The Legitimacy of VPN Service Refunds

The VPN industry is exceedingly competitive. For any given VPN provider, it is hard to stand out from other providers in a tough industry. As a result, companies vie against each other, hoping to acquire customers on the basis of some USP capable of giving competitive advantage over others.

The tradition of refund policies began in the VPN industry from only a few providers at first that were confident in their service enough to offer money-back guarantee for a week or so. As other providers followed suit in order to catch up with their competition, companies that were offering 7-day money-back guarantees extended it to 2-weeks so that they could preserve their USP.

The upshot of this cat-and-mouse game is that a lot of VPNs today offer a money-back guarantee, with some of the most popular brands in the industry offering a full-month refund period.

But how legit are these guarantees?

This is a difficult question to answer because every customer has a different experience to share when it comes to receiving refunds from a VPN provider.

Yet, I think the legitimacy of a VPN’s refund and cancellation policy can be judged from the ease of refund request process in place. Some providers are happy to announce their money-back guarantee but don’t specify how a user may request a refund.

However, some providers do an excellent job and make refund processing super easy for customers. One of the best examples is NordVPN. As this guide on NordVPN cancellation shows, you can directly cancel your subscription from your user panel, and then go on to make a refund request using live chat or email support.

In contrast to NordVPN, many providers don’t even offer you the option to cancel your subscription directly yourself. Instead, you can only do so by contacting customer support, which is often not even available through live chat support. As a result, you can expect significant delays for the whole process to commence and complete, if at all.

Therefore, if you want to judge if a provider actually stands by their money-back guarantees, taking a look at their refund and cancellation process can be helpful. If the process appears straight-forward and easy to perform, chances are good that the provider will take your refund request seriously. On the other hand, if the process seems convoluted and designed to frustrated users rather than facilitate them, then remember that the VPN industry is huge and your options are plenty.