each checkout screen and look for an itemized order summary. If one screen itemizes a charge and the next one does not, the earlier screen is the one to screenshot.

Compare the final total, not the advertised unit price. Per-box, per-unit and after-rebate figures are not comparable across sellers. The only number that compares cleanly is the amount your card will be charged, which usually appears only on the last screen.

Know the difference between a tax and a fee. A sales tax is imposed by a government on the transaction and remitted to that government. A charge the seller sets, keeps, and applies uniformly regardless of your state is part of the price, whatever it is labeled. Two quick reality checks: some states levy no general sales tax, and many states exempt prescription medical devices, so a tax line on a lens order in those places is worth questioning. Your state revenue department publishes what is taxable.

Watch the mail-in rebate math. A rebate reduces what you eventually recover, not what is charged today. The amount leaving your account is the pre-rebate total.

Document a charge you dispute while it is fresh. Save the ad or search listing you clicked, screenshots of each checkout screen including the summary, the order confirmation email, and the line as it appears on your card or bank statement. Note the date and the device you used, since disclosures can render differently across screen sizes. That record is what any agency, card issuer or lawyer will ask for first.

Know where complaints go. The FTC takes consumer reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and every state has an attorney general or consumer protection agency that takes them too. Card issuers have their own dispute processes with their own deadlines, which are generally shorter than you expect. Our guide on what to do after a deceptive charge and where to report it walks through the order of operations.

This is general information about a pending case and public law, not advice about your situation. Whether any particular charge is unlawful depends on facts a lawyer in your state would need to review.

This article is general legal information about a pending federal lawsuit and the statutes it invokes, not legal advice, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship. Allegations in a complaint are unproven. Laws, rules and case postures change; verify the current record before relying on anything here, and consult a licensed attorney in your state about your own situation.

Related articles

• FTC settles with travel app Hopper for $35 million over hidden checkout charges
• Illinois junk fee ban requires all-in upfront pricing starting in 2027
• New York City finalizes a click-to-cancel rule and proposes all-in pricing
• I got scammed: what to do, how to get money back, and where to report

Last updated: 2026-10-13. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-13.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has a court decided that Lens.com did anything illegal?

No. A complaint is a set of allegations that starts a lawsuit. As of October 13, 2026 there is no judgment, no finding of liability and no settlement in this case, and the FTC's own notice states that the case will be decided by the court. Every description of the defendants' conduct in this article is an allegation from the complaint.

What exactly do the agencies say the Taxes and fees charge was?

The complaint alleges it was a mandatory charge applied to every order, revealed only in an order summary positioned below the visible part of one interim checkout screen, and that it did not include state sales taxes even in part. The complaint quotes a site tooltip describing the taxes portion as tax recovery charges and the fees portion as compensation for servicing the order. The company's position on that characterization has not been filed on the public record.

Is there a federal click-to-cancel rule behind the subscription claims?

No. The FTC's 2024 click-to-cancel amendments to the Negative Option Rule were vacated by the Eighth Circuit on July 8, 2025, and the FTC restored the pre-2024 rule effective February 12, 2026. The rule now on the books covers only prenotification negative option plans. The subscription counts in this complaint rest on the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act, which are statutes and were not affected.

Does the FTC junk fee rule cover online contact lens sales?

No. The Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. part 464, took effect May 12, 2025 but defines a covered good or service as live-event tickets or short-term lodging only. Contact lenses fall outside it, which is why the pricing claim here is pleaded as deception under Section 5 of the FTC Act rather than as a rule violation.

What does ROSCA actually require of an online subscription?

Three things, before or at the point of charging: clear and conspicuous disclosure of all material terms before the seller obtains billing information, the consumer's express informed consent before the card or account is charged, and a simple mechanism to stop recurring charges. That is 15 U.S.C. 8403. The timing requirement is the part most often missed, because a disclosure that arrives after billing information is collected does not satisfy it.

Am I getting money back if I bought from Lens.com?

There is no refund or claims process connected to this case, because nothing has been decided. The plaintiffs have asked the court for monetary relief, civil penalties and an injunction, but a request in a prayer for relief is not an award. If a court ever orders consumer redress, the FTC publishes refund information on its own site at ftc.gov, and any legitimate process would be announced there rather than by email or text.

What happens next procedurally?

The defendants may respond to the complaint by answering or by moving to dismiss. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(a)(1)(A)(i), a defendant must serve an answer within 21 days after being served with the summons and complaint, though that period can shift with a waiver of service or an extension. As of October 13, 2026 the FTC's case page lists the complaint as the only filing and the matter as pending.

Which consumers do the state law counts cover?

The Nevada counts are pleaded under the Nevada Deceptive Trade Practices Act as to sales to Nevada consumers, and the Utah counts are pleaded under the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act and the Utah Automatic Renewal Contracts Act as to Utah consumers. The FTC Act, ROSCA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley counts are not limited by state. Residents of other states are not parties and gain no claim from this case, though most states have their own deceptive trade practices statute.

How should I report a hidden fee I was charged somewhere else?

Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general or state consumer protection division, and raise it with your card issuer under its dispute process. Bring the advertisement or listing you clicked, screenshots of each checkout screen, the order confirmation and the statement line. Agencies use volume and documentation to decide what to investigate, so a report with evidence attached is worth more than a complaint without it.