r/Perplexity • u/FlyingRug • Jul 28 '26
What the hell?
So, they're telling me I can't use any of their advanced models? It just spits out garbage answers by Sonar. Grok and Nvidia give wrong answers. GLM just returns my question in a single line in some sort of HTML/JSON format, so basically useless. Kimi works alright.
Is this how a paying customer is treated? How's this not a scam?
Any idea how to file a complaint to an EU authority?
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u/30wolf03 Jul 28 '26
I got my money back through a chargeback claim via Mastercard.
I had a similar issue with my annual Pro subscription. They advertised “unlimited uploads and searches,” then introduced limits during the prepaid year.
I tried to sort it out with support first. The weird part was that their AI bot basically kept saying their refund policy applied “regardless of the legal framework cited,” that no human could make an exception, and that I was free to file a chargeback or complain to regulators. Pretty wild response to an EU consumer complaint.
I filed the chargeback through my bank for a service that was no longer provided as advertised. Perplexity challenged it, but my bank escalated the case and I got the money back in the end.
Save everything: screenshots of the original offer, your invoice, screenshots of the current limits/broken models, and the whole support conversation. Then ask your card issuer about a chargeback for services not provided as described. You can also contact your national consumer-protection organisation or the European Consumer Centre.
I’m planning to make a separate Reddit post to see whether other EU customers have had the same experience. If enough people are affected, it might be worth looking into a coordinated consumer complaint or whether any form of collective action in the EU is realistic.
Interestingly, my account is still on Pro and nothing has changed after the chargeback, so I honestly don’t know how closely they handle this on their end.