Academia.edu serves as a place where researchers can make their publications publicly available. They have charged a subscription fee of $99 annually for at least the last decade. With no notice to users this year, they increased their subscription to $299 per year. This is a 200% increase to users without any sort of authorization. I immediately canceled my subscription and disputed the charge. They will lose a lot of subscribers as this price hike hits users this year. The only reason I caught it was I saw the charge in my bank account. Again, they did not contact me in any way and simply tripled the charge. Very unprofessional and unethical. I won't do business with any company that treats its customers this way. Maybe they needed to increase subscription costs to continue to provide services, but the underhanded way they did it will drive users from the platform and cost them far more in the long run. Academics are generally not particularly wealthy people. Tripling the cost will definitely drive them to find other platforms.
