Complaint Review: BetterHelp - Sunnyvale California

On June 20th, 2018, I discovered BetterHelp through a well-known YouTube content creator Aaron Marino or "alpha m". Both Marino's and BetterHelp's initial advertisement stated weekly payments of $65 USD, along with financial support, which I did seek to utilize. Upon registration of the membership, which was done when I replied to my assigned counselor concerning my issues, $214.64 CAD was immediately withdrawn from my bank account. Unfortunately, payment was done through a debit card, which meant that I couldn't cancel the transaction nor reverse it through my bank. Upon realization of being charged such an incredibly high lump sum payment, I decided to cancel my membership, and before I did that, I even contacted my assigned counselor. The reason being is that I have heard from other complaints that they supposedly needed their counselor to provide them with a special URL in order to complete the cancellation of counselling services. I personally didn't have to go through any of that because I simply hit the cancel membership option within the settings option on the website's user interface. In addition, this was the message I received from my assigned counselor after I messaged him that I wish to cancel these services:

Hello Steven, I completely understand. I believe the charge represents a full months of service? You will need to speak directly with the customer service team to resolve this, unfortunately, I do not have any access to patient financial or subscription information. Please know that you are always welcome here in the future if you decide the cost is worthwhile. I am here for you. Best Andy   I am a university student and money is incredibly tight for me, so to see $214.64 CAD withdrawn from my bank account just like that was devastating! I thought I was only paying on a weekly basis, and not much to my surprise, many other complaints towards this company are very similar if not exactly identical to my own complaints. That is, we all ultimately felt misled by how the company was advertising the billing information, and indeed it was very confusing upon registration. As the saying goes, "the devil is in the fine print", which it clearly is in this case. After my registration, only then was I able to see a visible statement regarding a monthly charge, but I still didn't see an immediate upfront charge, which again, many people who have submitted their credit card information to BetterHelp has experienced.   My request is a full refund of the entire $214.64 CAD that I personally felt was withdrawn under circumstances that were unauthorized, especially since not one bit of counselling service was provided.

In addition, I would like to make it clear that I do not indeed to utilize any of BetterHelp's services during the duration of the month, as I wish to use this in my argument for a full refund, and not a counter argument by the company saying something along the lines like, "we cannot issue you a full refund because you have used our services significantly", or something like that. Had I known that I would have made a lump sum payment on the spot, I would have never have even submitted my debit card information to this company.