Double Charging for Over a Year – No Evidence of Subscription, Inadequate Refund Offer

[magabim]

I hold a Premium Individual account in Australia, and I recently discovered that Spotify has been double charging me every month for over a year.

One charge is applied to my active Premium account (linked to my Gmail address, which contains all my playlists and activity). The other charge was applied to a secondary account linked to an Apple private relay email address that I never knowingly subscribed to, never used, and which contains no playlists or activity.

Despite my requests, Spotify has not provided any evidence that I ever subscribed to this secondary account — no confirmation emails, no agreements, and no proof of consent.

Spotify has acknowledged that the secondary account was never used. Yet, instead of doing the only fair thing — issuing a full refund of all double charges — they have offered only a token refund of one month (later updated to one month plus two free months), while keeping the rest of the money charged unfairly for over a year.

This is unacceptable. Charging customers twice for a service, acknowledging one account was never used, but then refusing to refund the full amount is not only unfair but raises serious concerns about Spotify’s billing practices.

Furthermore, in my case, Spotify never notified me of monthly charges nor provided clear invoicing notices. This made it impossible for me to identify duplicate charges until now. This lack of transparency raises serious concerns, that may constitute both misleading conduct and an unfair practice, and it has only compounded the problem.

I have already escalated this with Spotify directly, but unless a full refund of all double charges is provided, I will be submitting a formal complaint to the relevant consumer protection authorities in Australia.

I’m sharing this here because I think it’s important for the community to know that this can happen.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps shed light on an issue that really shouldn’t be happening.

[magabim]

Since posting the above, Spotify support has now stopped responding to my emails altogether. This is incredibly unprofessional and only reinforces the impression that Spotify is not a trustworthy company.

I have now formally submitted complaints to both the ACCC and NSW Fair Trading.

On top of this, contacting Spotify’s live chat support has been utterly useless. It feels like hitting a brick wall — assistants keep transferring the chat from one person to another, and each time the conversation restarts from the beginning, creating an endless loop without resolution.

At this stage, Spotify’s handling of the issue has been deeply disappointing, both in terms of transparency and customer service.