This desk records what a provider publishes and cannot audit the rest. Occasionally a regulator that can compel documents does it instead. The Federal Court of Australia has found that eHarmony made misleading representations about the pricing, renewal and duration of its memberships, per the ACCC’s release on the judgment — release 99/26, dated 25 August 2026, the source for what follows unless noted.

What the court found

Breaches of the Australian Consumer Law in five respects: free dating offered where ongoing communication was not free; automatic renewal of memberships; one-month memberships, when the minimum was six; early cancellation consumers could not make; and monthly prices omitting a mandatory fee for paying monthly. A sixth sits apart — failing to show the minimum total payable as a single price beside the per-month figure.

The renewal mechanics hold the money. Premium subscriptions renewed automatically into a locked twelve-month period, the Court found, at prices “up to five times higher than the price of the initial subscription, or hundreds of dollars more than the consumer initially agreed to” — in small font, late in the purchase process.

What has not happened

No penalty exists. The court will decide penalties, consumer redress and the other orders the ACCC sought, injunctions among them, later; any figure attached to this case today was invented by whoever quotes it.

The tense matters, and only partly. The Court found that from July 2024, when additional disclosures were added, the relevant pages no longer represented that plans could be bought at the stated monthly amount — one finding of six. Nothing in the release says the renewal, duration or cancellation conduct stopped, and the ACCC’s 2023 filing alleged most of it was ongoing. eHarmony told Reuters it was reviewing the judgment and considering its options. An Australian judgment, on Australian consumer law, silent on terms elsewhere.

The failure we had not catalogued

We have written about providers who publish no price at all. Here is the opposite, more elegant failure: a number published prominently that was not the number. The release renders eHarmony’s line as “from $xx/month” — a true statement about an instalment and a useless one about a commitment.

ACCC Commissioner Luke Woodward put it narrowly: “The Court’s ruling underscores that when businesses advertise a price for a subscription divided into instalments, such as a price per month, the minimum total cost must also be clearly and prominently displayed.”

A low bar, already written into the Australian Consumer Law, and it took a case filed in September 2023 to enforce it against one company in one country. What survives for a buyer is one question, asked before the card details rather than after: the minimum total, over what term, at what price it rolls.

This being an over-18s trade, one caveat of our own: today’s page can be edited by lunchtime, so get a provider’s total and renewal terms in writing before you commit.