Questia is an online library. It has various subscription plans. Two years ago, I opted for a yearly plan. When you subscribe to Questia, you can't just subscribe for only one year and that's that. They force you to enter a perpetual agreement that is renewed every year, and is billed by Questia withdrawing from your bank account without telling you. This perpetual subscription can only be stopped if you cancel. (At least that was the case based on the subscription plans available when I subscribed two years ago.) The cost was $100 per year. I subscribed to Questia for two years.

A few days ago, I checked my bank account and saw that Questia had again withdrawn from my bank account three days earlier, without informing me by e-mail either before or after the fact.

Now I did not want to renew my Questia subscription, but being a human being, I forgot to cancel. After all, the withdrawal only comes around once a year and Questia does not inform you that they're about to bill you. They're pretty sneaky.

So, I called to cancel and get a refund. The customer service person canceled my account. As to the refund, however, she said I needed to e-mail the resolution department. So, I did e-mail the resolution department. Their response was prefabricated and completely unpersonal. They offered me what they call a $50 courtesy, 'pro-rated' refund. I responded saying I still wanted a full refund, and I requested for the number of someone to speak with personally. The department responded with an e-mail, half of which was a cut and paste job from their first e-mail to me, basically saying 'no' to my requests.

Sure, Questia's agreement allows them to do what they have done. But you have to admit, it's pretty deceptive. Basically, Questia quietly withdraws money from their customer's accounts and relies on their customers' forgetfulness to keep their subscriptions going. Then when customers ask for a refund, they say, 'Oh, but you agreed to this!'

This online research site is deliberately misleading and should be blacklisted. They lure customers with free trial, but as you can see from their website (copy of which I have), they do not reveal that the free trial is only for 24 hours. I signed up for the free trial thinking that it is for one month. I tried their search function a couple of times as soon as I signed up, but did not get anything I could use.

I signed up at around 2 pm on Friday, and discovered that my credit card has already been charged by Saturday. I canceled my trial subscription at around 10 am Monday morning and sent an email requesting for a refund. I thought any reasonable company would comply with my request because my cancellation was certainly within one business day. They didn’t even reply to my email.

In summary, Questia is a deceptive, unreasonable, and uncaring business. There is absolutely no difference between Questia and outright scammers on the Internet.