Dear Nathalie,
Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that your experience has been frustrating, and we take billing-related concerns very seriously.
We have reviewed your account history in detail. As explained in several places on our website and billing documentation, surcharge usage is enabled by default for paid customers. This is designed to help ensure that API access continues even if the included plan quota is exceeded, so customers’ workflows are not interrupted unexpectedly. Customers can disable surcharge usage at any time from the billing dashboard.
Our system also sends multiple automated usage notifications as an account approaches and exceeds its included quota, including alerts at 80%, 90%, 100%, and when surcharge usage begins. These notifications are intended to help customers monitor usage and avoid unexpected charges.
In your case, usage continued beyond the included plan allowance and eventually reached the surcharge cap. Rather than charging the full $500 surcharge, we upgraded the subscription to the next plan because the upgrade cost was lower than the surcharge amount. We also moved the excess usage into the next plan quota, meaning no separate surcharge was charged for that usage. This approach is intended to benefit customers by reducing the overall billing impact while keeping their API workflows running.
Regarding your claim that “Allow Surcharge Usage” was disabled, our logs indicate that the setting was turned off on April 12, the same day the subscription was upgraded. Prior to that date, surcharge usage was still active on the account. We would be happy to share the relevant account activity and usage logs with you privately, as they contain account-specific information that we cannot publish here.
When the subscription was later downgraded, Paddle, our payment processor, automatically added a credit balance based on the number of unused requests remaining under the upgraded plan. This credit was generated by Paddle’s billing system as part of the downgrade process.
We also want to clarify the temporary API access suspension. Once a payment dispute was opened through the payment processor, the subscription status was automatically affected by that process. In line with our billing and dispute-handling policy, API access was temporarily paused while the dispute was active. After the dispute status changed, access was restored.
We understand that this situation has caused inconvenience, and we regret that it reached this point. Our support team has tried to resolve this directly with you, and we remain open to reviewing the matter again privately.
Please contact us at support@ipgeolocation.io so we can continue the discussion securely and work toward a fair resolution.
Best regards,
Customer Support,
IPGeolocation.io
