Kristina L.
Posted
Fraud
My mom talked me into buying my son an ABCmouse subscription several years ago and I picked the yearly option. He played some of the games for a couple days then lost interest, plus half the time the app would freeze up and not work, so I cancelled the subscription. Since we did yearly he would still have access to it for the rest of the year so I figured if he started playing with it again or if they fixed the app to actually work right I could just resubscribe him. He never did, they never did, so I never resubscribed. That should be the end of it right? Wrong! This is now the SECOND YEAR IN A ROW that I am having to dispute unauthorized charges from this company. There is no way my son could have resubscribed on his ipad, I have every parental control & restriction enabled. He cannot install apps or make in-app purchases without me explicitly approving it either from my phone or on his ipad with the screen time passcode. I'm starting to suspect this company reactivates cancelled subscriptions just long enough to charge people again, then cancels them again cause the latest cancellation date shows Jul. 5th of this year. There is simply no way that could have been us because my son's ipad had been in storage for several months at that time, and his ipad is the only device the ABCmouse subscription was ever active on. I can't even manage the sub on my apple account, I have to unlock his account and go into his subs to see it. And of course you can't reach anyone at the company, just a useless chatbot that either "encountered an error" when you try to cancel then tells you customer service is closed. I have reported this fraud to the FTC and I'll be submitting a report to the CFPB as well. They were sued for billing fraud before, looks like it's time for another class-action.
Response from ABCmouse.com· Jul 23, 2024
Hi Kristina, Your experience is important to us and we would like to resolve any concerns you have regarding your account. Once a subscription has been canceled by the subscriber, an account should no longer be charged. Any cancellations, adjustments or the reactivation of an account would need to be done by the subscriber. We would only make adjustments to an account at the request of the subscriber. We've identified your support ticket with us and a manager has reached out to you via email to address this issue. If you have any questions, need any assistance, or would like us take a closer look into the issue you experienced when using ABCmouse, please reply to the email and we will be happy to help. You can also reach out to our Customer Care team at abcmouse.com/contact-us or you can contact our team by phone at 1-800-633-3331 (Phone hours are M-F 6am to 6pm PT). We greatly appreciate your feedback and we look forward to resolving this for you.