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My experience with a disputed credit card charge

I was recently charged for an annual renewal but can not find any email reminder. It was a bit of a surprise. I have not used the service for a full year essentially, so I currently do not have any desire to renew. In light of the discussion here I hope customer service can help me refund. The service is good but I am simply not using it right now and nobody should have to pay for something they are not using. Thanks.

Hi Christian, I’m very sorry to hear this. I have forwarded your issue to Mante, our student relation representative. I’m sure you will get a reply on this very soon. You can also email support@chinesepod.com for further inquiry. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope this issue will get solved soon.

Rebecca

Thank you for helping me with my posting earlier. Customer service was able to assist me nicely and I am happy with the outcome. Looking forward to continuing my learning.

Hi Christian,

That is so great to hear! I’m glad it all worked out. Let me know if you have any other questions that I can help you with. You can also contact me at rebecca@chinesepod.com for any academic support you might need. Happy learning :grinning:

I had the same experience. It is not fair to treat loyal customers this way! I did just not follow up on my emails anymore. I simply have no time. So now they take advantage of me. I also asked for assistance to remove my credit card. No assistance delivered.

Hello,

I’m very sorry to hear that. I have forwarded your message to our student relation team and they will assist you with the issue of your credit card in no time. I apologize for any inconvenience we have caused you, and I’m sure the problem will be fixed soon and you’ll be able to enjoy our service again. Please let us know if you have any more questions!

Rebecca

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Hi,

I’m posting here rather than creating a new thread because have a similar issue related to billing that submitted to Support 10 days ago and still have not received any response despite multiple follow-up messages.

I took advantage of ChinesePod’s holiday sale and bought two vouchers for 6 months of premium membership. The first voucher I redeemed was automatically registered to my account and my Premium expiration date updated to June 25th 2021. I went ahead and redeemed the second voucher under the same account, but nothing happened. My expiration date remained at June 25th 2021. When I tried inputting the code again, the screen told me the voucher code was already redeemed.

Is there anything someone can do to help me with this? There was nothing on the sales page that said you cannot redeem two vouchers under the same account. If this is not allowed, I highly recommend you being clear about this somewhere on your website. If there is no way to add those additional 6 months to my account, I would at least like that second voucher code to be reactivate so I could gift it to someone else. Otherwise, I just wasted $50.

Hello,

I’m very sorry for the confusion on the limitations of the voucher and I apologize for the inconvenience. To my knowledge, multiple voucher codes can not be redeemed at the same time for the same account.

However, I have personally brought this issue to our student relation team. You will be contacted by one of our representatives, Paris. I hope you understand that during the holidays some cases got backlogged and this is also why you haven’t heard back from us for so long. But rest assured we’ve been working hard to resolve all the cases. I’m sure we will find a solution to your problem, and hopefully you can get back to your studies soon.

Rebecca

Appreciate it! Thank you!

Becca,

It’s been about a week, and I’ve yet to hear back from anyone on your team.

Hello,

Thank you for letting me know. I’ll check with our team and get back to you. I’m very sorry for the delay, please know that we are working hard to reply to all the users’ emails. Thank you for your patience and I’ll keep you posted.

Rebecca

Hello,

Let me just add my bad experience here as I dont get any response anymore on the CP support

In April 2020 I discussed some technical problems with Chinese Pod and didnt get a satisfying answer so I cancelled my membership back then (was still running till end Nov.). Unfortunately I didn’t receive a confirmation email from CP.

End November when my annual subscription expired, I suddenly saw a charge to my credit card and of course reached out to CP support. They requested to send the cancellation confirmation, which I dont have, because they dont send them anymore.

At the same time, I cancelled the renewed subscription and again and again, no email confirmation from CP about the cancellation.

I am now waiting since Christmas for an answer and the refund.

If this doesnt happen, I guess I also have to dispute the credit card charge through my bank.
Seems I am not the first one.

Many companies are making the cancellation difficult, but i have never experienced to be cheated
into another year of membership

Looking forward to getting an answer

Sven

Hello Sven,

First of all, I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience and the delay of the reply. Unfortunately a backlog of cases have been built up since the holidays and we are working very hard to reply to the users.
I have to say this seems to be a strange case. Usually if you cancel the subscription before the expiry date, your credit card would not be charged for the next subscription period. May I ask if you purchased the subscription though iOS or Google Play store and tried to cancel it on the website? This might have something to do with the cancellation issues you encountered.
I have informed Paris, our student relation team representative of your issue. Please expect an email from her in the next few days, and I’ll also keep you updated here on the forum.

Sincerely,
Rebecca

Hello Fan,

I believe your issue regarding the vouchers has been solved. Please enjoy your extended premium subscription and I’m sorry if this negative experience affected your studies in any way. If you have any academic questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at rebecca@chinesepod.com. I’ll be glad to help!
Happy learning!

Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

Thank you for escalating the problem! Looking forward to the next several months learning with ChinesePod!

Fan

Hello,

I post this here, as I had the same issue as the other users. After some time of not using the service, I just found out my credit card was charged without a reminder. I immediately cancelled the service when I realized, but, apparently, this alone won’t help with the charges already made (not even for a proportional refund, as it used to be the case, I believe, when I first signed up several years ago).

As it’s a yearly subscription, it’s quite a lot of money, so I am rather upset. I also don’t see why an automated email can be sent upon cancellation but none is sent a few days before renewal, if not to catch people unaware. Seems a little shady, to be honest.

Apparently, notwithstanding the above talks of review of the policy, all the issues experienced by the past users are still there.

Looking forward to hearing from support.

Regards,

Giovanni

Hello Giovanni,

Sorry for the late response, I’ll forward this issue to our student representative Paris, and you can expect an email from her soon. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I believe the problem will be solved in a short time. Thank you for letting us know.

Sincerely,
Rebecca

Re: “Apparently, notwithstanding the above talks of review of the policy, all the issues experienced by the past users are still there.”

Would CPod change its policy so this does not keep catching so many users by surprise? It seems like Giovanni is making a reasonable request for all users to be notified before their subscriptions are automatically renewed for another year. Also, it just seems weird that people have to go through the forum to beg for refunds instead of getting a professional reply from customer support.

Hi Podster,

I believe an automatic notification is sent out a few days before the subscription ends, but they sometimes end up in the spam folder. If the user would like to cancel after the automatic renewal, generally the customer support team would offer an extended subscription or other benefits instead as this is not in line with our policy.
The official way to file a complaint or report an issue is still via customer support. There was a bit of a backlog six months ago but now it has gotten better, and I believe Giovanni was contacted by Paris before I replied to his post.

Rebecca

Thanks, Becca. Really appreciate everything you do for the community. I just don’t think it is the best use of your talents to try to answer all the language questions and troubleshoot what customer service should be able to handle. Maybe they can hire another person or replace the subcontractor.