A Car Wash That Cleans Out Your Bank Account

The Setup: A “$13 Deal” That Costs You Way More

On January 13, 2025, Tate visited Soapy Joe’s in El Cajon, California. A company employee told her she could get unlimited car washes for one month for $13 (about what you’d spend on a lunch combo). She was interested. The employee then took her debit card and signed her up. According to the lawsuit, Tate never interacted with a kiosk, never received any written terms, and never heard the words “automatically renews.”

The next month, on February 12, 2025, Soapy Joe’s charged Tate’s debit card $25 without her authorization. On March 12, 2025, they did it again. That $25 monthly charge is roughly what many households pay for a music streaming service — except Tate never agreed to it. The first time Tate even learned she was enrolled in a recurring membership was in April 2025, when her card was declined and Soapy Joe’s texted her about the failed payment.

Tate immediately texted back, telling the company she had never signed up for a monthly membership. Soapy Joe’s ignored her. Six days later, on April 19, they tried to charge her card again. Tate sent another message demanding they stop. The lawsuit states she has requested a full refund but, as of filing, has not received one for all charges beyond her initial $13 purchase.

This Was Not an Accident — It Was Policy

The lawsuit is explicit: this was not the result of one rogue employee. The complaint alleges that Soapy Joe’s maintains company-wide training and standard procedures specifically instructing employees to enroll customers in memberships while omitting the auto-renewal terms, the price increase details, and the cancellation process. The system was designed to maximize signups by maximizing ignorance.

Soapy Joe’s owns and operates more than 20 car wash locations in California. The complaint states that the practices, procedures, and signup and cancellation processes are the same or similar across every one of those locations. This means every customer walking into any Soapy Joe’s location was exposed to the same trap.

The company also ran the same playbook on its website. Before May 2025, Soapy Joe’s online checkout screens contained essentially no disclosure that the membership would auto-renew, no clear cancellation instructions, and no notice that an introductory price would jump to a higher rate. The lawsuit describes the website as “void of this required information.” Only after this complaint was being prepared did the company quietly update its website in May 2025.

The Hidden Price Hike: Your “Deal” Becomes Their Most Expensive Option

The discount scheme follows a specific pattern. Soapy Joe’s offers customers a promotional rate to get them in the door — in Tate’s case, $13 (about the price of two movie tickets) for the first month. What customers are never told is that after the promotional period expires, the membership automatically escalates — “normally to the most expensive membership option,” according to the complaint. Tate’s plan jumped from $13 to $25 per month (roughly $300 a year, enough to cover a family’s monthly grocery bill for a week).

The complaint also alleges Soapy Joe’s fails to disclose what the new price will be before the customer signs up. California’s Automatic Renewal Law requires that this information be presented clearly, conspicuously, and in close visual proximity to the point of purchase. Soapy Joe’s did none of that. Customers were left to discover the true cost only when the charge appeared on their bank statements.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Dollar Amount Doesn’t Capture

The Betrayal at the Register

There is something particularly violating about what happens when an employee takes your debit card, smiles, and processes a transaction you did not ask for. Maryssa Tate handed over her card in good faith. She had done the mental math: thirteen dollars, one month, a nice clean car. What she could not have calculated was that the person across the counter was operating under a corporate directive to sign up as many people as possible, with explicit instructions to say nothing about the auto-renewal, nothing about the price jump, and nothing about how to get out.

That moment at the register — trusting someone, handing over your payment information, walking away believing you made a simple, bounded purchase — was the moment Soapy Joe’s chose to exploit. The deception did not happen because an employee got confused or forgot to mention something. The complaint alleges it happened because the company trained people to stay silent. The silence was the product.

The Anxiety of the Unexplained Charge

Most people who check their bank accounts and see an unexpected recurring charge from a company they barely remember visiting experience a specific kind of dread. When did I sign up for this? Did I miss something in the fine print? Is this fraud? That confusion, that stomach-drop moment of “wait, why is this here again?” — that is a real psychic cost. For people living paycheck to paycheck, a surprise $25 charge (which could cover a child’s school lunch account for two weeks) does not just feel unfair. It can cascade. It can mean an overdraft fee on top of the unauthorized charge. It can mean something else does not get paid.

For Tate, the discovery came only because her card was declined and Soapy Joe’s sent her a collection text. She had already been charged $25 (the price of a monthly gym membership, a streaming bundle, or a week of bus fares) twice over two months with no warning, no receipt, no reminder that the membership existed. The company’s first voluntary communication with her was not a welcome message or a billing notice. It was a dunning text telling her payment had failed.

When You Ask Them to Stop and They Don’t

Tate responded to that text message and told Soapy Joe’s directly: she had not signed up for a monthly membership. Soapy Joe’s ignored her. Six days later, they tried to take money from her account again. She sent another message. The lawsuit documents this sequence in full. This is the part that moves the story from “company made a mistake” into something more deliberate. A company that accidentally enrolled a customer would stop when the customer said stop. Soapy Joe’s did not stop.

The complaint also documents that Tate is far from alone. Better Business Bureau complaints from other customers describe the same pattern: being enrolled without consent, discovering an unauthorized charge, struggling to cancel, and finding the cancellation process itself made difficult. The lawsuit calls these “dark patterns” — a term from the tech industry for design choices that deliberately make it harder for users to escape a service than to stay in it. Soapy Joe’s applied that same playbook to a physical car wash lane in San Diego.

Legal Receipts: The Complaint in Their Own Words

The Smoking Gun on Employee Training

“Upon information and belief, Defendant’s employees are trained, through standard company-wide policies and procedures, to omit any information regarding the automatic renewal nature of the membership or any information about how to cancel the membership. In short, employees are uniformly trained to omit the terms of its memberships and cancellation policy in order to sign up as many customers for the automatically renewing membership as possible.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶38, Tate v. Soapy Joe’s Inc. (Filed November 12, 2025)

The Website Was “Void of This Required Information”

“Defendant completely failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose on its website that its membership would automatically renew each month until it was cancelled. Nor did Defendant clearly and conspicuously disclose how to cancel its membership at the time of checkout. Put simply, Defendant’s website was void of this required information. Indeed, Defendant offered little to no information whatsoever to consumers regarding its auto-renewal scheme.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶31, Tate v. Soapy Joe’s Inc. (Filed November 12, 2025)

The Promotional Discount: A Trap Door to the Most Expensive Plan

“Defendant also does not disclose that by purchasing a month of car washes for this ‘promotion’ the customer will be automatically enrolled in an automatically renewing monthly membership. Defendant fails to disclose, before the consumer makes a purchase, that the price of the membership will increase—normally to the most expensive membership option—after a promotional period. Defendant similarly fails to disclose what the new price of the membership will be.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶¶41-43, Tate v. Soapy Joe’s Inc. (Filed November 12, 2025)

The First and Only Notification Was a Collection Attempt

“On April 13, 2025, Defendant attempted to charge Plaintiff’s debit card again, but the charge was declined. Defendant sent Plaintiff a text message telling her the charge was declined. This was the first notice Plaintiff received from Defendant that she was being charged for an automatically renewing membership.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶56, Tate v. Soapy Joe’s Inc. (Filed November 12, 2025)

The Company Received a Formal Warning and Did Nothing

“On August 1, 2025, pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code § 1782(a), Defendant was sent in writing by certified mail, notice of the violations of Section 1770 of the CLRA, which notification demanded that Defendant rectify the problems associated with the actions detailed above and give notice to all affected consumers of its intent to so act. A representative for Defendant signed for the mailing on August 4, 2025. Defendant failed to rectify or agree to rectify the problems associated with the actions detailed above or give notice to all consumers within 30 days of receipt of the CLRA notice.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶¶129-130, Tate v. Soapy Joe’s Inc. (Filed November 12, 2025)

Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt and How

Economic Inequality: Dark Patterns Prey on Working People

Hidden subscription schemes are not a neutral inconvenience. They are regressive by design. A $25-per-month (roughly $300 per year, enough to cover a month of groceries for a small family) unauthorized charge hits working-class customers hardest. People with thin financial margins do not have a buffer to absorb a surprise deduction from their checking account. Overdraft fees alone — which many banks charge when an account goes below zero — can cost $30 to $35 per incident, meaning a $25 Soapy Joe’s charge could actually cost a low-income customer $55 to $60 before they even realize what happened.

The lawsuit explicitly describes the mechanic driving these schemes. Companies, including Soapy Joe’s, have recognized that customers “may lose interest but be too harried to take the extra step of canceling their memberships.” That word, “harried,” is key. It describes people who are busy, stressed, and stretched thin. The complaint cites industry research calling this model “the real money is in the inertia.” Soapy Joe’s built a business model on the fact that working people do not always have time to fight for their own money back.

The class is estimated to include thousands of customers across California and nationwide. If even a fraction of those customers were charged $25 per month (roughly the cost of a tank of gas for a compact car, or a week of public transit fares) for two or three months before noticing, the aggregate wealth transfer from working families to this car wash company becomes substantial. The lawsuit seeks full restitution and disgorgement of all profits earned through this scheme — meaning every dollar Soapy Joe’s collected without proper consent should come back.

Public Trust: The Subscription Economy’s Accountability Deficit

The complaint situates Soapy Joe’s within a broader explosion of subscription-model businesses that have turned to manipulation rather than value to retain customers. The lawsuit cites research noting that companies have found numerous ways to implement “manipulative designs” to prevent cancellations. When a physical business like a car wash adopts the same tactics as the shadiest corner of subscription e-commerce, it signals a broader corrosion of the basic consumer relationship: the expectation that when you hand money to a business, you know what you’re buying.

Soapy Joe’s received a certified-mail legal notice on August 4, 2025, telling them specifically what violations they had committed and demanding they fix it and notify all affected customers within 30 days. They did not. They had the opportunity to make it right before a federal lawsuit was filed. Their choice to ignore that notice and do nothing for over three months tells you everything about how the company weighs its customers’ interests against its own revenue.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? Here’s What You Can Do

The Watchlist: Who Should Be Watching Soapy Joe’s

• California Attorney General’s Office: Enforces the California Automatic Renewal Law and Unfair Competition Law — the exact statutes at the center of this lawsuit.
• California Department of Consumer Affairs: Handles consumer complaints against businesses operating in California and can investigate systemic patterns of deception.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Has broad authority over deceptive business practices and unfair subscription traps at the federal level, and has been actively pursuing cases against dark-pattern subscription schemes.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Oversees Electronic Funds Transfer Act violations and unauthorized recurring bank charges — precisely what the EFTA cause of action in this lawsuit describes.
• Better Business Bureau: Already has a documented record of consumer complaints against Soapy Joe’s on this exact issue, cited directly in the complaint.

If You’ve Been a Soapy Joe’s Customer

Check your bank or debit card statements for recurring charges from Soapy Joe’s. If you see charges you did not authorize, document them, dispute them with your bank, and file a complaint with the California AG’s office and the CFPB. You may be a member of the class described in this lawsuit, which covers everyone who was auto-enrolled in-person or via the website before May 2025 and charged at least one renewal fee.

Bigger Than One Car Wash Chain

This case is a window into how the subscription economy works at its worst: recruit with a discount, trap with silence, profit from inertia. The only thing that stops it is collective accountability. File your complaint. Share this story. Support the organizations doing consumer protection litigation on behalf of people who do not have the resources to fight alone. Mutual aid and collective action — whether in the courts or in the streets — are the only reliable counter-weight to a business model built on exploiting your trust.