Same story that others have shared. Without any notification my credit card was charged at 249 usd. Apparently auto-renewal is the default and raising the price from $0 to $249 in a little over a year is common practice. I’m telling my network to drop Academia as they raise the price without informing you. Then they won’t respond to your inquiry and I’m assuming will never offer a refund. I setup the account assuming a professional organization for real academics and unfortunately that has not been the case. Update: as expected they will not refund me and I didn’t receive any notifications of payment or bill increase, which was an annual increase of $130. I checked my settings and the boxes for all notifications are checked except the one for billing info. I didn’t recall unchecking this so I created a new account as I suspected they did this as the default as a predatory practice. It turns out that my new account had the same settings - all notifications are on except ones to do with payment - which tells me Academia is a total scam. It appears small claims is my next step. I would encourage everyone to either drop Academia or check your settings regularly in case they change them on you.
