“Privax Ltd. is the owner of the VPN service HMA, and therefore also the company who charges your bank account, credit card, PayPal or whatever for HMA. This is my recent experience.
I'm extremely annoyed with HMA 'customer support'. This is what they do if you discover they've been taking payments from you for 3 years when you thought you'd cancelled it:
1. They ignore the fact that you’re saying you thought it was cancelled for over 3 years already, and talk to you like you’re asking for a refund simply because you didn’t use it after you’d paid for it, when that clearly isn’t what you said. (The first sign of deceptive and manipulative evasiveness).
2. They make a claim that because their ‘integrity’ as a company means they have to refund within 30 days, that it’s also therefore necessary for the same ‘integrity’ that they do not refund when the request is made outside of the 30 days, regardless of whether the charges were paid in error. As I said this is like a landlord discovering he’d received 3 autopayments after you left his apartment, but thinking he’s entitled to keep the money. The logic is either foolish or deliberatively deceptive.
3. They make unsubstantiated claims that there has been ‘account activity’ (note, this is evasive language, the site keeps your old order as ‘active’, even when you stop payments and turn of autorenewal, they never said someone had actually been logging in and using the VPN), when you know you uninstalled it years ago, forgot the password, never gave the login or password to anyone, never used it on another device, took all the right precautions to protect the data, etc., etc. Then, when you ask them if they have any IP addresses or can substantiate this in any way, they ignore the question completely.
4. They make a claim that if I hadn’t used it, then there must have been a release of the access data via the customer, but never consider that they might equally have been the source of such a data breach (if there actually was one, of course). Only the customer can be at fault, it seems.
5. They claim that the way to stop the subscription is via the payment source, when their own website says to log in to their site and turn it off there. They just become silent then when you send them a screenshot of this.
6. When you point out that they had made an error in the past of double charging you, so might be making an error now, sending a PDF showing this, they still concede no possible error.
7. When you reply to all their points on the ‘support thread’ to show that they are illogical and/or unprincipled, they simply delete the thread and ignore you.
8. When you create a new thread about the same issue, and also point out discrepancies in the dates of the subscriptions on their site compared to the actual payments, again hinting at some potential system error, they just ignore that too.
Summary: they take the position that the CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG AND TO BLAME and that they will only refund money if you claim it within 30 days, even if there is reason to believe it was taken against the customer’s will. They start with a seemingly caring response, but when you actually read it attentively it is saying that they couldn’t care less about any incorrect payments, but will stubbornly take any money that isn’t reclaimed within 30 days, even if that money was credibly paid in error, and was given to them in return for nothing.
This doesn’t seem to have any resemblance to ‘integrity’, or to be a company I would feel I could trust.
I mean, in the end, what does it say that they give only one answer, have a support ticket that has a visible function to only be closed by the customer, then simply, at the first answer from the customer that undermines their argument, delete the support ticket with no answer or notification to the customer?”
“Very easy to use this site, next day delivery and was able to track my purchase very easily, arrived at 3,00pm, by very courteous delivery man. Packaging was excellent, and assembly very easy.”
“Very quick with their correspondence, free two day delivery, emails regularly from courier, arrived in perfect condition, thank you email including warranty advising me I don't have to do anything to activate this as they've already done it, simply brilliant experience and this is how shopping online should be.”
