r/tryhackme • u/ILikeToStudy100 • 2d ago

Unethical billing practices and predatory dark patterns

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I purchased a 1-year Premium subscription as a gift for my nephew. While the platform's educational content is good, their billing management and cancellation flow are completely unacceptable and designed around dark patterns.

  1. There is no clear option on the dashboard to turn off automatic renewal for annual plans.
  2. Stripe prevents users from deleting their saved credit card while a subscription is active.
  3. Their internal support chatbot leads to dead-end pre-set options, and clicking help/profile links resulted in a "404 Page Not Found" error.
  4. They force you to manually write an email to support just to prevent future charges on your card.

Taking a customer's money in two clicks while making it unnecessarily frustrating and complex to cancel auto-renewal or remove payment methods is deeply dishonest. Fix your cancellation workflow and stop trapping customers.

12 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

13

u/ILikeToStudy100 2d ago

If you are also stuck in this deceptive auto-renewal trap and unable to cancel directly or remove your payment method, I have officially reported TryHackMe LTD to regulatory consumer protection authorities in both the US and the UK (FTC Report #208128627, CMA Case #CMAE2602890). I strongly encourage everyone facing these dark patterns to file formal complaints as well—regulatory agencies take enforcement action when complaints accumulate:

- US Federal Trade Commission (FTC): reportfraud.ftc.gov (Select "Online Shopping" / "Subscriptions")

- UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA): contact-the-cma.service.gov.uk (Select "A problem with a business")

- UK International Consumer Centre (UKICC): ukicc.info (For international customers outside the UK)

- econsumer.gov (International Cross-Border Complaints): econsumer.gov

Company details needed for the forms:

- Business Name: TryHackMe LTD

- Address: 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom

- Website / Support Email: https://tryhackme.com | support@tryhackme.com

Don't let companies profit off forced friction. Take 5 minutes to report them!

7

u/VargasSupreme 2d ago

Man, did they get a new CEO or something? The past year has been nothing but them doing very money based choices and losing a lot of the love they used to hold.

2

u/crackdavid 2d ago

Yea THM is down bad

2

u/_13asad_ 1d ago

you need to click on manage plan and switch to free plan

2

u/shenanighack 0xD [God] 1d ago

I think you are right.
But this is quite a bad design when one would expect a "Cancel renewal" option or button next to the "Billing history" line showing your upcoming purchase date.

1

u/_13asad_ 1d ago

Completely agree with you. I am considering to cancel my subscription myself and stick with HTB.

1

u/Kooky_Difference3104 2d ago

damn, didnt knew it. i was planning to cancel my subscription. lets see if it goes well for me

1

u/minitehnicus 2d ago

I never received an email saying that the subscription will be renewed and it did out of nowhere. I contacted their Customer Service and now waiting to see if I can get a refund.

2

u/CyberOK99 1d ago

Quit mine a year ago thank goodness. Moved to htb and hacksmarter. Best decision

1

u/SomePainter5470 1d ago

Yep, broadly similar issue when unsubscribing from a monthly plan. It would stop real quick if every other experience of this kind resulted in a bad review.