FTC, Utah, Nevada Sue Lens.com Over Alleged Hidden Fees

FTC, Utah and Nevada Sue Lens.com Over an Allegedly Hidden "Taxes & Fees" Charge

Federal and state consumer regulators sued contact lens retailer Lens.com on October 2, 2026, alleging the company advertised low per-box prices and then added a mandatory "Taxes & fees" charge, buried below the fold at checkout, that routinely doubled the advertised price.

Information last verified on October 3, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers a civil enforcement action in United States federal court applying federal consumer protection statutes together with Nevada and Utah state law. It does not describe the consumer protection law of other states or of other countries.

What Happened

On October 2, 2026, the FTC, the State of Nevada acting through its Bureau of Consumer Protection, and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection filed a joint civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. The caption is 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 Commission vote authorizing staff to file was 2-0.

Three defendants are named. According to the complaint, Lens.com Inc. is a Nevada corporation based in Las Vegas that sells about 20 brands and more than 150 types of contact lenses online, and Speed Commerce LLC, also a Las Vegas company, provides finance, IT, sales, HR, warehousing, distribution and order fulfillment to roughly 150 clients including Lens.com and manages customer service provided by a third-party Philippines-based call center. Cary Samourkachian is alleged to be the sole owner, officer and employee of Lens.com and the manager and sole owner of Speed Commerce. The complaint alleges the two companies operated as a common enterprise, which, if established, would make each liable for the other's conduct.

The checkout flow the complaint describes

The mechanism alleged is narrow and specific. According to the complaint, a shopper sees a price such as $18.29 per box in a Google "Sponsored products" result and on the matching Lens.com product page, alongside a promise on the same page that the retailer charges "NO HIDDEN FEES." The shopper selects quantities, enters prescription and prescriber details, and reaches a Shipping Information screen with a prominent red "Continue" button.

The complaint alleges that the only place the mandatory "Taxes & fees" line item appears is in an Order Summary further down that same screen, beneath the "Continue" button. In the complaint's words at paragraph 7:

"Defendants hide the 'Taxes & fees' line item 'below the fold' on an interim purchase screen."

A shopper who takes the prompt and clicks "Continue" lands on a Submit Order screen that shows an "Order Total" and a "Total After Rebate" but, the FTC alleges, no "Taxes & fees" line. The complaint's worked example from February 2026 is stark. The advertised $18.29 per box was a post-rebate figure: the product page showed it as the lowest price per box after a $220.00 mail-in rebate, against a regular price of $45.79 per box, which made the advertised one-year supply of eight boxes $146.32 after rebate. The checkout order summary for that order showed a $366.32 subtotal, an additional $273.44 in "Taxes & fees" and $9.95 in shipping, for an order total of $649.71. Against the $146.32 the shopper had been shown, according to the FTC, the fee alone was nearly twice the advertised price.

The label itself

A separate theory attacks the words rather than the placement. The FTC alleges that calling the charge "Taxes & fees" represents to a reasonable consumer that some part of it is state sales tax the merchant must collect and remit. Paragraph 54 states the government's position plainly:

"Thus, contrary to Defendants' representations that the hidden charge is for 'Taxes & fees,' the charge is not, even in part, for sales taxes."

The complaint points to buyers in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon, which levy no state sales tax, and to Virginia, Florida and New Jersey, which it says exempt contact lenses from sales tax. It alleges the lump sum was charged anyway. A small information icon next to the line item is alleged to open a pop-up reading, in part, "Taxes are tax recovery charges for tax obligations where applicable and the fees are compensation for servicing your order."

AutoRefill

Since at least April 2024, the complaint alleges, Lens.com has also sold lenses through an "AutoRefill" subscription that ships and bills every three, six or twelve months. The FTC alleges the same "Taxes & fees" charge was not clearly and conspicuously disclosed before Lens.com obtained subscribers' billing information, and that the cancellation deadline and cancellation method were not disclosed inside the AutoRefill purchase flow either, sitting instead on a separate page reachable through a menu.

Consumer complaints

The complaint cites thousands of internal consumer complaints plus hundreds more lodged with the Better Business Bureau and Trustpilot. Among the excerpts quoted is a subscriber asking, "I do not know how my contacts went from $146 to $245??" The FTC further alleges that an August 2022 internal presentation acknowledged the checkout screen revealed the total only to shoppers who scrolled past the "Continue" button, and proposed a clearer presentation, but that the purchase flow was not materially changed. The complaint states the conduct continued after the Commission issued a Civil Investigative Demand in August 2025.

Relief sought

The plaintiffs ask the court for a permanent injunction against future violations, monetary relief, civil penalties for Nevada under its deceptive trade practices statute, fines and civil penalties plus attorneys' fees and expenses for Utah, and a declaration that the automatic renewal provisions are void under Utah law. Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the agency's announcement that Lens.com "advertised one price for contact lenses but charged a substantially higher price at checkout."

The FTC's case page for the matter lists the October 2, 2026 complaint and no later filing. Defendants' response is not yet due, and no court has made any finding against any defendant.

What the Law Actually Says

Nine counts rest on six statutes. It is worth separating what each one actually requires, because the gaps are as instructive as the overlaps.

Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45(a). The text declares "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce" unlawful. There is no fee-specific language and none is needed. Count I alleges three representations were false or misleading: that lenses could be bought at the advertised prices, that Lens.com charged no hidden fees, and that part of the "Taxes & fees" charge went to state sales tax. This is the workhorse count, and it is why the government did not need a pricing rule to bring the case.

Section 4 of ROSCA, 15 U.S.C. 8403. The Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act makes it unlawful to charge a consumer for anything sold online through a negative option feature unless the seller does three things: clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms before obtaining billing information, obtains express informed consent before charging the account, and provides simple mechanisms to stop recurring charges. Counts II and III target the first two. A negative option is defined by reference to the Telemarketing Sales Rule at 16 C.F.R. 310.2(w), and it means an arrangement where the seller treats silence as consent to be charged.

ROSCA matters here for a reason worth noting. The FTC's 2024 "click to cancel" amendments, which retitled 16 C.F.R. Part 425 the Rule Concerning Recurring Subscriptions and Other Negative Option Programs and extended it to all negative option programs, did not survive judicial review. On February 12, 2026 the Commission published a final rule recodifying Part 425 as it existed before the 2024 amendments, in light of federal court decisions. What sits in the CFR today is the old prenotification plan rule. ROSCA, a statute Congress passed in 2010, was unaffected, and it is the subscription authority the FTC is using.

Section 521 of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. 6821. This is the count most likely to be misread. It is not the GLB privacy-notice regime that banks follow. Section 521 sits in the subchapter titled "Fraudulent Access to Financial Information" and is the pretexting ban. Subsection (a)(2) makes it unlawful to obtain or attempt 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." Count IV alleges that the price and no-hidden-fees claims were such statements, made to obtain card and account numbers at checkout. Section 522(a), 15 U.S.C. 6822(a), lets the FTC enforce Section 521 as if a violation were a violation of a trade regulation rule, which is what opens the door to consumer redress under Section 19 of the FTC Act.

The junk-fee rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, is not in this case. The Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees was published at 90 FR 2066 on January 10, 2025 and took effect May 12, 2025. Section 464.2 prohibits advertising the price of a "covered good or service" without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price, and Section 464.3 prohibits misrepresenting the nature, purpose, amount or refundability of a fee. Those two sections describe the Lens.com allegations almost exactly. But Section 464.1 defines "covered good or service" as only live-event tickets and short-term lodging. Contact lenses are neither, so the rule does not apply and the complaint never cites it. The FTC has opened advance rulemaking proceedings on rental housing fees (advance notice of proposed rulemaking, 91 FR 12325, March 13, 2026) and online food delivery fees (91 FR 20381, April 16, 2026), but neither has produced a proposed rule, let alone a rule in force.

The Contact Lens Rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 315, is also absent. It implements the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act and governs prescription release, prescriber verification, prescription expiration and a ban on advertising that lenses can be bought without a prescription. It says nothing about how a seller must display prices or fees. A contact lens retailer can comply with Part 315 completely and still face the claims in this complaint.

State law. Nevada's three counts cite NRS 598.0915(9), which reaches advertising goods "with intent not to sell or lease them as advertised," and NRS 598.0923(1)(b) and (1)(c), which reach knowingly failing to disclose a material fact in connection with the sale or lease of goods or services and knowingly violating a state or federal statute or regulation relating to the sale or lease of goods or services. Subsection (1)(c) is a bootstrap provision: it converts the alleged federal violations into independent state violations carrying Nevada civil penalties. Utah's Count VIII is brought under the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act, Utah Code 13-11-1 et seq. Count IX is brought under the Utah Automatic Renewal Contracts Act, Utah Code 13-70-101 et seq. The complaint quotes Section 201 of that Act, Utah Code 13-70-201, as requiring a clear and conspicuous notice at least 30 but not more than 60 days before an automatic renewal, stating the renewal date, the total renewal cost and cancellation options.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The most useful thing about this filing is what it shows about the gap between rulemaking and enforcement. The FTC spent years building a junk-fee rule, and the version that survived covers concert tickets and hotel rooms. A contact lens site is outside it. Yet the agency brought a nine-count case anyway, because Section 5(a) has never required a sector-specific rule to reach a price that is not the price. The practical lesson for anyone reading fee-disclosure headlines is that "the junk fee rule does not cover my purchase" and "this fee is lawful" are different statements, and only the first one is usually true.

The same pattern shows up on the subscription side. The click-to-cancel amendments are gone from the CFR, and the version of Part 425 now in force is the 1973-era prenotification rule aimed at book and record clubs. That did not stop two ROSCA counts from being filed. ROSCA's three requirements are statutory, and they already demand pre-billing disclosure of material terms and express informed consent. Coverage of fee and subscription practices currently depends more on the statutes than on the rules.

The GLB pretexting count is the structurally interesting one. Section 521 was written with a different problem in mind, people phoning banks under false pretenses to extract account records. Applying it to a checkout page reframes a routine card entry as obtaining customer information of a financial institution through a false representation. If that theory holds up, it gives the FTC a second redress pathway in ordinary online deception cases. If a court narrows it, the case still rests primarily on the FTC Act count, which does not depend on the GLB theory. Either way, it is a theory worth tracking rather than assuming.

Finally, the fee-labeling allegation deserves attention separate from the hiding allegation. The complaint does not only say the charge was concealed. It says the word "Taxes" did work that the money did not do. That is a claim about the semantics of a line item rather than its position, so it would not be answered by a redesigned checkout page that simply displays the same charge more plainly. Placement and naming are two different compliance problems. For readers who track the broader category, our coverage of hidden and add-on charges and the Seattle ordinance restricting rental junk fees show the same tension playing out in travel booking and housing.

How This Affects You

Nothing in this filing entitles any individual shopper to a payment. There is no settlement, no claims process and no administrator. Any communication claiming to be a Lens.com claim form connected to this case should be treated with suspicion, which is the common shape of fraud that follows publicized enforcement actions. Our scams and fraud resources cover how those follow-on schemes typically present themselves.

If you buy anything online where a fee appears late in a checkout flow, the general practice regulators describe in filings like this one is simple enough to state. Scroll the full checkout page before clicking any button labeled "Continue," rather than treating the first prominent button as the end of the screen. Compare the final charge on your card statement against the advertised price rather than against the order confirmation, since the two can differ. Keep the product page, the cart screen and the confirmation email, because a disputed charge is much easier to describe when the advertised figure is documented.

If a charge on your account does not match what you agreed to pay, the general options are a dispute with your card issuer, a complaint to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and a complaint to your state attorney general or state consumer protection division. Whether any of those is appropriate for your situation depends on facts a general article cannot assess. General background on the mechanics is in our guides to recovering money after a fraudulent charge and what happens when a bank declines a refund request.

Subscribers to any auto-ship program may want to locate the cancellation path and the cancellation deadline before the next billing cycle rather than at the moment they want out. ROSCA requires sellers to disclose those terms before taking billing information and to provide a simple way to stop recurring charges, so a program where neither is easy to find is worth a closer look.

This article is legal information, not legal advice. It describes allegations in a civil complaint that have not been proven, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction about your own situation.

Related articles

• Scams and Fraud
• How to get money back after a scam
• What to do when a bank refuses a scam refund
• FTC Hopper junk fees settlement
• Seattle rental junk fee ban
• FTC Amway MLM earnings claims settlement

Last updated: 2026-10-03. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-03.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Lens.com been found liable for anything?

No. The FTC, Nevada and Utah filed a civil complaint on October 2, 2026. A complaint is an allegation. The FTC files one when it has reason to believe a law is being violated and that a proceeding is in the public interest, and the agency's own notice states the case will be decided by the court. No defendant has been found liable and no court has ruled on the merits.

What is the 'Taxes & fees' charge the complaint describes?

According to the complaint, it is a mandatory charge Lens.com added at checkout in addition to the advertised per-box price and the shipping charge. The FTC alleges it appeared only in an order summary below the visible area of an interim checkout screen, and that it frequently doubled the advertised price. In one February 2026 example in the complaint, it added $273.44 to a $146.32 order.

Does the FTC's junk-fee rule cover contact lenses?

No. The Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, took effect May 12, 2025 and defines a covered good or service as live-event tickets or short-term lodging only. Contact lenses fall outside it, and the complaint does not cite it. The case is built on Section 5(a) of the FTC Act instead, which prohibits deceptive practices generally and needs no sector-specific rule.

Why is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in a pricing lawsuit?

The count is under Section 521, 15 U.S.C. 6821, which is the pretexting ban in the subchapter on fraudulent access to financial information, not the familiar GLB privacy-notice rules. Section 521(a)(2) prohibits making a false statement to a customer of a financial institution in order to obtain that institution's customer information. The FTC alleges the price and no-hidden-fees claims induced shoppers to hand over card and account numbers.

Does the Contact Lens Rule regulate what sellers can charge?

No. 16 C.F.R. Part 315 implements the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act and covers prescription release to patients, prescriber verification, prescription expiration, limits on requiring immediate payment, and a ban on advertising that lenses can be obtained without a prescription. It contains no pricing or fee-disclosure requirement, and it is not among the counts in this complaint.

Is there a settlement or a way to file a claim?

Not at this stage. The plaintiffs have asked the court for an injunction, monetary relief and civil penalties, but the case has only just been filed. There is no fund, no deadline and no claim form. Any website offering to process a Lens.com claim should be treated cautiously until an actual court-appointed administrator exists.

What is ROSCA and why does it apply to an online lens store?

The Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, 15 U.S.C. 8403, applies to anything sold online through a negative option feature, meaning an arrangement where the seller treats a consumer's silence as consent to be charged. An auto-ship subscription qualifies. ROSCA requires clear and conspicuous disclosure of all material terms before billing information is collected, express informed consent before the charge, and a simple way to stop recurring charges.

Did the FTC's click-to-cancel rule play a role here?

No. The 2024 amendments that would have extended 16 C.F.R. Part 425 to all negative option programs did not survive judicial review, and on February 12, 2026 the Commission published a final rule recodifying Part 425 as it read before those amendments. The current CFR text is the older prenotification plan rule. The subscription counts in this case rest on the ROSCA statute, which was not affected.

What happens next in the case?

The defendants will be served and will have an opportunity to respond, typically by answering or moving to dismiss, and the case proceeds in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada under Case No. 2:26-cv-03232. Timing in federal civil litigation varies widely. Developments appear on the court's docket and on the FTC's case page for the matter.