Wittels McInturff Palikovic is investigating numerous complaints regarding NordVPN’s potentially illegal practice of making it difficult and confusing to cancel their automatically renewing memberships to prevent consumers from stopping recurring payments to NordVPN.
Upon investigation, evidence suggests that NordVPN may have designed its cancellation process so as to actually prevent NordVPN users from cancelling. These design techniques include over-complicated navigation menus, hiding cancellation options in grey text on white backgrounds, requiring users to request cancellation multiple times, and requiring mandatory “confirmation” via email within 15 minutes of completing the cancellation process on NordVPN’s website.
Consumer complaints accuse NordVPN of using “dishonest” business practices designed to “deceive” customers, describe the auto-renewal function as “fraudulent,” and describe the company as a “scam.” Numerous consumers have reported difficulty even finding the option to cancel their NordVPN subscriptions.
Consumers who do manage to find NordVPN’s option to cancel are taken to a page with a prominent link to maintain their membership, and a much harder-to-find link to “Cancel Auto-Renewal,” which the user must click on three separate times. Throughout the process, NordVPN uses what experts call “confirmshaming,” where cancelling users are bombarded with a laundry list of features they will lose if they cancel their memberships. After finally completing cancellation, users are automatically directed to a webpage reading “For true peace of mind, enable auto-renewal and avoid any interruptions to your service,” as a final attempt to bring cancelling users back into the fold. Convoluted cancellation processes such as these do not benefit consumers and only serve to reduce cancellations and enable companies to continue to charge consumers for services that they no longer want. Tactics like the ones used by NordVPN to prevent users from cancelling subscriptions have been named “dark patterns” by experts.
If you are or were previously a NordVPN customer and experienced difficulty trying to cancel your membership, you are not alone! We urge you to contact a class action attorney at WMP for a free case evaluation. Should a lawsuit be brought, there is no cost or fee involved in joining the case. You can contact us by clicking here, calling (914) 775-8862, or emailing us at case@wittelslaw.com.