charged for a change of url without any indication that the action was billable

  • Unknown's avatar
    zaxisred · Member ·

    I have a free wordpress account. I wanted to change my url ‘stopcalexpo.wordpress.com’ for access to my site to something more useful. I followed the procedure to do so. At no time in the process was I informed there was any charge for doing this. Indeed, at the point I was entering the new url, the sidebar indicated that the change was ‘free with this plan’. Since my plan is the free plan, and I hadn’t changed that, it was reasonable to assume the change of url was free. Later, after I made the change successfully, I got a notification that I was being billed $48 for the change. If there is a charge for the change, then I wish my url to be restored to its former url, if that’s what needs to be done. I do not want to be referred to refund, as the chat agent did, as I don’t intend to pay for something I never agreed to buy.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Changing a free example.wordpress.com address does not cost anything. You can find the steps for making this change here:

    Change a Site Address

    You have already changed stopcalexpo.wordpress.com to redsportal.wordpress.com, and you have not been charged anything.

    If a Personal Plan was added to your cart, it’s because at some point you tried to add a custom domain name instead of just changing the free address. Custom domains are a paid upgrade, and require purchase of a paid plan to use on WordPress.com.

    If you’re still seeing a notice in your dashboard that you have an incomplete purchase in your cart, just click on that notice and remove the plan and domain from the cart, and that notice will go away.

  • Unknown's avatar
    zaxisred · Member ·

    Kokkieh, can’t thank you enough for clearing this up. As you advised, I removed the item from the cart and it seems to have disappeared. Yes, It was likely I unintentionally (ignorantly) ordered a custom url in the process of figuring out how to just change my existing primary url. It’s been years since I used my WP account, and things have changed considerably since then (for the better I hope). The experience has taught me a few things, and in the spirit of helping improve the process, I’ll make a few suggestions you might discuss with your colleagues:

    — Nothing that has a fee associated with it should be put in the cart without first asking a user if they wish to put the item in their cart. Of course that should come with a brief description of what they are paying for and the price. Amazon is a good model for avoiding such mistakes and unintentional purchases.

    — the cart itself needs to have a very visible button ‘Remove from Cart’ on each item, so that we can cancel before approving a purchase. The little 8pt ‘cancel’ link over the item is insufficient. A user is likely to miss that or not quite know what it means (as in my case). And cart items need a clear description of exactly what is being purchased its terms and the price (which, if I recall, is now provided in aggregate).

    — finally, WP is complex and navigating through particular features can be confusing and difficult, especially for us non-geek users and dummies. It does do a good job in providing tutorials, and the tutorials are often very good. Still, it would help greatly, if similar actions were presented on a single page (linked from our home adm site) where one could choose and link to the action they wanted from a list of possibilities. For example, all the actions related to changing, transferring, redirecting,… urls, domains, email addys, and the like might be described and linked on a single page where we could see all the options related to domain and address management and choose the one most related to our needs (with those that are free distinguished from those that have associated fees, of course). That would have prevented the mistake I made in distinguishing between ‘customized’ changes and a simple url change for my.
    site.

    just a few ideas to consider and discuss among yourselves. Thanks again for helping out. I can plunge back into this WP jungle now, and see how many more mistakes I can make. :)

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