I would like a refund please

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Hello Codecombat.

I’m posting this here because if I send this via email, I feel like it will be ignored.

How can I word this? I paid $9.99 back on July 31st to further explore the CodeCombat site because I’d started the game and wanted to examine the it more. I paid $9.99 as a ONE-TIME PAYMENT for ONE MONTH, and I felt that if I was interested, I would MANUALLY pay $9.99 each month to continue. I only paid for the one month because I didn’t think the site would benefit me. Initially, I’d like to say I thought it was odd that I DID NOT receive an emailed receipt (or ANY receipt) for that $9.99 ONE-MONTH purchase, but I thought, “Well, it’s just a one-time purchase of $9.99”.

People don’t need to have an account with Codecombat to get onto the site and play a part of the game. And I personally have NOT been on my account since the initial one month that I paid for, because, again, I didn’t feel the site was for me.

Today, I saw that my bank account was missing some money. When I investigated, I was told that Codecombat has been taking money from my account for MONTHS-since July 31st! And as a matter of fact has withdrawn** $9.99 on DEC 3** of this month and had planned on taking another $9.99 on DEC 8th (according to what it says on my Codecombat account now) and on DEC 31st as well!
I discovered Codecombat has been withdrawing money from my account any time they want to! When I never authorized Codecomabt to take one cent from my account, aside from the initial, one-month payment of $9.99 paid on July 31st!

There is no subscription. I never, ever take on subscriptions, and I never authorized Codecombat to take anything more than the initial $9.99 from my account. I just added up $9.99 per month for one year and I came up with $120 per year for this! Codecomabt has taken money from my account for 5 months without my knowledge, when I only gave authorization and permission for the one month/one time payment of $9.99.

Now, I would like my money refunded please.Minus the one payment of $9.99 I authorized Codecombat to withdraw (July 31st-Aug 31st), which comes to $36. And I would like my account closed, please. ALL of it.

I look forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you.

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I’d like to say in advance, that I’m not part of the CodeCombat team, nor am I associated to them in any legal or financial way.

I’m sorry to say so, but it’s pretty clearly stated that it’s a monthly subscription:

##sub·scribe

verb

  1. arrange to receive something regularly, typically a publication, by paying in advance.

(source: define subscribe - Google Search)

It’s also mentioned several times on the page, before you pay. Here:

…and here:

726×522 129 KB

…and here:

Further to that, you can send a message anytime to the CodeCombat team in-game (blue button at the bottom left) and you can also manually unsubscribe via your account settings:

All that aside, I’m pretty sure that the CodeCombat team will refund your money.

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EDIT: Okay, I didn’t see this last part that said Codecomabt might refund my money. The “LEARN HOW TO READ” sign drew all of my attention. Okay.

Yes, I did read it, however, you need to make your wording more clear as well. I paid month to month at Netflix, but month by month meant just that-meaning, I paid MANUALLY each month and when I stopped paying, the subscription stopped. Okay? the same thing for my student loans I’m paying off. I have to pay each month but I pay MANUALLY, they don’t & CANNOT take money from my account without my authorization for each transaction.

Also, please email people a “receipt” after they make a purchase. All legitimate companies do this, and the receipt is a record of the transaction & tells exactly what was bought. By not sending the receipt, it looks “shady”. At least it did to me, as I’m sure it does to others.

I really hope they do refund me this money so we can go our own ways peacefully before the holidays.

Thank you.

I deleted my last comment because I felt this one was more relevant. I had also sent an email to teacm@codecombat.com at the same time I sent the initial post here. I just wanted to make sure someone got it and it wasn’t ignored.

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Hey @Lana1, just saw this–refunded your payments. Sorry that the subscription wasn’t clear!

@ant Thanks for detailing the monthly subscription copy–that was helpful to our team to see if we could make any improvements to the wording there. But when someone is frustrated and having a billing issue, they need some sympathy, right? We’ve all been treated poorly by big companies when doing battle to reverse a charge or get a refund for something, and if it was you, you’d want to have a nice experience for a change.

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Thank you! I appreciate the kind words and the refund. I’m glad Codecombat learned of some new improvements that could be made to the site. I gained knowledge from this experience as well.

Take care

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I didn’t mean to be harsh. I updated my comment accordingly.

There are definitely things to improve with the subscriptions:

  • there should be a receipt or confirmation email after each payment;

  • there should be a reminder a few days before the current subscription period expires;

  • these emails should contain detailed information (or at least links to it) about the terms and conditions and the ways to unsubscribe;

  • there should be a dedicated terms and conditions page that explains the payments, subscriptions, etc.

  • this page should be linked from the payment pages.

Cheers