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Comment by seth_at_kagi | Hacker News Reader

Hey, Engineer from Kagi here.

This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present. It should have also sent you an email about 7 days before it was going to renew.

With that said, I do understand how this may be unexpected. I will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for other users. Either way, if you contact support@kagi.com we can give you a full refund.

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That comment from an actual human being, sir, more than anything else, would be by itself a reason for me to switch to Kagi everywhere.

Fortunately I already switched to Kagi everywhere...

Egg on face from Hackernews has been known to turn the eye of even Google.

There is tremendous power here.

Huh? They are scamming someone,

> I do understand how this may be unexpected.

is the answer, they claim that it is a bug at their partner, and they offer opt-in (not automatic) refund. That's straight up illegal. Also controversial, like, if it's a bug, why isn't the refund automatic in the first place.

How does this make you want to be their user?

Have you ever written software? Especially to manage payments? This is a very plausible bug around a corner case. Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil mustaches figuring out how to scam their previous customers that they're also trying to win back, or maybe sometimes bugs happen.

As far as I remember, this ‘try us again for 30 days’ promotion was explicitly for previous subscribers, so I would not say this was a corner case.

Ah, if that's true that does make this a little less excusable. I still don't think it's nefarious, but I do think it's a pretty bad and embarrasing bug on Kagi's part.

Having bugs is okay.

That particular reply however is gross and controversial on so many levels.

If you have a bug at a partner, you don't claim that it is intended and "I do understand how this may be unexpected". If it affects multiple users, you don't do opt-in refunds (which is again, illegal, and is a scam if intentional).

> Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil mustaches figuring out how to scam their previous customers

They've just admitted it?

Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time out of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining why this might happen.. And is also taking the user input back to his employer to hopefully find a way to improve the user experience.

It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and 100% on you. You can argue that it's not a great customer experience.. But again, the engineer understands that.

> Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time out of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining why this might happen..

Yep. That explains why is it gross, controversial, and admits a scam. Which is okay, I guess. I've read much worse. (For example, in this very thread. From the person I'm just answering.)

I was just surprised that someone reading it felt that he needs to give money Kagi immediately. We are different.

> It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and 100% on you.

First, no, it's not legal. Especially with

    but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email offering the new free trial promised “A month on us”, and said “Click here to activate your trial, no strings attached”.

Second, they at Kagi didn't want this (according to what they said). It just happened (again, according to what they said). No refunds tho (again, according to what they said).

I clearly skimmed the thread too much. The quote from your e-mail is definitely misleading.

I do not like to see a helpful engineer being given a hard time.. But that is a worse look for Kagi than I was aware of.

> will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for other users

What more do you want? A user complained, they offered a refund and they said they would look into fixing it.

Automatic refund everyone involved?

so should they refund everyone who had free trial and started paying afterwards? what if they wanted to start paying?

And what if they simply missed that it continued charging with the stripe email? It’s a dark pattern that they should fix.

They are fixing it. The only debate in this thread is whether they should automatically refund everybody who might have been affected, regardless whether that person intended to continue or not. That's a pretty different thing.

I don't see how this is a debate. People unsubscreibed Kagi, they never subscribed again, billing them is illegal, period. (And even if it were legal, why would anyone want to that in the first place? If I operated a business I most certainly wouldn't want to bill people that are not my users.)

"wHaT iF tHeY wAnTeD tO sTaRt pAyInG?" was just a joke on twisted cartoon scammer logic, not an argument.

Anyone that wants to use Kagi again can click on the subscribe button.

No that’s not it. The contention was around two things 1) the dark pattern and 2) should they refund everyone.

I get it, people love Kagi, I do too. But this is a bad pattern that they should never have allowed on the first occurrence.

Yes they said they are looking into fixing it but it was a soft commitment and they also should think about refunding folks.

> don't claim that it is intended and "I do understand how this may be unexpected".

This is why companies end up having PR people. An attempt to sound understanding can can easily be scuttled by an unfortunate choice of words. If the programmer had shortened that sentence to "I do understand.", there would not have been a chance to construe an attempt at downplaying the situation.

Dude what's your angle here. Scammers don't offer full refunds.

> and they offer opt-in (not automatic) refund.

Please consider whether they can authenticate a user based on an HN comment and HN profile. The request for the user contact the company directly makes sense.

> Also controversial, like, if it's a bug, why isn't the refund automatic in the first place.

Have they known about the bug before? For how long? Perhaps it's not an automatic refund because they need to confirm the underlying issue, figure out which users are affected, and only then get management to to sign off on it.

I realize Kagi is loved here, heck I use it myself but this pattern does come off at best lazy engineering and at worst scammy. Their marketing email pitches it off as no strings attached but there is a case where it will auto charge you at the end.

I think some of the ton is a little aggressive but it does seem like something that a lot of other companies would maybe get called out for.

I agree, they should definitely be called out for it. However, I also believe a little grace and understanding from the users is called for. They're a small team trying to do their best, and they've taken concrete steps in the past demonstrating their committment to customer service (i.e. not charging you for a month if you don't use your subscription).

I will admit that I do have a reflexive allergy to conspiracy theories when people jump way over Occam's Razor to get there with little to no evidence, and saying that Kagi is just a "scam" is firmly in that boat IMHO.

It’s plausible that I didn’t see the email because it got spam filtered away, so I totally believe that one was sent.

On contacting support: to your (Kagi’s) credit, Kagi did cancel the subscription and refund the fee after I contacted support. But if I hadn’t been scrutinising my credit card statements for other reasons, I suspect it may have been a few months before I noticed.

[edit: Thinking more: if their ‘no fee if you don’t use it’ policy actually works, I guess I wouldn’t be charged more than the one month. Although that makes it even less likely I’d’ve noticed.]

> But if I hadn’t been scrutinising my credit card statements for other reasons

A bit off-topic, but rather than scrutinizing credit card statements, I find it much better to get email notifications of transactions - that way I can review transactions as they’re made and fresh in mind, and I notice fraudulent or unwanted transactions right away.

Depending on the dates, "no fee if you don't use it" might not have been in place yet

Email is not the best notification method these days. I'd suggest having a notifications delivered directly in kagi's interface as well. Maybe a banner for an ending trial period.

I have been using Kagi since the start. You guys are doing an incredible job.

> This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present.

Blaming Stripe?

> Blaming Stripe?

Explaining Stripe?

Thank you for stepping up but here's a tip - don't blame Stripe. If you use a 3p in your service, it's now apart of your service and you're responsible for that.

I appreciated the extra detail, and took it as something "Here's what we think caused this, and we're taking responsibility for finding a way to prevent it."

Hey, I've been a subscriber for a while. I love it. I wear the tshirt.

Thank you.

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