It’s been over a year since Spotify became official in Pakistan. Since then, the music streaming platform has added over 19,000 Pakistani songs to the app and has millions of plays in total. The basic subscription package is also quite cheap, starting at only Rs 300 a month.
There is also a free trial that lets you enjoy Spotify Premium for up to three months at no cost, but it turns out that it’s not free at all. We at ProPakistani subscribed to the free trial that is supposedly free of cost but were charged Rs 100 for it.
Rs 100 is not a lot of money, but it makes little sense since Spotify markets the three-month trial as “free” and even shows Rs 0 in your receipt. There is no mention of any extra charges on the website either.
Despite “Rs 0.00” shown on the receipt, Spotify still charged Rs 100 to our HBL bank account.
The deduction was shown in HBL’s bank account statement as well, which proves that it was charged by none other than Spotify.
Rs. 100 is pocket change for most of us but calling the trial “free” is clearly a misleading statement that could even be labeled as a false advertisement on Spotify’s part.
Please note that Spotify only charges the money to verify if the account is valid or not and refunds the amount. However, we haven’t received a refund.
Sometimes companies charge nominal amount to validate the payment card. Mostly that amount is reversed, even if this is not reversed that was only charged for card validation.
This was for validation. Dont over-react. SHould check with company first and then publish article.
Its a cheap tactic by Spotify in order to earn revenue by misleading customers. Supposedly if they want to validate a customer by charging this amount they could use Rs.1 or 10 and put a disclaimer stating that they will charge this amount for validation only. If you extrapolate this Rs. 100 to hundred thousands if not millions of Pakistani users then imagine the monthly/quarterly earning. Just to make their spreadsheet look a bit better they are cheating Pakistani consumers. Pro-Pakistani did the right thing to raise voice. As a matter of fact we all should raise voice against this tyranny so that this does set the precedence for other market players which are already here or planning to explore this market.
I used the three month time period as a trial and i was charged nothing for it. I cancelled my plan on the last day of trial and was charged nothing.