Warning WIX Users On Auto-Renew

Opting out of Wix auto-renew takes more than disabling auto-renew in your billing settings!

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Image by author created by Descript.

Do you use Wix? Do you know someone who uses Wix?

If so, do you (they)have auto-renew enabled is your (their) billing settings? Yes?

Okay. Guess what?

If you decide to turn off auto-renew by logging into your account billing settings (to opt out of Wix automated payments), there’s one more step you need to do to disable Wix auto-renew. What’s that step? Keep reading or watching to learn more.

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Video interview transcript…

Soul: Aloha everyone. I’m Soul and I am delighted to have with me my dearest friend Eve. Eve keeps reminding me how old I am. I’ve known Eve since moving from Minnesota to San Diego back in 2001. It doesn’t feel like I’ve known Eve for almost 25 years, but I have.

Eve is a person I cherish. I have been her webmaster for years, and that’s what this story is about. Something happened to Eve that I feel strongly needs to get this story out there about anybody who uses the Wix service. You need to know something important if you take off auto-renew. We did that, but yet they took money from Eve. Eve welcome. Thank you for being here to tell your story.

Eve: Yes. I subscribed to Wix approximately three years ago. When you first go into a website system, they usually have all these offers that they make you. Which they did with me, and I thought I knew exactly what I was getting. I thought I knew exactly when my one year window was up.

Soul: So what happened is I shifted Eve from good old WordPress world to Wix. I played around with Wix. We got you transferred over. I suggested to Eve take off the auto renew. Let’s turn it off because we’re not sure if we wanna renew every year. You can always renew it if you think you want it, right? We turned that off and it showed in your system settings that you were not in auto-renew. And we verified that, right?

Eve: Correct.

Soul: We even took screen captures. The interesting thing was is we never got an email confirmation from Wix that you discontinued your auto-renew. Correct?

Eve: Correct. That is one of my complaints about this company.

Soul: So the time came and went and all of a sudden, Eve you saw these free offers that you got on your first year. Offers to try a service for free for one year. Nothing was stated that would be part of your auto renew. It didn’t show up as an individual service in your account that you would have to pay to keep it going. Then up comes the annual thing. Not only did we turn off the renew for hosting, we were unaware that they were gonna charge you automatically to renew these free services, which they did, right?

Eve: Correct. The only thing I knew was due was my subscription, but it wasn’t due, I believe, until October 4th. I did get an email back in August before my subscription was going to renew, if I wanted to renew. It was such a short email and the way it read, I thought it was spam. I didn’t actually think it was coming from them. Where they said your auto renewal is coming up. There’s other plans you can choose from. I looked at it and I thought, okay, I’ve got time to check out if this is real or not. Because, you know, how many emails do we get from every kind of company out there. I thought they’ll reach out to me again. They’ll send me more information. I even jumped onto my Wix subscription and I didn’t see anything up there that was saying I was gonna pay a different price. Two weeks prior to my auto renewal, they charged me.

Soul: Before it was supposed to renew.

Eve: Before it was actually supposed to renew. It came as a shock. I didn’t see it coming. What I didn’t like here is I got no follow up email. I got nothing on my Wix site that told me this is your new plan and this is what you’re going to be paying.

Soul: So I instructed you to contact your bank and have ’em reverse the charges, which you did. And initially they did. What we did not realize is Wix would charge you again.

Eve: Yeah. Before I even called my bank, I tried right away to reach out to them, right when I got the notice from my bank that I’d been charged for this. Because I thought, okay, so they put me onto this new price point. I could change my plan. So I called them to change my plan to a lower price point. It is so hard to get a human being. They make you go through all of these loops and then they want you to go on to chat. And they want you to only be on chat. I can’t handle this just on chat. There was too much other information.

So then you have to give them your phone number and someone will call you when they have the time to call you. And they did. And the connection was very poor connection. Half the time I couldn’t hear the person on the other end. They just said we did send one email out, back in August. There was no follow up whatsoever. I did not see this on my site. This is not the plan I wanna sign up for. “ We’ll see what we can do.”

At no point did they offer me to speak to a manager. The person simply wanted to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. So at that point, I decided the next day to call my bank and tell them I’m refuting these fees. You removed me from auto-renew. They turned it back on. I went into their long, huge agreement. Which most people don’t read because it’s so long, it’s so legal. It’s difficult to understand. I did go in and look. In there it does say, when you do business with our company, any problems you have you have to resolve them with us directly. If you seek to resolve them outside of us, we will cancel your subscriptions and take you off.

Soul: And still charge you.

Eve: And still charge you. I did not know that was part of the agreement. If I had known, I would never from day one signed up with wix.com.

Soul: And that is the purpose of this video. That is the purpose of this post. We’re trying to alert people that while on the one end, Wix did follow through with the way their terms of service state. Now what we did not understand. What was misleading is nowhere in the process where I went in a year in advance and turned off your auto renew. I screen captured the fact that your auto-renew was turned off. You never got any notification that in order to truly discontinue auto-renew, you needed to reach out and talk to customer service, correct?

Eve: Correct.

Soul: So now here’s where it gets interesting. Eve, as you were working with your bank and your cards, you uncovered some more information.

Eve: I decided to dispute our original renewal. Wix took off my secure site even though I paid for it. Wix put me into their free site. I left my PayPal up with my zero balance with no account attached to my PayPal just to see what would happen. Once you move my free Wix website onto Google we completely removed anything I had on Wix. What’s interesting though, is that was done before the end of 2024. I remember back in January or February, March even, I was still getting something from them on PayPal.

Soul: So even though we had closed down your Wix. We removed your Wix site. We removed all payment information. We removed everything on Wix. We even closed your Wix account. At each one of these steps no email confirmations, right?

Eve: No.

Soul: Even after you are no longer a Wix customer, they’re still trying to get money from you.

Eve: Yes. The confirmations I got were for payment.

Soul: Payments they should not have gotten. One of the reasons why I’m interviewing you and we’re putting this out there, one of your Paypal representatives found out and shared with you something quite revealing. One of the representatives told you this was not an unusual instance. Correct?

Eve: Exactly. One of the representatives said, yes, we’ve had multiple complaints about this company.

Soul: So this is not a new issue.

Eve: No, it’s not.

Soul: As you were trying to get your money back, one of those representatives let slip. This is a common issue.

Eve: That happened on PayPal, but it also happened on Wix. I reached out to Wix again, had to go through the whole rigamarole of the chat and have someone call me. He kept telling me why should you get something you haven’t paid for? Wait a minute, Wix took my money. Wix took my money. He kept telling me over and over again, we’re not gonna give you something you didn’t pay for. If you want this service, you’re gonna have to go in and pay. So what they wanted me to do was to go in and sign up again and do a second payment, literally paying them twice. When I asked to talk to a manager, his response was, oh, the managers left the building. They’ll be back tomorrow. You can try through chat to reach out to the manager tomorrow.

Soul: So these extra services, one of which was known as Booster, not only did they charge you before it was due. You did not authorize that charge. You didn’t want that service. We had let them know you didn’t want that service ’cause we took off auto-renew. They went right back around and they charged you. All of a sudden you’re out over $800. Both your bank card and PayPal said, unfortunately, because of what you just revealed at the earlier mark of this interview.

Buried very deeply within the terms of service was this requirement that you get a direct confirmation from customer service. So the moral of the story here, ladies and gentlemen, is first off, if you’re using Wix and you’re happy with it, fantastic. If you are on auto renew. Here’s where it starts to get dicey. Just because you turn off auto-renew doesn’t mean they’re not gonna charge you. They will charge you. And we know that for a fact because even after we closed Eve’s account. Literally deleted everything from your user account standpoint. We deleted it in 2024. In 2025, they multiple times tried to bill you?

Eve: Yeah, that’s correct. It was for the Booster service, which according to Wix, that’s a service they use, but it’s a separate service.

Soul: Eve, your takeaways are, first off, you learned that if you’re gonna do auto-renew, to put it on something that has a zero balance.

Eve: Zero balance with no accounts attached to that. I did not realize when I first signed on, there was three different accounts attached to that. And I went in and closed my two bank accounts that they could possibly access because they had prior information from three years ago. It was PayPal I got to last. And in the conversations with PayPal I had two different managers tell me, we have a problem with this company. We will try to resolve this and we promise we’ll get back to you. Zip!

Soul: So Eve, it seems rather spurious that a company that you’ve deleted your relationship with. You’ve removed all account information. They’re saying whatever it is that you’re being billed for, is not Wix billing you, it’s somebody else billing you because it’s a service Wix use. I’m sorry, but it was a service that Wix recommended. It was a service through Wix.

Moral of the story ladies and gentlemen, if you’re on auto-renew on any service, make sure you’re aware of what accounts are attached to that auto-renew. I would highly recommend that you use a checking account with a debit card that has a zero balance. You know when your auto renews are gonna come in. You can always transfer funds into that account when that payment needs to happen. Then when companies try to bill you for something you don’t want, at least they haven’t got your money. Right? You’re out $800 and some odd dollars.

Eve: I feel naive, but it’s only because I had never had a company put me through this kind of experience before. I don’t go through that with Apple. I don’t go through it with other companies. I didn’t have this issue with GoDaddy.

Soul: In summary let’s run through this timeline. We disconnected your auto-renew, we turned it off a year before the auto-renew was in effect. Wix then charged you, even though you thought you had turned off the auto-renew. Once Wix charged you, you went in after trying to contact Wix to get your refund. Which you couldn’t get. You then went to your card and banks. They issued a fraudulent charge, and so they charged it back. Once they charged it back that caught Wix attention. Not only did Wix take the money again! But they took your site from a secured paid site to one of their free sites. That even after Wix charged you again for the secure site that you hadn’t paid, is that correct?

Eve: Correct.

Soul: So ladies and gentlemen, just to be clear. It seems like the free services that Wix offers you after you first sign up? Try that for free. You don’t get a separate email telling you you’re going to have to pay for it. They automatically charge you for it before your actual renewal service happens. And they will charge you to renew your service — again — before your anniversary date. And whether or not you have turned off your auto-renew on your settings, on your website online, that does not matter. The terms of contract that we’ve learned you needed to contact customer support. Which is hard to do as we talked about. Until you get something in writing from them, you’re still gonna get billed. And what infuriates me the most is even after you literally deleted your Wix account in 2024, the account has been permanently deleted. They started going after you and billing you for this extra service even after your account is closed. Thankfully you had $0 in that account and they couldn’t extract more money from you.

As we wrap up. I’m wondering who else had this same issue? Because if they’ve done this to Eve. I would imagine out of the millions of people that have used Wix. There’s probably one or two other people out there that has less than stellar service and who also believe Wix has taken advantage of them. I’d like to find out what your story is. Thank you for your time. Anything else you wanna add?

Eve: No. Thank you so much, Soul, for helping me on this experience.

Soul: My pleasure. Thanks for your time. Have you or someone you know, experienced problems with Wix billing, especially concerning auto-renew? What happened? Share your story in the comment section. The more we learn, the more likely we’ll help someone avoid similar events.

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