Trying to reactivate my account, I was directed to verify myself using Apple Pay which, because the amount was £0.00, I did. However, once I got a “verified” message, a tiny, tiny box appeared stating I had agreed to a “free trial” of “exploreedu” and would be charged £49.00 a month if not cancelled.
I emailed support at exploreedu who replied that they could find no trace of my transaction.
Guess what? This morning £49.00 has been taken from my bank account.
Somehow, this has been loaded onto infinityfree’s main website. Please get it sorted.
I can’t say I’ve seen anything on infinityfree asking me to use apple pay to verify. It does sound like this may have been an advert provided by infinityfree’s 3rd party ad-provider.
Since this is a community forum, there’s not much most of us can do to help, but I’m sure admin will be along at some point, and he might be able to assist.
In the meantime I strongly suggest contacting apple pay and your bank to try and get this transaction reversed and to stop future payments being taken
Yes, we would never ask you to pay to reactivate your account. This sounds like you clicked on a misleading ad.
The ads you see come from Google’s marketplace. We don’t directly manage the ads they display, those are managed by Google and originate from many advertisers from all over the world. So the number of different ads that may be shown on our website is huge.
But despite Google having supposedly pretty strict advertising policies, a lot of deceptive ads end up being displayed. I’m aware of the issue but my options to fully stop it are limited. I regularly review ads and block and report malicious ones, and I recently banned the entire Health category because it was mostly scam ads. But all of that only works after the fact.
If you remember what the exact ad said, I can try to find it, block it and look for similar ads.
Regarding the payment, all I can do is recommend to issue a chargeback through your bank. They are probably your best bet to get your money back.
Thank you.
I have been with Infinity Free for quite a long time so I know you are trustworthy. Some of these adverts on your main page are really intrusive - you don’t even have to click, just hovering the mouse over them for a second expands them. Based on your comment, I shall report exploreedu to Google.
