From the Performance Marketing Insider archive. Originally published September 2020. Revisited October 2026.

NutraClick Fined by FTC

Settled with the FTC in 2016 over "free" samples. Sued again in 2020 for doing it again. This time the ban was permanent.

By Pesach Lattin

This post first ran on Performance Marketing Insider (performinsiders.com), the affiliate and lead generation trade site Pesach Lattin published from 2011 to 2020. The original text was lost when that site went dark. This page sits at the same address the old links point to, keeps the original headline and date, rebuilds the subject from the public record, and says what happened next.

NutraClick is what happens when a company treats an FTC order as a cost of doing business.

The first time

In 2016, the FTC settled with NutraClick over "free" samples of supplements and beauty products. Customers who took the sample were enrolled in a membership charging $29.99 to $79.99 a month unless they cancelled within 18 days, and the FTC said the terms were not clear and conspicuous as the law requires. More than 70,000 consumers had complained.

The second time

On September 22, 2020, the FTC filed a new case against NutraClick, which also did business as Force Factor, and two executives, alleging they violated the 2016 order, the FTC Act, the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule through "free trial" offers by text and online. The settlement required $1.04 million in consumer redress and imposed a permanent ban on negative-option marketing.

How it aged

NutraClick is now the standard example of the repeat offender who finally got banned outright. The broader fix the FTC wanted, a "click-to-cancel" rule for every subscription, was vacated by a federal appeals court in July 2025, which leaves ROSCA and case-by-case orders like this one as the main tools. For the affiliate business, the takeaway from 2016 and 2020 is the same: the free sample was never free, and the traffic that sold it was paid by the sign-up.

This page rebuilds a September 2020 Performance Marketing Insider post whose original text is not available. Facts come from the FTC's case records for NutraClick and Consumer Protection Connection's summary of the 2020 settlements. The author co-founded LeadsCon.