Busuu

I'm not a Busuu subscriber. My partner is and he linked my PayPal account to their app (with my consent) last year for work, when he was able to get a discount. Their subscription is ordinarily unaffordable - we have three children and only one of us is working and that person has been furloughed until recently.

Neither myself or my partner knew about Busuu's automatic renewal as it isn't clear, so neither of us knew to cancel anything - not that I could because I'm not their subscriber. Incidentally, their subscription cancellation instructions do not work in the app or online.

Anyway, because of the automatic renewal I got charged £79.99 yesterday, without my consent - remember, I'm not even their subscriber! When I told Busuu about this they refused to refund me and now I've opened a refund case with PayPal.

Busuu are morally corrupt. I have therefore reviewed them here and on Trust Pilot to warn others. I have since seen that other people have also suffered this automatic renewal problem with Busuu.

So disappointed. This is not a time when people can afford £80 on an app. I need that money to feed my children.

Busuu make the dubious claim that they auto renew your subscription (without notice) to prevent interruptions of your learning experience. This is nonsense. If you are still using the service they can easily pop up a dialog if you are in danger of being unsubscribed. It like most folks, you give up on the poor service where you are not only the customer, but they are selling work you provide to other user, then they will happily charge you card without notice to prevent interruption of cash flow into their pockets.

On top of that, the cancellation process has a deceptive UI, which you feel that I have gone thru the necessary steps to cancel the service, but there is one more greyed out button to click to finish a process that you have already clearly indicated multiple times you wish to no longer participate in the scam. Double, triple check you cancellation status.

The humorous response from Customer Service that "We do inform all our users about the automatic renewal at all stages prior to the first initial payment." Prior to the first initial payment, but then never, ever, again. Surely you remember that website you signed up for a year ago, and were constantly asked to grade other students work (aka free labor) as if you were a "mentor" to them.

It may take a while before you decide that you providing more of a service than receiving one from this company. But when you do cancel your subscription right away, then contact your payment method and make sure they will not complete a payment to an auto pay request from Busuu every again. Then log on to Busuu.com a couple more times and verify that you really have cancelled. You might be surprised that you failed to do step n+1 of the process designed to make you think you have cancelled but just need a few more clicks to really really do.

So many bad business practice, the smell of dishonest is overwhelming.

These bastards charged my freind direct visa debit almost 70 pounds, she had never downloaded the app in her entire life and had never ever payed for anything from them, we contacted them and the idiots actually saw that she wasn't ever signed in with or had any details on their database at all, so after a hard look the sneaky $#*!s has hidden the receipt of purchase in her spam folder, not in here main emails, any receipt u get always goes straight into your main email not hidden away in spam please AVOID these bastards or you will loose money to things you haven't ever subscribed to, I had a look online and there are loads more people who have be n sneakily charged as much as 100 pounds, these people are fraudulent money stealing $#*!s

Busuu.com claims to be a free language learning site. However, the free aspects of busuu.com are very limited. In order to get more benefit from this site, users are enticed to pay for a 'gold' membership for one, three or six months. Busuu.com will automatically renew the membership just before it runs out FOR THE SAME LENGTH OF TERM THAT THE MEMBERSHIP WAS INITIALLTY TAKEN OUT FOR, i. E. if you have taken out a 6 month membership, then busuu.com will automatically renew it for another six months if you have not cancelled before the end of the initial membership. Should you decide to cancel your membership, say after one month, you will already have paid for six months and busuu.com will NOT REFUND any money already paid, effectively tying you into a contract. Shame on them for their awful business methods.

I was a foreign language major myself in the early 80s and have studied 5 languages since that time. Spanish and Italian were my forte, Egyptian Arabic is a struggle but I moving forward with it, and French and German slightly nightmarish. I decided now that I am older and have time that I would knock off the last 25% of my Spanish to be fully fluent and mastering Italian at long last verbally. I got nowhere with this site. I had a 98% average in Italian in high school but on this site, probably a 70% at best. The site itself is very hard to negociate as there are tons of circles, in blue and orange and it is hard to figure out what to press, as opposed to DuoLingo, which I love and is free, and I will be sticking with from now on, advances you automatically to the next level. This was a total waste of my $ 35 especially as I only used it for 4 days. I wrote them about not renewing me at year's end as that seems to be a very popular complaint with many people. They seem to auto renew you even if you have left the site and are not using it. I won't allow that to happen to me. I will advise my credit card company about it now in case they try to charge me again.

They are a huge scam.

I subscribed for a trial and they charged ~$80 without mu consent. They make it nearly impossible to cancel and even when you think you are canceled, you are not. I found out the hard way that I was not canceled! I emailed to get a refund and they refused. Stay away from this company - they will steal your money!

I have contacted their support through helpdesk, social channels and emailed them at team AT busuu.com, but they refused a refund.

They don't display a contact number or address, which is a bad sign. No reputable company hides that information. Not only are they shady and dishonest, but they are also unreasonable once they are confronted.

Please help me get my refund. My support ticket They are a huge scam.

I subscribed for a trial and they charged ~$80 without mu consent. They make it nearly impossible to cancel and even when you think you are canceled, you are not. I found out the hard way that I was not canceled! I emailed to get a refund and they refused. Stay away from this company - they will steal your money!

I have contacted their support through helpdesk, social channels and emailed them at team AT busuu.com, but they refused a refund.

They don't display a contact number or address, which is a bad sign. No reputable company hides that information. Not only are they shady and dishonest, but they are also unreasonable once they are confronted.

Please help me get my refund. My support ticket is #*******.

I suscribed 2 years ago to the Busuu premium suscription. I gave them my credit card number and I didn't know that the premium account has an annual renovation. For my susprise last year they charged me usd 99 without telling me anything, and I even didn't use the web page, I had many troubles with them and they sent me many emails, in the last one they said that I didn't have anything to worry because they weren't going to charge me anything else, and I cancelled the Premium Suscription. Today, one year later, they charged me again the same amount and I had to cancel my Credit Card, with many problems because I'm living in Australia and my Credit Card is from Colombia. Now I don't have any credit card, thank you bussu for everything

La pagina te llena de tantos correos basura, que cuando te llega un correo recordando que tu suscripcion va a caducar, simplemente no te das cuenta.

La plataforma me cargó automaticamente la membresía anual (la cual no quería pero no caí en cuenta por el supuesto correo amontonado con los miles de marketing que te llegan), lo cual les escribí lo mas pronto posible luego del cargo explicando la situacion y solicitando un reembolso ya que estaba dentro del periodo de gracia.

Su respuesta es simplemente excusarse con términos y condiciones convenientemente cubriendolos a ellos y no al cliente. No me parece y no es para nada legal que te obliguen si o si a tomar una membresia QUE NO QUIERES.

The site fills you with so many junk mails, that when you get an email reminding you that your subscription is going to expire, you just don't notice it.

The platform automatically charged me for the annual membership (which I didn't want but didn't notice because of the supposedly stacked mail with the thousands of marketing emails you receive), which I wrote to them as soon as possible after the charge explaining the situation and requesting a refund since I was within the grace period.

Their response is simply to excuse themselves with terms and conditions conveniently covering them and not the customer. I don't think it is at all legal for them to force you to take a membership that you don't want.

I created an account a year ago at a 30% discount so it was $45 USD I went to go buy something today and I had no money in my account. This company let me know they were going to charge $69 USD me again but I never saw the email (fault on my part). I went to go login to cancel my membership and they said something that made me think maybe I had the wrong username or password (tried my phone number and email as a username) so I thought maybe I created the account and used a different password I didn't remember. So I went to request a new password and they said an account associated with my email didn't work so I went into my emails to see what email address they were sending me emails from (it was the one I originally tried) so I sent them a strongly worded email and I got an automated message back and so I sent another strongly worded email about the horrible login process. So now I've lodged a complaint with my bank and let's hope they refund me. If you would like evidence of this you can comment and I will send you evidence

Are you or your kids studying languages? This is a free-of-charge major language learning site supported by Collins (the dictionary company) and POM, a large academic text book publisher. The Busuu website (http://www.busuu.com) is well organised and you can sign up to study English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. From the drop down list it appears that they will soon offer other languages as well. At the free site you can sign up for one or more languages and get access to free online lessons at a selection of levels from beginners to advanced with audio and video support.

Different free areas offer vocabulary, general learning, meet people, join discussion groups, carry out writing exercises, test your pronunciation and test your skills.
The site also offers a contact / friends facility where native speakers can mark and comment on your exercises you can do the same in return for your native language. Being internet cautious I would advise against (especially kids) giving out any personal details (full name, location, address, email, phone, school, etc) but it does genuinely seem to be able to match up language students with each other as mutual support.

They also offer a premium package (Euro 65 / US$ 90 for 12 months) which gives you more audio, more video, preferential marking on writing exercises, access to grammar support etc. Compared to the cost of personal tutoring this seems like a bargain, as long as you use the facilities it offers.

Meanwhile the free site by itself is a great facility, especially for students who like to work alone and go at their own pace. Two thumbs up!

They apply automatic renewal without advice and one day before the deadline of the invoice.
Suggested not to subscribe.

Please never use the busuu.com! They are just kidding you all the time. If you use this, use only the the free version! Never buy the premium membership! If you want to contact the customer support, this will bring nothin and they will not solve your problem because they are just kidding you all the time!

AUFPASSEN! Nutzen Sie NIE Premium Mitgliedschaft bei busuu.com! Es lohnt sich gar nicht und außerdem wenn Sie sich rechtzeitig nicht abmelden werden die automatisch ohne was Bescheid zu sagen Geld von Ihrem Konto per Lastschrift abbuchen! Ich hatte 1 Jahr Mitgliedschaft seit August 2013 und heute haben Sie automatisch ohne was zu sagen Geld von dem Konto meiner Tochter abgebucht! Frech!

They offer you 15 days free after that the premium promotion with a 50% discount which most of us take advantage of. Then you do not hear from them about any type of expiration or automatic renewal, they only let you know, after 1 year! That your membership has been renewed for another year and of course at the full price (about $100 dlls CA). Immediately, after I received this email, I requested my cancellation and my refund, my cancellation was immediate but the refund never came, so I contacted them and explained my situation, I had not used busuu for months because I felt stagnant, it becomes routine, likewise I told them that I could not pay another year that I had never received an expiration or automatic renewal notice, which was somewhat abusive, because there isn't better adjective to describe their business methods, and this was their response:

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Hi Paulina,

Thank you for contacting us.

I am afraid your subscription was not cancelled and by not cancelling it you authorised us to renew it automatically. I am sorry if you did not realise Busuu subscriptions always renew automatically.

As per our Terms and Conditions, I am afraid you are not eligible for a refund. However, I can confirm the auto renewal feature has been cancelled from your account so we won't take anymore payment from you in the future.

It would be great if you could take a moment and complete our short survey below so that we can learn more about why you wish to cancel and what we can do to make Busuu better.

Kind Regards,
Peter,
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Judge by yourselves, and no, I don't recommend busuu.com, they lack of integrity.