It is always interesting to follow discussions on the Internet and on social media sites like Twitter when it comes to VPN providers. The word scam is thrown out in all directions and I guess there are few providers that haven’t been accused 100 times or more for being a scam provider.
Yesterday I looked on Twitter and managed to see someone accusing HideMyAss of being a scam. Their accusations was based on the fact that they did not get a refund for their money, due to way to many connections started.
In the same way I often see people accusing VPN providers of being scam when they ask for a refund, but have exceeded the allowed bandwidth which is set by the maximum by the VPN provider. Now, it is true that often those rules when it comes to allowed bandwidth and amount of connections are written with small letters. But, they are there and that should kind of cover the VPN providers following those regulations and rules.
There are of course some real scam VPN providers
There are of course some VPN providers which are real scam. Those are the providers that promise something, and give you something else. This could be true for lots of providers, but if you then ask for a refund you will not get one. Not because you used more bandwidth or exceeded the amount of maximum allowed connections. You do not get a refund, because they do not give money back. Because they are a scam!
One of the most popular scam accused VPN providers is PureVPN. They have had a terrible refund policy for a long time, but they changed it earlier this year. Lots of people accuse them for not giving back their refunds, and making it really hard for the customers to actually get their refund. That is why we have signed up for a PureVPN account undercover just to check it out. We signed up, paid for the service and got our account. Later e tried it to watch Canadian Netflix, but once we found that it did not work we asked for a refund.
You might not be surprised, but we did not get the refund at once, but we had to send a couple of emails. They tried to help us out, find solution to our problem(s), but in the end we simply answered that we want a refund, and after three emails we got our money back.
There are however examples with other VPN providers when we have signed up, tested, did not like it (without exceeding any limits), asked for a refund, asked for a refund again, but did not get any answer of feedback at all. Those are more worthy of the scam accusations.
A bad website does not make it scam
A few days ago we noticed a thread on Reddit about Vanished VPN. Someone wondered if it is a scam, after all their website is really bad. We had the same feeling as we looked upon their website, but after trying their services we discovered that it ain’t a scam, but a working VPN provider. Now that is a risk, and that is why it can be worth reading VPN reviews before signing up with a VPN provider you know nothing about. And, maybe you should read the small letters about refund policy carefully, just to make sure that you stay safe in case you want a refund.
What to look out for in refund policies
To stay safe and make sure that you are entitled for a refund with any VPN provider, look out for the following criterias:
- For how many days are the full refund policy available (this normally varies from 3 days to 1 month)
- How much bandwidth can you use and still be entitled for a refund (normally varies between 500 MB and 10 GB).
Here you should especially know that if you use your VPN to stream content online, you will exceed even the 10 GB limit within a few hours). - Do they have a maximum amount of connections you can use? One connection equals connecting to a server once. If you thus try to connect to different servers 50 times (it might only work 20 times), it will still often be counted as 50 connections. Check the amount of connections allowed by your VPN provider to stay on the safe side.
Those are the main criteria that you need to pay attention to when you want to receive a refund from a VPN provider.
What kind of experiences do you have with VPN providers? Do you have any VPN provider that you think of and consider to be a scam? Why would you call the VPN provider a scam? Write a comment and let us know!
