The news: Instacart agreed to pay $60 million in refunds to customers to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it used misleading enrollment and ad practices to raise costs for shoppers.

• The FTC accused Instacart of falsely advertising free delivery, overstating a “100% satisfaction guarantee,” and failing to clearly disclose that free trials of Instacart+ automatically convert into paid memberships.
• The settlement requires refunds to consumers who were charged for Instacart+ without their express informed consent, clearer disclosures, and an end to the practices the agency deemed deceptive. Instacart denied wrongdoing.

The agreement comes as Instacart is reportedly facing a separate FTC investigation into its pricing practices. A report earlier this month by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative found Instacart’s algorithm caused consumers to pay different prices for the same products in the same store.

The pattern: The FTC has been making efforts to crack down on what it characterizes as deceptive billing and enrollment practices.

• The FTC sued Uber in April over allegations it charged consumers for Uber One membership programs without their consent, failed to deliver promised savings, and made it difficult for users to cancel their memberships. Earlier this month, 21 states and the District of Columbia joined the agency’s lawsuit as part of an amended complaint.
• In September, the agency and seven states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster, alleging deceptive pricing strategies and illegal coordination with ticket brokers.
• Earlier this year, the FTC reached an agreement with Amazon in which the retailer agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle an agency lawsuit that accused the company of “knowingly duping” users into enrolling in its $14.99-a-month Prime program and making cancellation unnecessarily difficult.

Our take: The Instacart settlement highlights the limits of the FTC’s current enforcement approach. While the agency is increasingly aggressive in calling out what it deems is deceptive billing, enrollment, and pricing practices, its penalties still lack meaningful bite. Amazon’s Prime settlement, for example, amounted to just 5.6% of the company’s 2024 subscription revenues, while Instacart’s agreement equals roughly 6.4% of its Q3 revenues.

It is a promising sign for consumers that regulators are targeting opaque disclosures, auto-enrollment, and cancellation friction. But unless the consequences become more severe, these actions risk reinforcing a familiar incentive structure in which companies continue to push questionable practices until they are caught, settle, and move on.