Price per billing period clearly stated
Why it matters
Displaying an annual plan as '$24/month' without disclosing the $290 annual charge is a documented deceptive pattern under FTC Negative Option Rule (2025): the consumer commits to a $290 lump-sum charge while believing they authorized a $24 monthly payment. The FTC's Dot Com Disclosures guidance (2013) classifies missing-period qualifiers as material omissions. California ARL reinforces this by requiring the 'initial subscription fee' be clearly stated. A missing billing period label on a $29 price is the lowest-friction compliance gap in this category — one additional span element fixes it.
Severity rationale
Low because the omission is typically isolated to label text and does not itself trigger the charge, but it feeds the misrepresentation chain that leads to chargebacks when the period is misunderstood.
Remediation
Standardize every price display component to render billing period and, for annual plans, the actual annual charge. In components/PriceDisplay.tsx:
// Annual plan shown as monthly equivalent — must also show annual total
return (
<div className="price-display">
<div>
<span className="price">${monthlyEquivalent}</span>
<span className="period">/ month</span>
</div>
<p className="annual-note text-sm text-gray-600">
Billed as ${annualPrice}/year
</p>
</div>
)
Run a search across src/ for bare price strings (e.g., \$29) not followed by /month or /year to catch any component that bypasses the shared display component. Report the count of pricing surfaces audited.
DetectionPro
The detection method for this pattern is part of AuditBuffet Pro.
The full method (what to look for, pass and fail conditions, and how results get reported) ships inside the Subscription & Auto-Renewal Compliance Audit. The pattern definition, severity rationale, and remediation remain openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
External references
- external · ftc-negative-option-rule-2025 — FTC Negative Option Marketing Rule (2025) — price per period disclosure
- external · california-arl — California Automatic Renewal Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §17601) — billing frequency disclosure
Taxons
History
- 2026-04-18·v1.0.0·Initial import from subscription-compliance·automated