Betreff: Being invoiced for a full contract period for accidentally going over marketing contact all

[DanKemp]

Hi everyone,

I'm at the end of my tether with Hubspot over this, and just wanted to see if anyone had any advice or had experienced anything similar.

At the end of July, we were trying to manage our Marketing Contact allocation by removing some users then adding some more. Something went wrong and we accidentally went over our limit by 70. 

I immediately removed all of our marketing contacts to reset it to zero. We didn't send any emails to those new contacts. I contacted Hubspot support straight away and explained the mistake, and I was told it could probably be fixed, or at the very least I would just be charged for that one month where we had gone over. 

By this point we had already received the auto-generated invoice saying that we had been moved onto a new tier for Marketing Contacts, and we had been invoiced not just for that month but for every month until the end of our contract (next February)!

My account manager did finally get back to me and we had a face to face meeting, I explained what the situation was and I fully expected it would get resolved there and then and the invoice would be rescinded.

A few days later I got an email saying that it could not be rescinded. Suddenly all I was getting was the blanket corporate response of "it's in our terms" and there's nothing anyone could do about it.

I tried escalating via the Billings team but got the template response. I tried to push for it to be escalated via my account manager but he kept stalling and giving me the template response. Finally he gave my the email contact for his line manager. I emailed her and she's ignored me.

My estimation of Hubspot has nosedived because of this. One tiny error and not only am I being charged extortionately, but I am no longer being treated as a valued, human customer. 

What would you do in this situation? Anyone experienced anything similar? The invoice will come up to 30 days overdue on 26th September and I am worried our access to Hubspot will be cut off if we don't pay, so I want to get it resolved by then. 

I would have thought that any change in service should be refundable within 14 days - covered by UK law? Any ideas?

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @DanKemp and @rodericks,

thank you for providing additional information. We apologize for the frustration and business impact this has caused. I've reached out to your account representatives to make sure that this is on their radar. While we cannot promise anything regarding changes to the the charges, you deserve a response from us and an open channel of communication with your account representatives at HubSpot. 

I did want to take this opportunity to share some resources around this topic that other Community members may find beneficial down the road: 

• This Knowledge base article explains the guardrails that are in place to help customers prevent an unwanted contact tier upgrade. You should get notified about the number of marketing contacts so you can change their marketing status before the next contacts update date.
• You can also prevent other users from setting contacts as marketing by adjusting their user permissions to avoid unwanted tier upgrades.
• Here is the legal documentation where the pricing & billing for marketing contacts is explained in more detail: Terms of Service, Product Specific Terms.

If you have any further issue regarding getting in touch with your account representatives at HubSpot, please feel free to DM me on the Community and I will continue to advocate for you internally. 

Thank you for your understanding. 

Mia, Community team 

[rodericks · Accepted solution]

Hey @DanKemp,

We have a similar case. However, we did it on purpose, but expected to be billed only the month we were using it. The next month we also removed all contacts to non-marketing. However, billing, account manager (she doesn't even respond, only when I ask her about expansion), customer succes, etc.. all respond the same.

So unfortunately, I can't help you. What I do think however is that we combine other customers to force Hubspot to change this ridicilous term. Because I get I have to pay if I use more, but not for my whole contract. 

[DanKemp]

Thanks for speaking up. You're exactly right.

[DanKemp]

Hi Mia - I'm not sure they are the best points of contact if they've stopped responding to me? Who else can I take this up with? How does one make a formal complaint to Hubspot?

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @DanKemp,

Mia from the Community team here - I just wanted to say that we understand your frustration. Your Customer Success Manager and the billing team are the best points of contact in this matter, but please let us know if we can provide any documentation or articles about Marketing contacts. Thank you. 

Mia, Community team