I have been a user and a course creator for a long time. So, when they launched a pro version, I promptly purchased a pro membership, mostly because I liked what Memrise was and felt like contributing as much as I could to help it grow. When they were offering lifetime memberships for donations to the Membus, I thought that was a good deal and also a useful contribution, so I made a donation, thinking of course that it would be my final payment. Then to my surprise, as I am having financial difficulties, I see that I am still being charged for my membership. So I sent them an email about it on October 20th. Same day, they replied to me that they could not find a payment from my email address and asked me to confirm my payment method. Still same day, I confirmed that I was using PayPal and pasted in the email I had received from PayPal. On October 24th, they then asked me to confirm the email address that I used for the PayPal transaction, and I confirmed that it was indeed the same email address that I used to contact them. And after 2 days went by (given that I knew that I had payed with said email address and that they therefore should be able to find it in their system, I started to get the feeling they were stalling at this point), I opened a dispute in PayPal and sent them an email notifying them of this and attached screenshots of the emails I received from PayPal confirming the two payments I had made since receiving my lifetime membership. That was on October 26th, and they have not replied to me directly, nor have they replied to PayPal about the dispute. The PayPal dispute expires on November 11th, so I would need to escalate by that date.
Have any others had a similar experience? This is really a massive red flag for me.
I haven’t seen anyone with this experience, but there was quite a few people asking for refunds for one reason or another. The way it looked was that a staff member came in and handled a lot of these requests at once, so maybe they’ll do that and delegate time to handle all these financial issues. I’ll try to find that thread, maybe you could post in there as well.
I see that you have refunded the payment I just made on October 20th. But I cannot see any refund for the payment I made last year which also occurred after I had received the lifetime membership.
I agree that 2 days generally is too quick. The reason why I acted so hastily was the context in which this took place. But, I will agree that I probably should have given it a few more days.
Look, I have contacted PayPal. They can find the payment (last year’s payment which you still claim via email that you can’t find) and they say that there is no reason why you would not find it. I have given you the transaction ID, date etc. Now, you can refund it yourself or contact PayPal and give them permission to do it for you. The transaction took place and you DO have proof of it.