This week, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that Cerebral, an online mental health provider, is required to pay out over $740,000 due to unjust cancellation practices and review manipulation.
The telehealth company — which provides New Yorkers with access to numerous mental health services through a subscription fee model — had an investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) launch against it following reports from consumers saying they experienced issues canceling their subscriptions to Cerebral.
Through the investigation, James says that OAG found that Cerebral had made it burdensome for customers to get off their subscriptions by forcing them to go through a prolonged process.
According to the investigation’s findings, after initially canceling their subscriptions through email, customers would then be forced to endure extra steps, including having to complete a multi-question survey.
Following the cancellation requests, Cerebral would then reportedly take its time to finalize the inquiries, taking up to 72 hours — or, in some cases, over a week — to complete the process.
While customers waited for their cancellation requests to be fulfilled, OAG says that Cerebal would use the time to send several retention requests in an effort to convince its subscribers to stay.
In some cases, James says that the delays would extend through the customer’s new billing date, which would force them to have to pay for a whole new month of services.
“Making New Yorkers withstand stressful and extended delays to cancel a subscription for mental health care coverage is unacceptable,” said Attorney General James. “It is illegal and unfair to make consumers spend extra time or jump through hoops to try to cancel a subscription they no longer need. The law is clear that companies must make it easy and simple to end a subscription and my office will continue to hold them to that standard.”
During the investigation, the mental health company was also discovered to have manipulated phony reviews by illegally instructing its employees to anonymously create fake posts praising Cerebral, in addition to “upvoting” positive reviews and “downvoting” negative ones.
As a result of OAG’s findings, James says that Cerebral has agreed to pay $200,000 in penalties and more than $540,000 in restitution to over 16,000 New York consumers.
