Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions.

Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America. Its platform serves millions of customers and is also used by roughly 600,000 independent shoppers across thousands of cities in Canada and the United States.

In a complaint filed on Thursday, the FTC claimed Instacart engaged in multiple deceptive tactics that raised costs for customers, including failing to provide advertised refunds and falsely advertising "free delivery" while still charging mandatory service fees that added up to 15 percent to order costs.

The FTC said Instacart also advertised a "100% satisfaction guarantee," but typically offered only small credits toward future orders rather than full refunds to customers experiencing problems with deliveries or service. The company allegedly hid refund options from "self-service" menus, leading customers to believe credits were their only option.

The FTC further alleged that Instacart's free-trial enrollment process for its Instacart+ membership program failed to disclose that users would be automatically charged at the end of the trial.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of consumers were charged membership fees without receiving benefits or obtaining refunds, the FTC added.

Instacart misled consumers by advertising free delivery services—and then charging consumers to have groceries delivered—and failing to disclose to consumers that signed up for a free trial that they would be automatically enrolled into its subscription program. The FTC is focused on monitoring online delivery services to ensure that competitors are transparently competing on price and delivery terms. — Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Under the proposed order, Instacart must stop all deceptive practices and clearly disclose the terms of its subscription services. The FTC says that all users who were charged for Instacart+ memberships without their consent will be refunded.

While Instacart has resolved the FTC's allegations of deceptive tactics, it is reportedly still under investigation for its pricing practices. An investigation from consumer advocacy groups Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union found that Instacart charged different prices for the same products for multiple online shoppers simultaneously at the same stores.

However, Instacart explained the price differences as part of what it described as short-term, randomized A/B testing designed "to test how sensitive consumers — at a macro level — are to the price of certain items."

The company also denied setting online item prices based on personal information about individual customers or controlling the base prices on its platform, saying that each retail partner has complete control over price tags.

An Instacart spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today.