WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against bill payment company Doxo and two of its co-founders, alleging the company uses misleading search ads to impersonate consumers’ billers and deceptive design practices to mislead consumers about millions of dollars in junk fees they tacked on to consumers’ bills.
The complaint alleges that Doxo, its CEO and co-founder Steve Shivers, and its vice president and co-founder Roger Parks, have “known from years of internal surveys and complaints from tens of thousands of consumers and hundreds of billers of the harms their business model caused consumers and have still failed to correct their unlawful actions.”
The FTC’s complaint further alleges that Doxo “immediately charges a consumer for payment, in many instances, the company then prints a paper check that is mailed to the biller – arriving days or sometimes weeks after the customer believes their bill is paid. As a result, many consumers have had their utilities shut off, have had car and health insurance lapse, and have been charged fees and fines even though they paid their bills on time.”
Search Comes Up Empty
According to the FTC’s complaint, Doxo purchases search engine ads that appear when consumers search online for information about companies they owe bills to.
“These ads are created to mislead consumers into believing that Doxo is affiliated with those companies. The complaint cites as an example Doxo’s ads that are designed to trick consumers into believing they are affiliated with a prominent medical testing company,” the FTC said. “Doxo bought ads that appeared when consumers searched for the company’s name or website, and the ads included headlines that included the company’s name but not Doxo’s.”
“Doxo’s landing pages prominently feature the biller’s company name and sometimes even their logo, even though Doxo generally does not have a formal relationship with the biller. In fact, less than 2% of the companies in Doxo’s ‘network’ authorize Doxo to accept payments on their behalf,” the FTC said, citing its complaint.
Additional Allegations
Additional allegations made by the FTC include:
- “Once consumers provide their billing details, Doxo then shows a final payment amount, onto which the company tacks an extra fee that is included only at the final payment step, and even then only in greyed-out fine print,” the FTC said.
- The complaint also outlines Doxo’s “deceptive” process to sign consumers up for its recurring subscription program, noting that, until February 2024, after learning of the FTC’s proposed complaint, the company would automatically check the box to sign consumers up when they clicked to read a terms of service document.
- In addition, while Doxo said consumers would save on the company’s “delivery” fees, consumers paying for the monthly plan are still often charged those fees, the FTC alleged.
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