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eHarmony complaint: Misleading charges

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Filed 1 Apr 2022 by Kirsty

I would like to lodge a formal complaint against your company for the failure to clearly communicate charges both prior to subscription and also within your terms and conditions. A payment has been deducted from my bank account without prior authorisation. There has been no clear warning or communication that a specific charge of £65 will be made for a personality test during the cancelation period.

Upon joining the dating site you are automatically taken to the personality quiz with no forewarning that you will be charged for this. This quiz has to be taken with no option to skip it.
After the personality quiz is complete there is no notification that you will be charged for this.

A pop up prior to showing your profile invites you to a subscription deal which is automatically set to premium plus with a “sale” on that you don’t at first glance notice the premium light or premium extra either side. There is no obvious marketing or advertisement that continuing to a basic free profile is an option.

There is only basic information provided on the chosen plan listed under the heading “Your benefits as a Premium Member“. With regards to the personality test there is no information of what this costs nor that you will be charged for this service. The next page is when card details are asked for and there is a link to the terms and conditions prior to continuing.

Within these terms and conditions there is no specific cost attributed to the personality test itself to state that it costs £65. 3.2 “harmony will also provide each Premium member with a detailed personality evaluation of the harmony
compatibility quiz (your personality profile) as a PDF file by email.” Again there is no specific fee or warning that you will be charged for this within this statement.

3.3 “other charges” can not be easily found in other parts of the website. Even when I placed a search for the personality test in the search engine there is still no reference to what this costs or that it has to be purchased. Even when “other charges” are entered into the search engine nothing appropriate appears.

11.2 “However, please note that if you have started to use the Premium Membership within the 14-day cancellation period, we will be entitled to retain from the refunded payment a reasonable amount (value compensation) to account for that portion of the Premium Membership that you have already received.” Again there is no specified amount that will be charged and this statement is rather ambiguous. Who determines what a “reasonable amount” is?
I signed up to the service at 09:46 and then requested to cancel this service at 12:30. Is it reasonable that I have been charged £65 for less than 3 hours subscription when the most I did was flick through a few profiles and tried to get a feel for the site?!

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 201316 require the following information to be given in a clear and prominent manner​ before an online purchase if the order carries an obligation to pay:
1. the total price or how the price will be calculated
2. all additional charges including delivery charges

The additional charge of a personality test was not made clear and if it was it certainly was not prominent.

I provided a response to a message from one of your customer service representatives that I would not be paying any further monies. Despite this message my card details were used to debit further monies from my account without authorisation. “…the payer may withdraw its consent to the execution of a series of payment transactions at any time with the effect that any future payment transactions are not regarded as authorised…”
The Payment Services Regulations 2009 Part 55(4).

This is clearly a subscription trap and the eharmony company has been extremely misleading. I am requesting a full refund of monies.

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