The facts
The Federal Trade Commission, the People of the State of California by and through the Los Angeles County Counsel and San Francisco City Attorney, and the attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah filed a lawsuit against Toast Inc. and affiliated entities. The complaint alleges the restaurant software and fintech company saddles restaurants with hidden fees, unauthorized fees and unwanted add-ons, fails to deliver on its customer support promises, and makes it difficult to cancel its services.
Toast sells point-of-sale hardware and software and payment processing to small restaurants. Its subscriptions auto-renew and cost around $900 per month on average depending on the number of terminals and bundled add-ons, according to the complaint. Those add-ons include employee timekeeping, payroll processing and filing of payroll taxes.
Customers frequently complain they were enrolled in and charged for add-ons without consent, according to the complaint. Toast also advertised a plan with hardware and software at $0 per month while charging higher fees per transaction, and then imposed fees it failed to clearly disclose, the complaint alleges. Clients who fail to start processing payments within 120 days of buying a subscription must return all their hardware or pay its full retail value. Restaurants that must close temporarily still owe $85 a month for payment processing. Customers who want to cancel owe an undisclosed early termination fee of $150 per month for each remaining month of their contract.
The complaint also alleges Toast unilaterally charged restaurant patrons a $0.99 fee without adequate disclosure or consent. From September 2021 through late-July 2023, Toast added the fee to certain online orders above $10 placed through its platform. The fee went to Toast and not the restaurants, on top of the fees the restaurants were already paying.
Canceling is a maze, according to the complaint. Customers must first give 30 days written notice of their intent not to renew, a requirement not clearly disclosed when they sign up. Even customers who give timely notice report getting no response and incurring additional charges. Others are told to call customer care or use live chat, where they face questions about why they want to leave and sales pitches to stay. One consumer complained he was charged a $5,318.87 early termination fee, which Toast refused to refund, when he cancelled his account after four years.
It gets worse for customers with a Toast Capital loan. If they cancel their subscriptions or change providers, Toast treats that as a default on the loan and demands the total outstanding amount immediately. The complaint alleges this forces customers to choose between paying unwanted subscription charges to avoid defaulting or facing accelerated loan charges on top of any early termination fees.
Then there is the support promise. Toast's website claims customers can get help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from real people with real solutions, and lists round-the-clock support as a feature of every subscription package. In reality, the complaint alleges, consumers have difficulty reaching anyone who can help at any time of day. One consumer called on a Saturday and was told the team that could help him was not available on the weekend, costing his small business thousands of dollars in credit card transactions. Others report spending weeks to months trying to resolve an issue with no follow-up.
The complaint alleges Toast's conduct violated the FTC Act, the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act and related state laws. The Commission vote authorizing the staff to file the complaint was 2-0, and the complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. A complaint is only the start of a case, which the court will decide.
Our take
Toast is a fucking shakedown disguised as a cash register. This isn't software; it's a rectal probe with a subscription. You sign up, and suddenly you're paying $900 a month for the privilege of being fucked six ways from Sunday. Want to leave? First, you have to send a fucking written notice 30 days in advance - a rule they hid in the fine print like a coward. Then you get to pay $150 for every month you dared not remain in their shitty ecosystem. After four years of taking it, one guy got a ‘thanks for nothing’ bill for over five grand. That’s not an early termination fee. That’s a gangster’s vigorish, calculated by a fucking algorithm. And if you had the spectacularly bad judgment to also take a Toast Capital loan? Canceling your subscription triggers a default, so they can demand the whole fucking loan back immediately. It’s a choice between getting sodomized by the monthly fee or getting skull-fucked by the accelerated debt. A real Sophie’s choice for suckers. Then there’s the 99-cent fee. For two years, Toast just helped itself to a buck from online orders over ten dollars. No asking. No telling. Just a quiet little skim off the top, because why bother robbing the till when you own the whole fucking restaurant? It’s the digital equivalent of a pickpocket working as the coat-check attendant. But the beautiful, polished cherry on this shit sundae is the ‘24/7 support.’ They advertise round-the-clock help from real people. Then a restaurant owner calls on a Saturday - you know, when restaurants tend to be open - and gets told the team that can help doesn’t work weekends. His business bled thousands while their ‘always-on’ support line rang into a void. That’s not a broken promise. That’s a deliberate, malicious lie told by absolute cunts. Toast didn’t build a point-of-sale system. It built a roach motel with a card reader and a loan shark attached. The only thing it delivers 24/7 is another fucking charge. The FTC and a gang of states are now suing, which is the legal equivalent of a health inspector finding a turd in the soup. It’s about time someone tried to flush this toilet of a company. Bon appétit, you greedy fucks. Enjoy the complaint. It’s the only support document you’ll actually receive.
