Proton is charging their legacy paid customers more than what was promised, breaching their own policy. Check your account!

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TLDR:
Proton overhauled their paid tiers in 2022. Users who had signed up for a paid plan before 25 May 2022 were automatically upgraded to a new plan, at the same price they were paying for their old plan. Proton promised the customers would keep their current price for as long as they stay on the plan they’d been upgraded to with the same billing period (monthly, 12 months, or 24 months). However they’ve started forcing price increase for such customers.

https://i.imgur.com/3KHma7E.png

Full Story:
I am a paid member of Proton since November 2021 (it was called ProtonPlus then). I was paying 4.99 EUR/month and was on a 2-yr billing cycle, hence 119.76 EUR for 24 months. In 2022 they overhauled their paid tiers. Since ProtonPlus wasn’t a thing anymore, I was automatically upgraded to Proton Unlimited plan. In their blog post explaining this upgrade for their legacy paid customers, they go on to explain how these customers will not be charged anything more than what they were paying for their legacy plan, and will continue to pay original rate as long as they keep renewing with their original billing cycle -

In their own words quoted from the above article -

Won’t I pay more for my new plan?
No, you’ll keep your current price. As a thank you for being a valued member of the Proton community, if your new plan’s price is higher than what you paid for your old plan, you’ll receive a discount so you won’t pay any more than before. And you’ll be billed as usual at the end of your billing period.
You’ll keep your current price for as long as you stay on the plan you’ve been upgraded to with the same billing period (monthly, 12 months, or 24 months).

However my plan is due for renewal in next few days, and when I checked the renewal details it said the account would renew at 158.99 EUR for 24 months. But as per their policy stated above, I was eligible for a renewal at original rate of 119.76 EUR. So why am I being charged at a higher rate?

I decided to open a support ticket. The full conversation is here -
PDF: 213.1 KB file on MEGA
Screenshots: Proton is charging their legacy paid customers more than what was promised, breaching their own policy. Check your account! - Album on Imgur

At first the support agent told me I would be charged 119.76 EUR. But when I showed him screenshot of my dashboard which showed 158.99 EUR, he changed his response and said I would be charged 158.99 EUR indeed because the old rate was ‘only a one-time discount’.

This is completely in violation of their publicly stated policy (the article linked above), and a complete breach of trust for their legacy paid members. In view of this, I have decided to discontinue my paid subscription.

I have also posted this on r/ProtonMail but it’s waiting moderator approval.

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No, Proton is in the right here. In 2021 you signed up for a plan which gave you:

  • The ProtonVPN Plus for two years is billed at €119.76 for the first 2 years (50% special offer discount)
  • ProtonVPN Plus for two years renews after two years at a standard discounted two-year price of €159 (33% discount).

“119 EUR for two years, then 159 EUR for future renewals” is your current price, so yes, Proton has kept you on your current price plan exactly as promised.

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Thank you for the clarification, it makes sense now. The support team member at Proton who responded to my ticket could have done a better job at explaining.

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