Care.com Settlement: The FTC Paid 194,207 People and Nobody Filed a Claim

Who qualifies

• The people paid were Care.com members who had bought a paid subscription and were harmed by the practices in the FTC's complaint — both caregivers looking for work and families posting jobs.
• Nobody had to apply. The FTC used Care.com's own customer records to identify recipients, which is why there was no claim form, no deadline to file, and no eligibility questionnaire.
• Payment arrived as either a paper check or a PayPal transfer, sent on June 24, 2025. Checks had a 90-day cashing window printed on them; PayPal payments had to be accepted within 30 days.
• If you were a paying Care.com member in the relevant period and never received anything, the refund administrator Epiq Systems can check your record on 1-888-867-6151. The FTC does not require payment or account information to release a refund — any request like that is a scam.
• Being paid in this distribution has nothing to do with whether Care.com owes you a subscription refund today. Cancellation and billing disputes now go to Care.com directly; the order requires the company to provide a simple cancellation method.

What the FTC said Care.com did, and how the refunds worked

1. 1

   How Care.com's marketplace works, and why that matters

   Care.com is a platform where families post jobs — child care, care for older adults, care for people with special needs, pet sitting — and caregivers apply for them. The crucial mechanic is that to contact anyone, you must buy an auto-renewing paid subscription. Families can create a listing for free by answering a questionnaire. That combination is the root of the FTC's case: a free listing counts as a job on the platform, but a caregiver who pays to apply to it cannot be hired unless the family has also paid.

2. 2

   Allegation 1 — the job numbers were inflated

   According to the FTC's complaint, Care.com advertised the number of jobs on its platform in a way that was deceptively inflated, because it counted listings for which there was little to no chance a job seeker could actually be hired. Since at least 2019 the company advertised millions of such jobs to draw caregivers into paid subscriptions. The complaint cites numerous consumer complaints from people who applied to job after job and never heard anything back.

3. 3

   Allegation 2 — the earnings figures were made up

   The FTC alleged Care.com advertised hourly and weekly earnings it had little or no data to support. The complaint's clearest example: a 2021 Care.com ad campaign on a third-party site said "Childcare jobs from $18/hr" while Care.com's own website stated that the average national rate for babysitting jobs, and the average rate for babysitters on Care.com, was between $13 and $14.25 per hour. The FTC said Care.com does not track what caregivers actually earn — pay is negotiated off-platform after contact — and that it continued making these claims even after receiving a Notice of Penalty Offenses about earnings claims from the FTC in 2021.

4. 4

   Allegation 3 — cancellation was deliberately hard

   The complaint describes what the FTC calls dark patterns. To cancel, members had to click through a number of unrelated links just to find the cancellation information; consumers regularly complained that they resorted to searching the web for instructions. Once inside the cancellation flow they met multi-page questionnaires, confusing language, warnings about what cancelling would cost them, and offers to buy other paid memberships before they could finish. The FTC noted the tell: cancelling a free subscription was a simple two-step process, while cancelling a paid one was not.

5. 5

   August 2024 — the complaint and the $8.5 million order

   The FTC filed its complaint on August 26, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-987, with the stipulated order filed on August 30, 2024. The Commission vote authorising the case was 5-0, and Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter issued a separate statement. Care.com agreed to turn over $8.5 million for consumer refunds and to change its conduct: make only earnings claims it can substantiate, only advertise job counts for listings posted by users who can actually hire, be upfront about how contact on the site works before taking money, and provide a simple cancellation method for any negative-option subscription.

6. 6

   June 24, 2025 — 194,207 payments go out

   The FTC distributed more than $8.1 million of the $8.5 million to 194,207 affected consumers as checks and PayPal payments. Because the FTC worked from Care.com's records, there was no claim form and no filing deadline — the practical difference between an FTC refund program and a class action, and the reason many people who were owed money in FTC cases never realise it until a payment simply arrives.

7. 7

   The redemption windows, and what happens to unclaimed money

   Checks carried a 90-day cashing deadline and PayPal payments a 30-day acceptance window. Those windows are the most common reason someone eligible ends up with nothing: an FTC check that looks like junk mail gets thrown away, and after 90 days it cannot be cashed. The gap between the $8.5 million ordered and the $8.1 million sent, and any further gap between sent and redeemed, is money that stayed unclaimed.

8. 8

   If you think you were missed

   Call Epiq Systems, the refund administrator, at 1-888-867-6151. Have the email address and approximate dates of your Care.com paid membership ready. Two things are worth knowing before you call: the FTC never requires you to pay a fee or hand over bank account or card details to receive a refund, and no legitimate FTC refund process asks you to transfer money first.

9. 9

   Why this pattern keeps repeating

   Care.com sits in a cluster of cases about the same mechanic — a subscription that is easy to start and hard to stop. The FTC has brought the same theory against Chegg, Vonage, Amazon Prime and others, and in most of them payment was automatic with no claim form, so the only people who got nothing were those whose payment window lapsed. ClaimBee scans your email for administrator notices and tracks the redemption deadlines, which is exactly the failure point in a no-claim-form refund program.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and official records

Every figure and date on this page was taken from the primary records below — court dockets, agency releases, and the settlement administrator's own notices. Payout averages we describe as averages are calculated from the official totals, not reported per-person estimates.

• FTC — Care.com Refunds page: 194,207 payments totaling more than $8.1 million, Epiq administrator, 90-day check / 30-day PayPal windows
• FTC press release — the complaint: inflated job counts, the "$18/hr" vs $13–$14.25 earnings example, cancellation dark patterns, $8.5 million, 5-0 vote, W.D. Tex.
• FTC press release — June 2025 distribution of more than $8.1 million to 194,207 consumers
• FTC case record — Care.com, Inc., FTC v., Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-987 (W.D. Tex.), with the complaint and stipulated order