Why was I charged twice? Can I get my money back?

Today's online banking and commerce services are a lot more intelligent than they ever used to be.  Any instance of double-charging will often be because a service has tried to recoup a payment it thinks is missing.  Note that we will ALWAYS refund duplicate payments if this happens.  Simply contact us and we'll put it right (see bottom of this page).

The common causes of a duplicate payment:

Past-due accounts

If your account falls 'past-due' (ie our subscriptions service provider (Recurly) tried to take payment for a subscription but funds weren't available or the payment method was no longer valid, it still keeps the subscription open, attempting to take payment for a further couple of weeks.  If you didn't cancel the subscription in your account settings, Recurly then thinks this is an unpaid charge if it ultimately fails to collect.  If you later sign up for a new subscription, Recurly notices you have a new payment method and takes a charge to cover the old 'debt' as well as bill you for your new subscription!  it's not something we can prevent (sometimes, online commerce services are a bit too clever) but we can and will refund you the duplicate charge if you tell us about it.   

Assuming an expired card will stop the subscription

In short, it doesn't.  Recurly is one of a few ultra secure services that can receive data direct from card issuers when a new card has been issued.  As soon as Recurly is sent that information, it makes any overdue charges to the new card.  Again, we will aways refund a duplicate charge so please get in touch with us (details below).

You forgot you already had a live subscription

It happens!

Buying a duplicate subscription on the same user account isn't possible.  If you do, Recurly simply cancels the subscription you already have, allowing it to run to its original next-renewal date, then any new subscription you bought will take over and bill at that point, so there will never be a duplicate charge.

However, if you use different TSR accounts, then Recurly thinks both of your accounts are actually two different people and will allow a duplicate purchase, because it has no way of knowing about any other usernames you might have.  We will happily refund a duplicate purchase - simply contact us with the information we need (see below).

A technical fault

In very rare circumstances, if the site happens to go down mid purchase, there is a very small chance the purchase will appear to freeze.  If you try refreshing the page when this happens, this can send the charge through twice or more, depending on how many times you try to reload.  This is a common problem for all payment forms on the web - best advice is never refresh a page after submitting a payment!  Anyway, it's easily done and we will refund any duplicate charges.  Simply let us know by contacting us (see bottom of the page).  


Refunds for charges 6 months ago and beyond

Unfortunately, PayPal and many bank cards will not accept refunds older than 6 months.  Some cards might even be less than that.  If you have an older duplicate charge, if we can't refund you, we can:

  • add the refund to your TSR account as a credit that you can use for a future subscription or a gift card
  • donate it to a friend's account as credit at TSR (send us details of the account

Simply tell us what you would like us to do.


Contact us to arrange your refund

We will always refund erroneous charges in full, even if you used the account.  To do this, we need information from you to locate the duplicate charges as follows:

Firstly, we need, for each account charged:

  • the username of the account
  • the TSR email address for each TSR account that may have been charged
  • optional, but a big help to us, your Member ID (this can be found next to your username - simply click My Account > Show Profile at the top of the page)

Don't worry if you can't remember all the details of all accounts involved.  The next information (below) should help us locate it:

Next, we need the charge details:

If the charges are on a debit or credit card:

  • last 4 digits of each card charged
  • the type of card if applicable (Visa, Mastercard, Discovery etc)
  • the dates of the charges
  • amounts charged

Or if you paid by PayPal:

  • your PayPal email address
  • the dates of the charges
  • amounts charged

Send all this to our support team.

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