MindGeek Billing Practices

Author	Post
high_flyin5 Member 729 Posts 6/10	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 12:22PM There have been various complaints about how MindGeek operates across multiple threads. But I wanted to bring attention to something specific which potential consumers should probably be made aware of. Specifically, their billing practices via ProBiller have gotten increasingly shady over the last couple of years. I had purchased a yearly subscription to Brazzers back in 2016 (which I've maintained). And a year ago I took advantage of one of their bundle deals and paid $85 to add lifetime Mile High Media access, with a $9.99 per month charge for download capability. The selling point being that if you maintain your Brazzers membership, you'll always have access to the additional portal(s). When my rebill cycle kicked in this year they apparently reverted my Mile High access back to standard without informing me. Which meant that they started charging me $20 per month for Mile High access, with an additional monthly $9.99 for downloads. This is the 2nd time where a MindGeek owned site has pulled something like this on my account (Claiming a certain price for a supposedly permanent deal, then flipping the rate back to a higher amount later without informing me). At this point I would highly caution anyone who is considering taking advantage of one of their so-called deals. Just be aware that whatever they're advertising, the deal will almost certainly be temporary and you'll get dinged later without any kind of warning. Edited by - high_flyin5 on Jul 18 2021 [Link]
fit18 Member 642 Posts 1/20	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 1:51PM high_flyin5 wrote: This is the 2nd time where a MindGeek owned site has pulled something like this on my account (Claiming a certain price for a supposedly permanent deal, then flipping the rate back to a higher amount later without informing me). At this point I would highly caution anyone who is considering taking advantage of one of their so-called deals. Just be aware that whatever their advertising, the deal will almost certainly be temporary and you'll get dinged later without any kind of warning. Edited by - high_flyin5 on Jul 18 2021 Click to expand To play Devil's advocate, did you reach out to them to get it fixed? The tech behind billing programming for most of these guys, are horribly underdeveloped. Rocketgate had like 1 programmer for years. It's almost a joke. And the configuration for different types of accounts and countries, could run into hundreds of entries. Their system might have just reach an expiration and billed you at the full price by mistake, or there was a configuration error. [Link]
high_flyin5 Member 729 Posts 6/10	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 6:34PM ^Yes, went back & forth with their support people over this and the best they were willing to do was to cancel & resign me at a one year "promo" rate. If it had been the first time I wouldn't have said anything. But I just went through a similar situation last year with them over a Digital Playground subscription. Comparatively, my experiences with Gamma and their payment processor 'Fame Support' have always been seamless. I have a couple of different bundled subscriptions and have never run into an issue. [Link]
fit18 Member 642 Posts 1/20	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 8:50PM high_flyin5 wrote: ^Yes, went back & forth with their support people over this and the best they were willing to do was to cancel & resign me at a one year "promo" rate. If it had been the first time I wouldn't have said anything. But I just went through a similar situation last year with them over a Digital Playground subscription. Comparatively, my experiences with Gamma and their payment processor 'Fame Support' have always been seamless. I have a couple of different bundled subscriptions and have never run into an issue. Click to expand Based on how you described it, that sounds like a configuration issue. They are still running NATS and NATS is horrible with these combo subs and packages. Mistakes happen. It's far less likely their intent was nefarious and designed to overcharge you because they are already maxed out on chargebacks and are under extra scrutiny because of the pornhub incident. [Link]
snufish Member 580 Posts 4/14	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 9:54PM This is why many persons are hesitant to buy membership subs due to getting burned. are you being charged two separate $9.99 fees? if i were them, I would refund you the $20 charges and give you free downloads for a year. Be well Edited by - snufish on 7/18/2021 10:58:41 PM [Link]

high_flyin5 Member 729 Posts 6/10	Posted - Jul 18 2021 : 10:15PM ^That's the primary reason I made the thread. Happening once as a mistake is understandable (technology is always finnicky), happening back-to-back with both of my rebills suggests their system is garbage or something else. Either way the end result is the same, getting double-billed for multiple months until I just happened to catch it while reviewing this month's bank statement (I guess triple in this instance because because what should have been 9.99 was a net charge of 30). I pretty much decided to wash my hands of their sites. Like I mentioned to the other poster, large sites like Gamma clearly have their billing systems figured out, so I'm not exactly willing to extend courtesy to an org the size of MindGeek. [Link]
Panoramata Senior Member 15849 Posts 11/06	Posted - Jul 19 2021 : 5:31AM Bookmarking in case I want to subscribe again . [Link]
fit18 Member 642 Posts 1/20	Posted - Jul 19 2021 : 10:27AM high_flyin5 wrote: Either way the end result is the same, getting double-billed for multiple months until I just happened to catch it while reviewing this month's bank statement (I guess triple in this instance because because what should have been 9.99 was a net charge of 30). I pretty much decided to wash my hands of their sites. Click to expand Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. Your point is the most important. It should not have happened twice, whether through intention or not. They're going through a lot of pains now, but it is of their own making. [Link]
rearadmiral All-Star Member 6516 Posts 12/11	Posted - Jul 19 2021 : 1:53PM I haven't joined any Mindgeek sites in a long time but for different reasons. I keep a Word document of all my subscriptions going back nine years and part of the information I keep are any notes on the biller if there is anything good or bad about them. I checked that document for Probiller and see that every time I've used them I've complained about their cancellation process. There isn't (or wasn't) any self-serve process. Every time was a long, drawn out chat to get a membership cancelled. Maybe billers like CC Bill and Epoch take more of a cut, but I spend a lot more on sites that use those billers than I do in sites where I know I'll have trouble. Compare my spending at Mindgeek sites over the past three years to my spending on Gamma sites, which have in-house billers but that always work well. $0 at Mindgeek versus maybe $500 at Gamma. Trust does have a price. [Link]
hoochimama Deactivated User 1437 Posts 5/10	Posted - Jul 19 2021 : 2:34PM Signed up for a mindgeek-ran site (which I'm not specifying for anonymity's sake), entered email, pass, CC details, authorized payment, and.....nothing. Ended up in a blank page. When I tried to enter the site's member's area it would say something like login credentials invalid. Tried to recover password, got the recovery email followed the link and.... never worked. Could never login, credentials always invalid. On the website they only had one form of support for someone who isn't logged in: an email. I sent them an email where I explained everything and attached screenshots. No reply from that email, ever. I assumed something just went wrong with the transaction so my account/login wasn't created and I wouldn't be charged. No money withdrawn from my bank for days, so I just signed up for something else. Months later I noticed a recurring withdrawal from my bank account: it was the mindgeek site. I cancelled their authorization. Time to get the money back. Sent them another email. Still no answer. I googled up the transaction description text, on one of the google results pages -leading to a different separate website- I found a mention of a different support email (one related to billing). I tried that other email, again explaining everything that happened along with screenshots and asking for my money back. I finally got a reply. The reply message said that my recurring billing had been cancelled and to have a nice day. MFers. They had a machine read and answer my message. So I shot them an email again hoping this time an actual human being would read it. I finally got a reply saying that the issue could only be solved by a live phone operator and they gave me a phone number to call, a number in California.... I was on the other side of the planet, english isn't my first nor second nor third language. When I explained this to them you'd think they'd at least offer live text chat operators like other pornsites/online payment processors do(ccbill & co) but nope, they expect you to spend the money on an international english phone call to california in their office hours to get your money back. It happens that I can read, write and speak english well enough, but I shouldn't have to, not when dealing with a global corporation the size of mindgeek. And I did call them, because I wasn't going to let them fucking keep the piddling money, and got the transfer weeks later. But no explanation from the phone operator as to what went wrong, no apology, no offer of a free trial to smooth things over for the trouble I went through. So much for american customer service and business know-how. And this wasn't an isolated incident, a different website network I would subscribe to yearly (realitykings - this one's common enough) got bought out by mindgeek, and mindgeek decided to remove the ability to download when you signed up, they want to charge extra for it. But they didn't bother changing any of the realitykings pages that advertised streaming&downloads when you'd sign up nor the user agreements (false advertising) so that you're caught by surprise. So after signing up expecting to be able to download videos as usual and advertised and finding out I couldn't (and quickly seeing how their shitty streams are useless as they make you wait for several seconds whenever you skip ahead to a good part -or crashing- making the viewing of videos like inthevip practically impossible, not to mention the removal of so many videos used in their promos/ads) I messaged them for support - within an hour of signing up- only to be asked to pay extra for downloads. I asked them to either give me the ability to download videos I paid for as advertised for the duration I paid for or give me my money back. They refused to do either. Know how people who just jerk off to whatever crap they see on tube sites ask why someone would pay for porn, implying you'd have to be an idiot to pay when you can watch porn for free? That's mindgeek, treating paying customers like the idiots it believes them to be. [Link]
ReturnOfTheDude Deactivated User 110 Posts 9/18	Posted - Jul 20 2021 : 4:28AM As much as i crap on OF for their prices wich are way too high in general compare to mainstream sites, there is ONE thing that been bugging me with the mainstream sites for years. Reccuring billing. I am not rich, i can only sub to 1 or 2 websites per month MAX, so if i want to see different content i need to cycle them, but cancelling at times can be so painfull. It should simply be "pay for 1 month, when the month is done you revert back to no acces". Reccuring billing should be a little checkbox you click like on Xbox Live. Personally i NEVER put rebilling, i hate it. I don't want to forget and be rebilled for something i didn't wanted anymore. Even when i sub to an OF, despite what creators say that peoples with rebill on get more stuff blablabla, i ALWAYS put it off (or cancel now as they changed the button) to make sure when the month is over, it just expire. If im enjoying it as much as wanting to keep it... ill simply resub... take 2 secs... On Xbox live i always unclick the rebill option, or sometimes they offer a free month if you do so i do it but immediately manually cancel afterward LOL. Mainstream porn like mindgeek and basically every type of medias should do the same, it should be a LAW that rebilling is optional. [Link]
PornoSmurf Senior Member 1190 Posts 12/13	Posted - Jul 20 2021 : 5:00AM Porn companies seem to deliberately make it difficult to cancel recurring bills. It's so annoying because you have to go through hell to just cancel a subscription at times. I've had some experiences that were so bad that I just refuse to sign up for some sites. [Link]
fit18 Member 642 Posts 1/20	Posted - Jul 20 2021 : 10:50AM PornoSmurf wrote: Porn companies seem to deliberately make it difficult to cancel recurring bills. It's so annoying because you have to go through hell to just cancel a subscription at times. I've had some experiences that were so bad that I just refuse to sign up for some sites. Click to expand @ReturnOfTheDude and @pornosmurf Ever try cancelling your cable or cell phone bill? :) It's not just porn. Recurring billing makes money. Actually took a while for mainstream tech to catch on, but everyone does it now. You have your streaming services, but also Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, as you mentioned, xbox, playstation, icloud, many iOS apps, webhosting, etc. If you own a home, you may be renting your water boiler, furnace, or solar panels. Recurring actually lowers costs for everyone because it creates a predictable and stable cashflow that allows companies to plan expenditures. Look how porn pretty much hasn't gone up in price in 20 years. Some websites offer one time payments, but they are usually much higher than the monthly price. [Link]
ReturnOfTheDude Deactivated User 110 Posts 9/18	Posted - Jul 20 2021 : 6:15PM I have not been subscribing to cable for a decade so i can't say for how easy/uneasy it is to cancel it, but USUALLY most peoples who sub to cable intend to keep it at all time, they are TV junkies who follow series or sports or the news. Same for a cell phone plan, if you have a cell, unless you just want a very portable computerish in your pockets, you intend to keep the sub active at all time. Other medias is different. For instance i can cancel Netflix at the press of a button. If i am not watching it at certain moments because i saw all i wanted to see and i know nothing great is coming up in their OG content for the next month, i cancel 1 month, i then come back later when the new stuff is out. I do this sometimes, i switch between Netflix and Amazon prime video, because i don't have time to watch enough stuff to justify 2-3 subs. I am also a big physical guy so most of the shows i enjoy i like to buy them on DVDs or blurays. Xbox Live i am subscribed almost at all time, cause i play certain games on a daily or weekly basic, but i use my Microsoft Rewards point to pay for it. So i need to make sure it expire and not rebill so i can use points again to resub. But yeah i get your point that some peoples are careless and will sub on something, forget about it, then rebill will pass and they will see the charge and be like "oh screw me, forgot to cancel that, well i paid for 1 more month so rather just enjoy it" and then they may even forget about it again... I don't wanna be that guy. I am on a budget and i want to make the most of my $ When i sub to a porn website, my goal is to download the stuff i wanted the most to keep on my HDD, enjoy the new updates, then i cancel the next month. 6-12 months later if they have enough new material i want, ill resub. May not be the best thing for a company but if i want to get the most different content from websites its the only way to do it. This or an ...even less ethical way... I can't be subscribed to Brazzers, Bangbros, Naughty America and other smaller sites every months. I don't have 200-300$ to put on porn per month. [Link]
LegendaryOverfiend Member 137 Posts 6/18	Posted - Jul 21 2021 : 12:42AM Did they also completely change their additional networks model? I have my primary Brazzers sub for 70$ a year and in addition 2 years ago I got networks like RealityKings, Mofos, FakeHub, Twistys etc. all on sale for 40$ each unlimited as long as I keep my Brazzers sub going every year. Now everytime there a re sales like during easter or 4th of july etc. the only options they offer for those networks are monthly subs. Unlimited sub options are completely gone. Is this because credit card companies dropped support for PornHub and MindGeek can't or doesn't want to afford giving those unlimited subs away anymore? [Link]

redchambray Member 94 Posts 6/20	Posted - Jul 21 2021 : 1:28AM Last year my Brazzers sub was supposed to auto-renew mid-May like it always had in the past (joined mid May 2018 for $90 a year). For some reason I got charged $1.09 from Probiller, then $1.09 the next week, and the week after that, until a month later they finally charged me $90 third week of June. It was very odd, but I was too lazy to contact customer service since the charges were only $1.09. This year my renewal came third of week of June, like last year. I still don't understand what was going on with Probiller charging me $1.09 a week for 5 weeks. I have an incentive to renew since I also took advantage of all the unlimited $40 subs to other Mindgeek properties - Mofos, Reality Kings, Twistys, etc. I just checked and it does seem like they did away with lifetime memberships in the PornPortal. [Link]
fit18 Member 642 Posts 1/20	Posted - Jul 21 2021 : 10:33AM ^ and ^^ Mindgeek was in a very long process of migrating their payment management systems from a very old piece of tech, to something they created in house. There are bound to be some kinks. The old system was incredible labyrinthian. Recently, a whole chunk of people quit because they did not want to be associated with a company that allegedly deals in child porn (according to the class action suit that was filed) [Link]
Ibarra Enthusiast Member 123 Posts 2/21	Posted - Aug 5 2021 : 2:26AM I hate subscribing to Mindgeek sites because they continually find new ways to try to screw you. Their scenes are usually not very good, but they have some performers on the sites that I try to collect every scene they are in. So a month ago I subscribed to DP and cancelled through Probiller well in advance of the rebilling date. Earlier today my credit card company notified me of a new $19.99 charge from Probiller. I paid an initial charge of $9.99 and another $19.99 to be able to download. You may be able to see where this is going. When you cancel online, Probiller only stops the rebill on the $9.99 part of the cost. They will continue to bill you for downloads for a site you no longer have access to. They maintain that you have to speak to customer support in order to cancel the recurring download charge. I initiated a chat session that was less than satisfying. The rep explained their policy and offered one extra "free" month of access. My reply - no thanks. Then he offered a second "free" month of access. Again I declined their offer and asked for my money back. Their response - we have a "no refunds policy" for this site. It turns out that the magic word for them to see it my way was "chargeback," As soon as I mentioned I would have to take that option the no refunds site decided to refund my money. I always take screenshots when I join or cancel a site just for situations like this. I've had billing problems before and I'm sure I'll have them again. But in my experience if you join a Mindgeek/Probiller site you're almost guaranteed to experience some of the sleaziest business practices known to mankind. [Link]
LegendaryOverfiend Member 137 Posts 6/18	Posted - Aug 5 2021 : 7:23AM Thankfully when I joined Brazzers and additional sites in their porn portal I had the download option included at least with the majority of their sites, so I don't have to deal with an upgrade price, but then again I don't download anyway. Also, I am subscribed through EPOCH, so no billing problems yet and even if i cancel it should go smooth as butter, cause I never had issues with them. Edited by - LegendaryOverfiend on 8/5/2021 7:23:55 AM [Link]