I would like to ask the community if this seems reasonable.
My annual membership was automatically renewed, and I requested cancellation and a refund within a few hours of being charged. The renewed membership was not used at all.
I was told that a renewal notice email had been sent beforehand, but I never saw it because it went into my spam folder. I also found the cancellation process less clear and less visible than I expected for an auto-renewing membership.
That is what makes this hard to understand. If the service was completely unused and the cancellation request was made almost immediately, is it really reasonable to refuse any refund at all?
I also posted about my refund request on the website and did not receive any response there, which made the process feel even more frustrating.
I understand that subscription businesses have policies, but I also think fairness matters. Clear notice, straightforward cancellation, and reasonable treatment in cases of immediate cancellation for unused services should be basic expectations.
I am genuinely asking whether other users think this kind of refusal is fair, and whether anyone here has experienced something similar.
I don’t know what subscription that was, but any subscription for anything I have ever dealt with has a cancellation policy of sorts. You were notified and the fact that the notification ended up in your Spam folder is unfortunate, but I don’t believe it can be used as an excuse. I have been burnt by some companies in that I did not even know that my purchase involved a monthly subscription afterwards. They could point to where it was stated so I had no recourse other than to cancel and suffer my loss.
In my country it’s normal that you need to cancel certain subscriptions weeks or even months before they end or otherwise they will renew, no matter what you do.
If you didn’t keep track of something like that, it’s reasonable, in my opinion, that you need to pay for it. This is how it works.
On the other hand, here are laws that require, that if you can subscribe with a click of a button you must be able to cancel with a button click as well. Certain dark patterns are not allowed (for example, you need to phone in or send a written letter to cancel). So, under certain circumstances it might be possible to get out of a subscription if it isn’t as easy to cancel it.
I’m not sure what subscription this is.
But I do get annoyed by subscription services that don’t offer the option of manual renewal or they pre-select auto renew as a default.
You should be able to tick a box when you first sign up as to whether you want your subscription to auto renew or not. And yes I’ve also found the unsubscribe process can in some cases be unnecessarily complicated.
Unfortunately it’s a common, unethical practice used by a lot of service providers now, aimed at catching out the unaware.