Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/20/2024

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I signed up with Tailwind in 2017 but only used the service for less than 6 months. I paid for the year in advance but didnt realize they automatically set me up on an auto renewal subscription. Last year (2023) is when I finally caught it on my credit card statement. So I emailed the company to tell them that I didnt realize I was still being charged for this service and to please cancel and refund me as I do not use their service anymore. I didnt get any response. I also tried calling but they do not have a working phone number available. This year I got another charge that I did not authorize. So again, tried calling but the phone number online is not a functioning number. I emailed them and got a response that they do not offer any refunds and didnt even ask to help me cancel my subscription as I found it to be challenging to find where to cancel on their website. They make it super difficult. Usually companies send you email statements when youve been charged. But Tailwind doesnt do that. They even increased their plan prices recently and continue to use shady practices by disguising their emails as promotional emails knowing most people will not take the time to read them. Also, my credit card on file expired in 2020 and somehow they were able to find a way to continue charging me. The thing that is most frustrating is that they wont even refund me for the most recent charge which most other companies will do if you contact them within 30 days of the charge. But Tailwind will not reimburse no matter what. They are all too happy to take your money knowing that these mistakes are going to happen. Its obvious that part of their business model includes taking advantage of people who dont read every piece of junk mail that ends up in their inbox. Its a shame they are so unethical and difficult to work with.

  Business Response

  Date: 06/06/2024

  Hi Crystal, 
  
  I just reviewed your complaint and the details. While the initial refund request was denied for being outside of our 14 day refund window (the refund window required by the **** once you added additional details about the circumstance, the customer support employee escalated it to the manager and the manager immediately gave you a refund for the last charge in full. (It's not possible to refund credit card charges that are more than 120 days old).
  
  Regarding the auto-renewal, whenever you upgrade, we say in multiple places (on our website and in the confirmation email) that this subscription auto-renews, as most online subscriptions do. Regarding your credit card expiring in 2020 and still getting charged with your new credit card, that's because your credit card provider offers a feature called "Auto-Updater." With this enabled, the credit card company will automatically provide new credit card information to your subscription services so that they don't get canceled on you unexpectedly. This is meant to be a convenient feature, but if you do not want them to do that, you would need to call the company and ask them to disable this. 

  I'm not sure where you're seeing our phone number at -- we removed it years ago from our website when we chose to only provide online chat and email support. If you can let us know where you're seeing it, I'll make sure my team gets that removed. I'm sorry about the confusion and frustration we clearly caused there with a non-working number.

  BBB does not deliver these complaints to us immediately, so I'm guessing you wrote this before we issued the refund. I do want to emphasize that we absolutely are not trying to trick people, and we're quite up front about the auto-renewing subscription, and we have no control over your credit card company automatically updating your credit card for your subscription services. If I can do anything else, please let us know.
  
  *****

• Initial Complaint

  Date:08/24/2023

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  Hello,I signed up for a trial to test this software with an educational course partnered with the company in August 2021. The educational system provided a code for a free trial + a discount to use the product for a month. Me and many others signed up to use it along with the education course. At the end, I canceled my account to not continue with the service because I did not need it after the month course ended. The company has proceeded to unauthorized bill my account for the last three years without me knowing. I only JUST found out from rechecking my credit card and caught the charge which I was surprised to see since I had not logged into this account and had it cancelled three years ago. They claim on their website they constantly email their customers about the billing to give them a chance to cancel. I have not received 1 notification of the "reoccurring" charge or a confirmation email I was charged. I checked my entire inbox, and all the company sends me is emails about their promotionsnothing about billing. When I finally found the old account log-in, I saw my card was expired in their system, and they insisted on billing me. I checked email notifications, and somehow, they conveniently had "billing" notifications on my account turned off. Why would anyone want this turned off????When I aimed to cancel my account and delete it, the articles for account deletion and cancellation were non-existent and came up with error codes. They removed these articles to keep people from being able to delete their accounts and get their credit card info out of their system. I feel like I was stolen from a shady business, and despite CANCELLING after the education course, they CONTINUED to bill me just because they had my credit card info. I want all three years refunded since I have not used the service AT ALL. I tried to reach out by email, and they refused to help me. I feel like their business model is to steal from their users.

  Customer Answer

  Date: 08/24/2023

  I want to additionally add that I tried to be in touch with the company regarding the refund and notifying me about this unauthorized billing. They claim to send reminders via email. They sent a screenshot of the email I received as their reminder for this reoccurring billing which I never authorized in the first place. The billing reminder mail is hidden under an email that is similar to a marketing email to disguise the fact they are billing you AGAIN. I posted a copy of it here. I did some research on how subscription companies are using dark patterns and strategies to guise their reoccurring subscription ******** so their customers do not see the billing patterns and it goes unnoticed for years. If I would of had an honest and clear reminder of their reoccurring billing cycle that was clear, I would of cancelled before the 1st payment was ever made. Based on how they send their "reminder emails" they are using the same shady guise to hide their billing reminders under the guise of a simple marketing or profile update email which is wrong and unethical.I believe with more digging there might be some laws against this type of practice.
  

  *******************************************************************************************************************************************

  I also asked the company to confirm they are cancelling this account and deleting my credit card information which was expired anyway, no idea how they were able to still use my credit information. They have stopped responding to me regarding confirmation that this account will be stopped and deleted, which I requested for them to do.
  

  Business Response

  Date: 08/25/2023

  Hi ******, 
  
  I checked with my team about this. It looks like are team had already refunded you for your renewal this month. I wanted to clarify a coulpe of things.
  
  When you originally signed up, you selected an annual plan and not a monthly one, and those renew every twelve months. My best guess as to what happened here is that you may not have completed the cancelation flow, which I know I've personally done by mistake with my own subscription services. While your credit card did expire at one point, you currently have a credit card provider that auto updates the new credit card information with subscription services to prevent service outages. You can contact them to prevent them from doing this on your behalf.  We also do have functioning articles that explain how to cancel. Here's a link to one, and as noted at this link, it was last updated a month ago (before you tried to visit it), and we've always had articles that explain how to do this. Here's the link: 
  
  *************************************************************************************************************************
  
  While I don't know exactly what happened when you tried to find this information on your side, I do what to clarify that this is not something we try to hide.
  
  While we are unable to refund your charge for August 2022 because of restrictions imposed by credit card companies for charges over 120 days ago, your 2023 charge was refunded in full. I understand that charges like this are frustrating to uncover, but I do what to emphasize that we're transparent that our service auto-renews, we strive to provide a clear cancelation process with instructions in our knowledge base, and we offer optional billing notices like receipt emails alongside our in-app statements to help with managing the service. 
  
  Best,
  *****

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/31/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I purchased a year subscription to Tailwind in 2021. I used the service for a few months but then stopped using the service. I did not realize that I was on a recurring subscription and on October 7th was charged $193 I reached out to the merchant explaining that I did not know that I was subscribed and asked for a refund for the payment. They refused to give me a refund. I contacted my credit card company to file a dispute and they were not able to help. They suggested that I contact BBB to assist with the resolution for this issue.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/31/2022

  Hi ******, 
  
  Thanks for reaching out. When you first sign up to our subscription service for our annual plan, we do alert our members that auto-renewal is the default setting, and that subscriptions must be canceled. Although we have a no refund policy if the software is working as expected, I checked in on your issue with my team, and I'm seeing that one of our managers did agree to offer to refund 50% of the charge prior to issuing this complaint to the BBB, although I'm not sure if you saw their email yet. It may take up to a few days before it posts to your bank account. I hope that meeting partway is sufficient and that you're able to continue to use Tailwind for your business in the future.
  
  Best,
  
  *****

  Customer Answer

  Date: 11/01/2022

  
  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  

  While Tailwind did offer a "50% refund" they did downgrade my account to the free plan. So they removed the plan from my account and still elected to charge me 50% of the membership fee. I am now also involving the consumer protection agency as Tailwind has not only charged my credit card but also is rendering no service. 

  
  Sincerely,
  
  ***************************

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/13/2022

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I've been a Tailwind subscriber for years, and it's always been buggy. Since January 2022, Ive had the hardest time getting my Tailwind extension to work reliably. Ive literally spent hours emailing back and forth with Tailwind Support. (At one point the support guy was so frustrated with the problem that he emailed me a gif of a crying baby. It was funny at the time, but not exactly professional). I eventually gave up on getting the extension to work and just decided not to renew my subscription for the next year. But- it auto-renewed without my doing anything, so I got a charge for $513 on my card on October 3rd, 2022. Seemed like an easy correction to fix, but it wasn't. Tailwind doesnt give refunds under any circumstances. So Im out five hundred bucks for a service I dont want anymore and cant use with my browser even if I did. They actually acknowledged that the browser extension didnt work, but only offered me $30 for my troubles. I've emailed back and forth about this refund request, and they are refusing to remove the charge of $513 from my credit card, even though their product is defective. I hope that the BBB can facilitate a resolution to this situation, and I also hope that other consumers understand that there are no refunds at this company, regardless of the situation.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/14/2022

  Hi *****, 
  
  ******** raised your situation to me yesterday before this complaint was issued, and given the circumstances of your situation, particularly with issues surrounding the product working as expected, I asked that she offer a full refund to you, and also offer you additional service at no cost as we work to fix the portion of the product that was not functioning. I'm sorry you didn't get better support out of the gate on this one - thank you for bringing it to our attention. Please let us know if we can do anything else in the meantime. 
  
  Best,
  
  ***********************

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/17/2022

   
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *********************

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/07/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I signed up with Tailwind in Oct 2021 to try their product for my small business pinterest account. I noticed really quickly that it wasn't something I wanted to use so after a few days I never signed in again. I let the 2021 charge go even though i probably shouldve requested a partial refund then. Anyway yhe business was closed months ago, website and email addresses were all deactivated. I noticed the annual charge on my credit card for Tailwind in Oct 2022 and at first couldn't login to cancel. Once I was able to I requested a for 2022 only and have been refused despite me never logging in ever or any usage on the account. I never received any reminder emails or anything. I feel robbed of over $300 CAD. And I think it's unjust that they're able to charge ppl on recurring subscription when the emails were obviously bouncing and no one is receiving. They can see that no one has logged and there is no activity. So they're basically making money off ghost accounts. And it's not like this charge happened months ago. I contacted them the week the charge went through as soon as I noticed. This doesn't feel right. And I know they know it isn't right.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/10/2022

  Hi *******,
  
  Thanks for elaborating on your situation, and I'm sorry it wasn't handled better when you initially wrote in. Although we do have a no refunds policy, I understand that you're in a unique situation here without a business to use our platform with and an extended period of inactivity. I've just fully refunded your charge, which you should see posted to your bank account within 3 business days. I hope this addresses the complaint in a satisfactory manner. Please let us know if we can do anything else for you in the future.

  
  Best,
  
  ***********************

• Initial Complaint

  Date:09/28/2022

  Type:Sales and Advertising Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  On 09/22/2022 I was charged $155.88 for annual subscription renewal for Tailwind. I did not know the charge was coming as I had not been using Tailwind for nearly a year. I saw the charge on 09/26/2022 and contacted Tailwind support to explain that I do not want this service and would like a refund. Their service representative informed me that they wouldn't be issuing me a refund. They even charged it to an expired credit card! I'm shocked that they won't just refund me so I can delete my Tailwind account and move on with my life.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/05/2022

  A full refund was provided to this customer before we received this message from the BBB. The refund was issued on the 29th of September for the full amount. I hope this is considered to be reasonably resolved by the customer. Thank you!

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/07/2022

   
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ***************************