When I originally signed up at openBC I thought of it as supplement to my LinkedIn profile. Naow zey call zemselves XING and behave very correctly as a proper German company should.
At some point in 2009 I thought I should give the premium membership a try. However, I didn’t really use it though. Since it was supposedly a two-year membership, it would conveniently run it. Or would it? Well, it turns out it didn’t. And I am not the only one who got burned by this interesting business model of XING (dead links removed). When a mail – or more precisely an overdue notice – arrived in May I was genuinely surprised. Billing for what? It’s a subscription? Turns out it was and it turns out that XING goes to great lengths to hide this fact from the casual (paying!) customer. Neither the German nor the English version are very obvious in this respect.
To make it perfectly clear, they are in line with German law on this one, I had it checked with a lawyer.
Right after the overdue notice arrived I sent them my cancellation notice. No reply, except an automated receipt arrived until now. On Tuesday a second overdue notice arrived in my inbox. I’m supposed to pay the due amount plus € 4.95 in fees. When I asked back what about my cancellation of the membership I was told in an indignant tone that supposedly a reply was sent the day after my cancellation notice reached them (the contents of that mail were quoted inline). But what to expect of a company that doesn’t even sign their mail? The SMTP protocol is pretty strict about non-delivery of mail so I really can’t imagine they weren’t notified – because the mail was not delivered. BTW: exactly because they don’t sign their mail (such as I do with mine) I’m afraid that they will tell me after the following two years that their confirmation of my cancellation never happened or is invalid (this did not happen in the end). A company that treats its customers like that can’t be trusted.
Anyway, too late. They insist on my continued membership and instead of just having a dissatisfied (with their service) user now have a disgruntled one. The membership of course gets extended by the same amount of time I originally paid for: two years. Of course it would have been impossible to come to a mutual agreement and decrease the time, because that would have lowered their profits.
Thanks a bunch XING! I sincerely hope your service will be rewarded accordingly. I’ll certainly do my part. After all I now have a shiny new two years of premium membership before me. And I intend to make use of them this time.
First three digits of their bank account number? 419. Classy! So fitting … 
// Oliver
Hi all, I’m in the same troubles with my expired Premium Membership with Xing. In many country (Italy, France, etc.) the auto renewal must be explicitly signed when you sign a contract. I don’t know how to explain to these “unfair” gents that in such cases a reminder is mandatory. Was anybody able to solve the issue without paying a year more? Thx
Xing did the same to me, two years after trying it for a couple of days and ditching it, they claim that they can legally chase me for the debt for a service I didnt use. Most legitimate sites would notice that someone hasnt used the service and email them out of courtesy to let them know that they are about to be charged for a service they do not use and ask them whether they wish to continue. This needs challenging at the highest level.
Hi Andy,
I sent them this email and they delete the billing:
> Dear Xing Team,
>
> probably I missed condition 6.2 about the automatic renewal of the contract,
> but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one, who’s experience this bad
> circumstance.
>
> Actually it’s deeply unfair that You send out many birthday info and
> reminders about evevrything and no a single reminder that my subscription is
> about to expire. The most important social networks act transparently
> according to renewal conditions. With a prompt expiration reminder, I would
> surely cancelled my Premium account immediately.
>
> Please delete such billing and remove my Premium account.
I hope it can help you as well! 🙂
Hi Ulmer!
Did your mail solve the problem?
I experienced as people above and they want me to pay again and again and I am thinking to organize all the people whom they did this and sue them on court.
Elza
Hi Elza,
I don’t know if I was lucky or not, but yes, it did. Nevertheless, before getting their answer, I had thought to act legally and an advocate told me that such unconscionable clauses have to be *clearly checked* during the subscription (they haven’t!), otherwise every court can theoretically repeal them.
If you decide to sue them on court, I can provide their answer (that proves that they are able to cancel every invoice they issue!). All the best!
Hey guys
thanks so much for the comments on XING and its sharky business practices. I am going through the same thing, but am not going to give up. Automatic renewals? Honestly, I call it fraud. Ulmer your experience is amazing. I have tried to cancel, but they said too late because I should’ve cancelled eve before they sent me the invoice (!)
I am not going to be using XING anymore, but I want to get somewhere on this one and your help would be massively appreciated. Elza, could you please let us know how your issue finally ended?
Many thanks
@Marc: they can cancel whatever bill they want, ’cause they did it my case! for sure, “fraud” is the right label. Good luck!
Thanks very much, Ulmer. That’s so interesting, and they said the policy hasn’t changed for 8 years. Obviously, considering your experience there are some exceptions sometimes! I have just spoken to a member of a EU organisation to protect consumers and he used the word “dubious” to describe the practice employed here by XING. Currently checking the legal avenues I can pursue. Elza, where do you stand on this? Thanks
For the record, it seems that XING.COM continues this practice as I discovered to my dismay this week. I have noticed XING makes reference to their Premium renewal rates with financial analysists… Perhaps full disclosure should be explored among that community and with ZING’s financially-responsible parties.
Oh yes, it is still very much continuing. Happened to me this week. I asked them to cancel the invoice as a gesture of goodwill. They said “if you did not take the time to read the agreement then we of course cannot be held liable for your actions.” I have posted on Twitter about this with the tag #xingautorenewals. I suggest everyone else posts with the same tag. In the meantime I am going to see what UK Trading Standards says.
UKDave
really sorry to see you have been a victim of http://www.xing.com this networking website seems to be using their sharky business practices to make a few extra euros. With me the won in the short term but lost money in the long run as I deleted my account and not subscribing anymore. I talked to someone that works there and some people internally agreed it’s really poor business practice and have been trying to change it for 8 years, but the board does not want to.
best,
M
Hi Marc,
Sorry to hear that you “lost”. May I ask what happened when you looked into the legal options?
DaveM
I lost a few quid;they lost a costumer that had been with them for years, but clearly they were not bothered; it looks like what they are doing is not illegal; let’s say if you go and buy a bottle of milk, you should read the receipt they give you at the purchase (no matter how long it is) because it may be that just because you wanted to buy a bottle of milk today and you gave them your credit card, they will automatically assume you want to buy milk every day and charge you accordingly (if that’s written in the receipt or t&cs), whether you actually use the milk or not. If you change your credit card, they will call a collections agency.
That’s their rationale, and again, strictly speaking, apparently not illegal because you were aware of it as included in the middle of a rather long t&Cs document.
I have learnt from this one. Maybe that’s how German rationality works, who knows. They don’t seem to understand of “the spirit of the letter”, “business relationship” “brand loyalty” “online-reviews” or any of the concepts that most consumers in early 21st century will bear in mind for their everyday purchase. Very dangerous.
Good luck with them. My advice, is get away from them as much as you can.
M
Hi Marc,
Did you get as far as actually testing this in court or did you just decide it was not worth the hassle? I am thinking of paying the bill at next demand and then suing for a refund using the European Small Claims Procedure.
Having spoken to a consumers’ advisers body, I decided not to pursue. They did get a collections agency to chase me though. All in all was a waste of time.
good luck if you decide to pursue
Dear all,
Very glad to have found this blog about the dubious business practices and bullying customer service by the German social media company Xing.de
I’ve commented on Dave’s blog over here. http://autorenewals.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/premium-membership.html?showComment=1427545356958
I’d advise anyone considering joining the German social media service Xing http://www.xing.de to stay clear and go with LinkedIn instead.
In this day of social media and the interconnected world, they must surely understand that modern business is based on good customer relations, and news of poor practice will spread very quickly.
Presumably they are not interested expanding their service to the English-speaking world?
Autorenewal is one thing, but sending brutish debt collection letters because you stop using their service is quite another.
Wake up, Xing!
You have to PAY!! BEWARE of these automated unfair methods!
Original Xing Message:
Hey Nick, I edited the comment to put the quoted message into a block quote tag.
Also, it appears some people get lucky. Since I hadn’t kept the original ToS from before, I was out of luck. A lawyer I consulted told me they were in line with German law and so I paid. But it was the last time I paid and I removed my account as soon as I could.
Personally I’m of the opinion that this is a fraudulent business practice and I sincerely hope that prospect customers will be cautioned by this and other reports on their business practice. Thanks to everybody who commented.
btw: I also had respective remarks in my profile for the two forced additional years.
I have the same issue with XING, and they are extremely rude as well.
“Please keep in mind that if you fail to read and respond to our emails, we cannot proceed with the deletion of the account nor can we further assist you. We require your full cooperation and would hope that you would agree. So please recheck your records to include junk and spam folders and you will see that we have not ignored you in anyway.”
So, according to XING, its all my fault, and they are threatening me with legal action!
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER sign up to XING!
I have a problem with XING Premium Membership…they tricked me to some FREE Membership period, which i did cancelled on time, but i STILL got an invoice.
Please tell me , if i´ve chosen paypal as the payment method, can they press charges against me? ??Because they´ve stated here ” XING S.à r.l. shall not process your data in any other cases, including if you choose a payment method other than credit card.”
If you use any of XING’s paid services, XING will collect and use your billing details such as your credit card or bank details for billing and payment purposes. If you select credit card as your method of payment and pay with your MasterCard or Visa credit card (not American Express), XING S.à r.l. shall process your billing data along with any other details required for billing purposes (e.g. name and billing address). In such cases, XING AG and XING S.à r.l. shall process your data in accordance with applicable Luxembourg law, in particular the Law of 2 August 2002 on the Protection of Persons with regard to the Processing of Personal Data. XING S.à r.l. shall not process your data in any other cases, including if you choose a payment method other than credit card. To the extent required, your billing details are sent to, collected and processed by service providers such as credit card companies in order to process payments. Your billing details are saved in order to process payments for automatic user account extensions.
SO, since i´ve chosen paypal as a payment method, is there any chance for them to press charges on me?
Hi all
Unfortunately this is standard German business practice, not just Xing; and it sucks. Happens on this, any other web subscription service, mobile phone contracts (even where you do not get a phone from them) .. anything. Worse, usually you have to actually send them a letter to cancel not just an email. Great hey? Sign up online, cancel via snail mail. What amazes me is that Germans still accept this.
Hey Paul, not sure what experiences in particular you refer to. But even to me as a German (once again living in Germany now), this (i.e. Xing’s) is a pretty shady business practice and from my point of view still the exception. But yes, a lot of things require dead trees in Germany. However, as you may have noticed if you enter a contract with a mobile phone provider or ISP, you will still get dead tree mail which contains all details and due to provisions in German law you may cancel within 14 days. It is also true that for a contract you don’t have to sign anything. IIRC (but mind that this may have changed meanwhile), at some point it was sufficient to know the name, birth date and account number – don’t remember whether the current address was also required, though.
In the strictest sense even you buying bread rolls with cash in the bakery means you enter a contract with the baker 🙂 … it’s mind-boggling to compare the world of attorneys and judges with the real world. English has the term Legalese for it, but in German we also have a few terms covering the not so common sense world view of those people.
You can always try to fight for your right, of course. But despite shady business practices like those of Xing, I think they’re pretty safe when looking at this from the legal perspective. Unfortunately. And I really hope this will come back at them to bite them.
XING are a terrible company. I’ve been fighting with them over a Premium Membership charge since 2008. They’ve now resorted to only sending emails in German. I’ve not paid and I won’t be paying but it did mean that I had to cancel my credit card and report XING as posting fraudulent transactions. They might not be breaking the law but they’re damn close… If you’re German wanting to socialize with other Germans and you’re happy to pay for that isolation then use XING. For the rest of the world there’s LinkedIn…
Unfortunately despite their fraudulent, albeit apparently still legal, practices, this company is gaining traction. It sucks, but it seems that consumer rights advocates are needed.
If you want to, you may get in touch with me over those German emails they send. Of course if you don’t care at all, there’d be no point.
MY premium membership was also prolonged without me knowing it. Because they send tons of emails everyday I even overlooked the reminders for payment, but one of them caught my eye. I tried to rationalise with them but with no luck. They finally downgraded my account to basic and I thought that maybe it did work! A few week ago though I got a letter from their lawyer – the due amount doubled :). On complaining about their practices again, I got an angry email from their customer rep telling me that I should have paid in the first place because it would have been the right thing to do rather than try to shrink responsibility – their employees are really committed to the cause and as you see not only do they send longish emails to show you that there is no way out other than paying up, but they also try to preach… Interesting bunch of people.
Hello,
I am based in France and I have exactly the same issue and I am willing to setup a legal action against Xing based on the European regulation, make them cancel their action and give some visibility on their abusive behavior in Germany.
If you are in the same case, please contact me at : xingabuse(at)gmx.com
Best regards
Very interesting what you people complain about when it is actually your own fault. I also was once a victim here, but when I reviewed the facts I soon realized that it was my own fault as I agreed to have read the terms and conditions which states how the whole process works.
Even when you choose a term it clearly states that the contract will be renewed for another term unless cancelled at least 3 weeks prior to the renewal date. This is a very common practice these days with alots of companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Watchever etc. All companies present the information for the user to read and it is therefore your responsibility to read the information that these companies provided. If you do not read the information, then sorry this is just your own fault and stupidity.
So please stop trashing all these companies for your own lack of attention and grow up and take resposibility for your actions. If you did not want to use the service any longer then you should have informed them of that instead of assuming it will just stop on its own. What kind of service does that? I am sure you would be highly pissed off if your mobile or cable provider shut off your service if you did not use it after a few days or weeks. So why would you expect any other company such as XING to stop your service without your consent????
It is also your choice to choose what emails and notifications you receive from a company. I also received lots of emails from XING and eventually got tired of them. I later realized that this also was my fault as I could choose in my settings what notifications I wanted to receive, so make the changes yourself rather than making the excuse they send too many emails. They are only sending the emails you agreed for them to be sending….
All in all people these days needs to stop forcing companies to always do what the customer wants, I have news for you all… the customer is not always right, in most cases the customer is the problem and I would never personally cover the cost of one of my customers for a mistake they made or their failure to read the agreement.
I hope my thoughts help some of you improve your ways of thinking and hope that all of you will avoid such cases in the future and learn from your mistakes.
Nice case of victim blaming, “Chad”.
Hmm, comparing apples and oranges, are we? With Netflix and Watchever I subscribe for another single month. With Xing it’s a tad bit longer.
Also small hint: we all paid for our mistakes and if Xing or you – for all I know you may be working for them – think that we pay and shut up about this shitty business model, well … here’s an advice you just gave us right back at you: grow up!
I learned from my mistakes and better yet, I shared the information. Period.
Posting from Chad reads like written by an employee of XING… Arrogant and customer hating… Chad if you were comparing Apples with Oraanges you’d have mentioned LinkedIn… You didn’t because LinkedIn treat their customers better than XING and look at how successful LinkedIn are compared to XING… Not a coincidence… Also the point you make re email settings is wrong. XING don’t send out renewal email warnings whatever your settings are… If XING treated customers fairly they would…
@Philip: don’t know, maybe they send out such noticed these days? I wouldn’t know, because from my perspective the business relationship ended with the forced renewal.
And by the way, it’s possible that they adjusted their terms of service as well. It would explain this wildly different experience “Chad” had with them. When I re-read the terms of service upon forced renewal it also became clear that it’s likely legal, “Chad”. In fact I wrote this in my blog post. Problem is that it was in no way obvious. And what the lawyer told me was that this would not be a waterproof case against them, so I decided to pay them instead of a lawyer, essentially. However, in Germany there’s also a rule that stuff that is not obvious or outright surprising – which is obviously a rather stretchy term – must not be hidden in terms of service (AGB), because most people don’t read them until the end anyway.
@Oliver: From the thread I have read not all have paid their invoices. Working for them? I wish so that I could assist in making it better.
They still do not send out reminders as I have not received one for any of my renewals and my account renews every quarter. Of course this is not a nice approach, but alot of companies do business in this manner and we they never agreed to send me a notification to remind me of the renewal. My gym does the same damn thing and I am forced to pay for another year if not cancelled in time, but of course I paid close attention after my experience with XING and one other online company.
@Philip: Why would I mentioned LinkedIn when I do not even use their service, I would only refer to site that I use and now how they work.
It is intersting that you go out of my message that I said XING sends renewal email warning as I never said that at all, no wonder so many of us makes mistake as we only see and hear what we want or expect and not the facts.
Here is a copy of what I actually said:
It is also your choice to choose what emails and notifications you receive from a company. I also received lots of emails from XING and eventually got tired of them. I later realized that this also was my fault as I could choose in my settings what notifications I wanted to receive, so make the changes yourself rather than making the excuse they send too many emails. They are only sending the emails you agreed for them to be sending.
The main point and lesson here is to pay attention and read the fine prints for things you and I buy.
I will not comment further as I do not want to flood Olivers blog with nonsense we now have no control over.
@Chad: thanks for the response. No worries, I think as long as you don’t post megabytes of text it’ll all be fine 😉
Hi all,
I have recently experienced the same thing. Apparently they did send me some reminders (which I never received, at least by post) and one day I received a letter asking me to pay 100 Euros for a year renewal that I don’t want. I never understood I was in debt with them. I simply find Xing useless and I didn’t want to renew. My bad for not understanding.
Only 2 days after I receive this letter I got an email from a debt collection agency asking me to pay the 100 (precisely 102.35 Euros) plus 80.62 Euros for their fees, interest, reminder cost and communications.
Outraging.
So something I don’t use is going to cost me 182.97 Euros.
Have anyone of you tried not paying the collection agency but only paying the original Xing invoice? Have anyone succeed in complaining about this?
Thank you!
Check with a lawyer. But it seems unusual that they should start so early and without reminders about you already being late with a past payment.
I think you can complain with them as much as you want. They’ll hardly give in, given it’s seemingly part of their business model.
Had the same problem today. In fact XING sent me a bill the same day as they debited my account via Paypal. I complained to Paypal and they reimbursed the money. ” months later I have a bill from a lawyer demanding 182 Euros. Has anyone found out what happens if you don’t pay. ?
I have had a similar problem to the people above. Has anyone fought them yet in a court?
I signed up to the Premium membership and used a Visa debit card to pay.
I was sent a paper mail informing me the payment had not been processed. So I changed the payment card to a Mastercard.
Today I received a hundred euro fine for non-payment.
I’m trying to get through to Xing or their lawyers KSP.de but nobody will talk to me about this.
Oh, so I see this is a thing. I just got screwed too. I was trying to cancel my membership (of course I didn’t notice the 3 week notice period they wrote with tiny letters) and I thought it is a matter of a click like on LinkedIn but no. I wrote an email asking how I can cancel and was told I missed the 3 week notice period and will have to get one more 3 month period….. today they booked almost 120 EUR, twice as much as I paid for the same period before this.
Beware of Xing Premium Scam !!! XING BETRUG; Xing Abzocke!
Last year I subscribed to Xing Premium on an offer. One year later Xing sent me an invoice asking to pay that for my renewal. I said to them that I do not see value on this membership and asked to stop the membership. Xing did not accept that, they told me that I had to send them an email 3 MONTHS BEFORE!!!! in order to cancel the membership. No reminder email was sent to me! When I refused they put a lawyers office to hunt me and now asked double the value of the membership. BE AWARE XING IS SCAM. DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE. XING BETRUG, Xing Premium betrug. Automatische Verlängerund der Xing Premium Mietgliedschaft. XING ABZOCKE, Achtung, Achtung, Achtung.
You can submit your complaints against Xing here:
http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/solving_consumer_disputes/non-judicial_redress/adr-odr/index_en.htm
Same issue, this company is a complete scam. Without any form of notification whatsoever they just charged my card. I found the charge a month late, and there is apparently no way to contact this firm. No email, no support via the website, no phone number – at least not that I can locate. I hope this company dies a quick death, they certainly are not operating an ethical business.
We are in 2016 and five years after the topic was open, XING continues to make victims. They took from me a new automatic payment even if I enable in account setup to cancel automatically subscription. (Now they remove this option)
Even if I work in this area, this proves that the Internet is still a jungle and the big ones can make their own rules. There is still no Internet Police or someone to impose some strict rules in order to continue a business.
Hi guys,
did somebody try to cancel the profile right after the request of payment?
I’ve just got the invoice with request of payment for the premium renewal as they couldn’t get it from the credit card added in the system 1 year ago (fortunately expired).
Am excluding to pay for that and am requesting them to delete my profile as am not longer interested to be a member. That means they would ask money for 1 year subscription to a person that is not even a member on their website….
Any suggestions? It looks like most of the people here gave up.
p.s. am not German and don’t live in Germany – if it helps anyway..
Xing are idiots. The world is really hating LinkedIn now and Xing us a very credible competitor. But build a business around picking up unhappy LinkedIn users of no… Instead they just want everyone to hate them by endlessly threatening legal action against the few users they have.
Xing are morons…
I have the same issue, except I updated my details when I left my last company but for some reason they didn’t save. I know this is xing’s fault as when I eventually managed to reach them to ask about my premium membership I had to try twice more to change my details before it worked.
In the mean time unbeknown to me they had rolled over payment, not been able to collect and sent to a debt collection company who are now lumping on charges and threatening me with court.
Ironically I need to use xing, want to pay my membership but they won’t let me. I now have to pay the debt collection agency near double my premium membership price. I have had to call, email and try to contact them via live chat quite a few times – guess what – in this German international law firm no one speaks English when you call them to discuss. Xing don’t want to know anymore, even though I am trying to pay them they just ignore me.
Hello All,
I having the same issues. This is what I have sent there lawyer recently after speaking to a lawyer in the UK.
None of our observation and questions raised have been addressed.
Paragraph
7.3 does not say WHEN that 3 weeks’ notice has to be served and indeed paragraph – Please advise
7.1 says notice to terminate can be served at any time. – Please advise
7.6 breaches the provisions in the German Civil Code relating to unfair contract terms. Under section 307 of that Code, “a term will automatically be unfair and void if its effect is to put an unreasonable disadvantage on the other party”. Xing clearly works within the German – Please advise
We looking forward to your clarification on the above points I will then pass this information on to our legal advocate.
You will clearly advise your client as you see fit we will be also be guided by the advice we have given and will not be pressure in to a forced payment deadline
Lets see if they now take me to court or send to a debt recovery agency. Has anyone tried this is in a court of law yet?
We have stop this dubious practise once and for all.
I am facing the same situation!! Thanks for sharing your experience, I hope my complaint works…
Hi guys
I have just received an invoice for another year at twice the price of last year. About 90.
Same as before I don’t want the membership but they say I still have to pay. Has anyone been successful with getting out of this? It is such a scam. I find the site pretty useless tbh. The card on my account has expired thankfully and I no longed love in Germany if I was to return will they be able to chase me at a new address, have access to my bank account or will it affect my schufa? Obviously I don’t want to pay these scammers but don’t want it to haunt me. Has anyone fought them and won? Thanks
Would be great to hear if anyone has got out of it
I have the same problem. at begining i paid the premium for half year from 07, DEC 16 to 06, Jun 17 , 70,34 €. unfortunatey i missed to cancel it and get new one invoice for another half year till 06. Dec. 17, but with amount 209,70 €. i can not understand why this half year increase so much. From August, I get KSP email and post. and the invoice changed from 209,70 € to 300 € . I really want to fxxx Xing. how can i handle this, must i pay this money to this fraud company.