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Busuu has a rating of 1.8 stars from 83 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about Busuu most frequently mention customer service, credit card, and automatic renewal problems. Busuu ranks 200th among Language Learning sites.
I had the same problem than most people here. The cancellation option was not showing up in my settings. I freaked out, and read the review and got mad. However, when I shoot them an email and provided them my account email address, they took care of it the same day and email me back that it was canceled. I just have to wait a year see if they will charge or not as some people are complaining here. Until that happen, I would say they not as bad as people say they are.
A year ago I needed to learn German. I tried several programs including Busuu. I loved the idea of peer reviewing exercises, so I bought Premium for a year for 50% off. And now, a year later, without email notification, they renewed Premium subscription for a year at full price! After contacting the support team, I was told that I had read the Terms and Conditions, in which they are not required to notify before renewing the subscription. Thus, this company behaves like real thieves, "quietly" continuing premium subscription and charging the full cost of it. So when buying a Premium subscription, be prepared to lose money in the future. Below are quotes from their support team responses: "Usually, you would need to cancel your subscription before the automatic renewal if you don't want to have a renewal." "However, as per our terms, we do not issue refunds over 7 days after the initial purchase, which was in 2019."
La pagina te llena de tantos correos basura, que cuando te llega un correo recordando que tu suscripcion va a caducar, simplemente no te das cuenta.
La plataforma me cargó automaticamente la membresía anual (la cual no quería pero no caí en cuenta por el supuesto correo amontonado con los miles de marketing que te llegan), lo cual les escribí lo mas pronto posible luego del cargo explicando la situacion y solicitando un reembolso ya que estaba dentro del periodo de gracia.
Su respuesta es simplemente excusarse con términos y condiciones convenientemente cubriendolos a ellos y no al cliente. No me parece y no es para nada legal que te obliguen si o si a tomar una membresia QUE NO QUIERES.
The site fills you with so many junk mails, that when you get an email reminding you that your subscription is going to expire, you just don't notice it.
The platform automatically charged me for the annual membership (which I didn't want but didn't notice because of the supposedly stacked mail with the thousands of marketing emails you receive), which I wrote to them as soon as possible after the charge explaining the situation and requesting a refund since I was within the grace period.
Their response is simply to excuse themselves with terms and conditions conveniently covering them and not the customer. I don't think it is at all legal for them to force you to take a membership that you don't want.
Tip for consumers:
It's a scam the fact that you cannot get your money back for a service you don't want.
Products used:
I used the premium program for a while.
They offer you 15 days free after that the premium promotion with a 50% discount which most of us take advantage of. Then you do not hear from them about any type of expiration or automatic renewal, they only let you know, after 1 year! That your membership has been renewed for another year and of course at the full price (about $100 dlls CA). Immediately, after I received this email, I requested my cancellation and my refund, my cancellation was immediate but the refund never came, so I contacted them and explained my situation, I had not used busuu for months because I felt stagnant, it becomes routine, likewise I told them that I could not pay another year that I had never received an expiration or automatic renewal notice, which was somewhat abusive, because there isn't better adjective to describe their business methods, and this was their response:
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Hi Paulina,
Thank you for contacting us.
I am afraid your subscription was not cancelled and by not cancelling it you authorised us to renew it automatically. I am sorry if you did not realise Busuu subscriptions always renew automatically.
As per our Terms and Conditions, I am afraid you are not eligible for a refund. However, I can confirm the auto renewal feature has been cancelled from your account so we won't take anymore payment from you in the future.
It would be great if you could take a moment and complete our short survey below so that we can learn more about why you wish to cancel and what we can do to make Busuu better.
Kind Regards,
Peter,
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Judge by yourselves, and no, I don't recommend busuu.com, they lack of integrity.
Tip for consumers:
Do not take advantage of their promotions!
Busuu make the dubious claim that they auto renew your subscription (without notice) to prevent interruptions of your learning experience. This is nonsense. If you are still using the service they can easily pop up a dialog if you are in danger of being unsubscribed. It like most folks, you give up on the poor service where you are not only the customer, but they are selling work you provide to other user, then they will happily charge you card without notice to prevent interruption of cash flow into their pockets.
On top of that, the cancellation process has a deceptive UI, which you feel that I have gone thru the necessary steps to cancel the service, but there is one more greyed out button to click to finish a process that you have already clearly indicated multiple times you wish to no longer participate in the scam. Double, triple check you cancellation status.
The humorous response from Customer Service that "We do inform all our users about the automatic renewal at all stages prior to the first initial payment." Prior to the first initial payment, but then never, ever, again. Surely you remember that website you signed up for a year ago, and were constantly asked to grade other students work (aka free labor) as if you were a "mentor" to them.
It may take a while before you decide that you providing more of a service than receiving one from this company. But when you do cancel your subscription right away, then contact your payment method and make sure they will not complete a payment to an auto pay request from Busuu every again. Then log on to Busuu.com a couple more times and verify that you really have cancelled. You might be surprised that you failed to do step n+1 of the process designed to make you think you have cancelled but just need a few more clicks to really really do.
So many bad business practice, the smell of dishonest is overwhelming.
They charge you 69,99 even if you cancel your subscription with them. Busuu is a complete SCAM and they don't give your money back.
Boo I hate busuu it scamed me 40$ and I returned it next day prior and no refund they stole my cash never and I mean never buy anything on busuu 0/10
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