On 20th of April I received an email that my subscription ends on June 3rd, and that it will auto renew in 30 days, then on April 25th I get out of the blue a $1 SM.NORD* CCCHECK GB charge, that without having done anything on my part, didn’t update any billing info or card, and definitely didn’t authorise this, there are a lot of choice words to describe this: I leave it to your imagination, but obviously I’m done with nordvpn
And did you check if this 1$ charge was reimbursed right away?
Sending small charges to your card and refunding them is a technique commonly used by a LOT of companies to check if payment details are still valid.
Also, did you atleast try to contact support for an explanation?
Did NordVPN take your subscription virginity? This is one of the most common verification practices for subscriptions.
That money will be refunded. Like others have said this is common practice. Hotels do it all the time with pre authorisations. Most of the time it is quicker for them to charge than credit. Sometimes it is so fast that it doesn’t show up on the account at all!
Nord does MUCH worse. Until recently, they didn’t even send out those warnings that they’re about to auto-renew you. Probably has something to do with a class-action suit that might be around the corner.
When the auto-renew you, they do it at a much higher rate. For example, they’ll auto-renew you at $99/year for the basic plan, when you can just buy the basic plan for $99/2-years.
Lots of people have reported they’ve been auto-renewed when they thought or even know they had it disabled. The only safe thing to do is make it so they’re unable to charge you, for example, I had to poke around pay.amazon.com until I found where nord-vpn had the ability to bill me.
Oh okay I was worried myself if that my card was hacked again
Haven’t encountered another company that will do it on their own without any kind of action on your part, particularly since this is well outside of the window for renewal, again there is a word that describes such practices.
I did not reach out to support nor I plan to, this is an FYI for others to beware, I cancelled the card and switched off the auto renew, if anyone from the company is reading: well done nord vpn for losing another client.
It was not, but I expect it was a holding charge that will fall off, it’s the practice that makes it shady
It’s not about the money, as I said it’s probably just a hold that will fall off eventually, you’re not wrong either that it’s used by companies to verify your cc, with one caveat, every time I had this happen before I was explicitly asked to authorise it, big difference there, I wouldn’t have batted an eye either if I had updated my card info, but this feels shady.
I was aware of that one actually, I was planning to buy another subscription before the auto renew kicked in but they caught me by surprise, probably for the better, but you’re right auto renewing you to their most expensive plan instead of for example the one you are already on (and they still offer) it’s extra shady.
They’re checking the account to make sure it’s active, and if it’s not they are giving you time to update the payment method hence why it’s 30 days prior
You signed up for a subscription and they’re checking to make sure the payment is still valid. If the test payment failed, you’d get a 2nd email asking you to update.
You’ve been given a full 30 days notice if you want to cancel. How is that shady?
If you cancel now, don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get your dollar back lol
You obviously don’t know what shady is. Even Amazon doesn’t remind you by default before they charge your card for an annual prime membership. You have to go into your account settings and click a button to be notified 3 days before. Otherwise, they just charge you without any kind of notification.
There are people who have legit complaints against Nord, but this is not one of them.
You did authorize this though… when you signed up for the subscription… Nord is extra shady with their subs, but this isn’t one of those shady practices. You having admitted to never encountering this before cements to me that you either just got a debit/credit card and this is your first time, or you were really not paying attention to spending before.
You can read plenty of reviews all saying essentially the same thing.
What bothers me the most is the way they deliberately structure their billing, is so they can take money from customers. They hide it the renewal. They bill at higher rates. Their checkout page is misleading. their TOS is designed to reject every refund request.
A week before I discovered all the above, I was considering “re-activating” my account, having no idea they had billed me, and that my account was still active. I literally thought I didn’t have VPN service.
This has “I don’t know how subscriptions work” energy all over it. Reminds me of a guy in a different subreddit that was mad his debit card got charged by like 3 subscription services at once while it was frozen causing an over-draft. He couldn’t believe that a company would just bypass the card freeze on a checking account that had already been authorized to make the payments. He also didn’t want to go cancel the subscriptions when he didn’t have the money because he “shouldn’t need to cancel with the card freeze function”
Doubt it, but if you have a copy of the terms of service from mid 2021 feel free to link to it
Here you go, it’ll be under “Zero Authorization”: https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/terms-of-service/subscription/
Edit: Since you’re probably going to say it, no I can’t find a different page for 2021 specifically which means if you didn’t agree to new terms in the last 3ish years, then they haven’t changed their terms since your first subscription. You would also know if they changed their terms since they wouldn’t let you use their software without the agreement to the new ones.