Gotta share this customer support web experience here, as I have a feeling it will be the norm for most businesses. It could also come in handy for the users, if you ever encounter a similar situation.

I started a one month free trial for a tool that I needed for a one-off project. To do the trial, I had to provide my credit card details, which seemed standard. They reassured me they’d send a reminder before the trial ended.

At the end of the 30 days, I didn’t cancel it and got billed for a year’s pro subscription automatically. I checked my email to see if I received any reminder. The reminder said: “Your Pro subscription is about to begin”. This caught me off guard, so I reached out to their AI support bot. It kept on saying the same thing, that the subscription wasn’t refundable once the trial ended, suggesting to contact their help center. The moment I clicked on that contact help-center link I entered a personalised journey.

Navigating the help center (also AI-based) involved some back and forth until I found the option that said something along these lines: “Request a refund if you were not notified by email about the end of your free trial”. I then had to fill in a form describing the issue: “I was not notified that my free trial would end, only that my pro subscription would start soon”- which is not the same thing. An alert about something I signed up for would’ve grabbed my attention more than a notice about something I hadn’t signed up for. Then again, marketing.

After submitting the form, I immediately received an automated email stating they don’t usually do refunds because of their T&C, but as a courtesy, they processed the refund.

Did they lost out? They didn’t. Their fully automated system eliminates the need for a customer support team to handle these queries. The info on the website was personalized based on my user journey, and by design, made it difficult for me to find this option. Other users might have given up. Just to say that now that I cancelled my subscription, I can no longer find this option in their help center.

Was it a good experience ? It was a clever experience. Annoying at first, but successful in the end.