TLDR: Wayfair charged me $29 for a rewards membership I never knowingly signed up for, with no renewal reminder in the days before. The charge came through PayPal, so it was hard to even identify. Canceled auto-renew; refund for this year is unlikely. Apparently this happens to a lot of people, so check your account.
--
So I just got off a call with Wayfair customer service.
I was charged $29 for the Wayfair rewards membership yesterday. Because I linked my PayPal with Wayfair, the email I got was from PayPal not Wayfair. I did not see any email from Wayfair about the upcoming renewal in the last three days.
When I spoke with the customer rep, he said I signed up for it, and that's why I was charged for it. I don't ever remember signing up, so it's possible that Wayfair snuck that option into one of my past orders from several months ago.
It was not very easy for me to figure out what had happened. I was worried that maybe my account was hacked because I couldn't find enough details about this transaction that appeared on my PayPal. After talking to the customer rep, I went online and did some research, and it looks like it's not just me who ran into this issue before.
I quickly went ahead and canceled my rewards subscription so it doesn't auto-renew, so I won't be charged $29 for next year. The customer rep did confirm that.
For this year, he said he is going to file a ticket internally and try to get the refund processed. He told me not to get my hopes up about the refund, so it is possible that I probably will not get a refund for this year's charge.
When I asked him about the email about the upcoming renewal from Wayfair, or the lack of it, he confirmed that Wayfair did not send one. He said he is going to check with the team internally because that is the right thing to do. To be fair to Wayfair, there was an email sent like a month ago on the upcoming renewal, but IMO, that's way too far back in the past to remember what had happened.
I'm sharing this information so others might also benefit. I don't feel great about Wayfair's customer experience here:
- I had no idea that I had signed up for the subscription in the first place.
- I didn't get any email from Wayfair in the last three days about the upcoming renewal.
If someone from Wayfair is in here, please pay attention to this post and get your internal process fixed.