Scam! I have had a free account for over a decade, but they have charged me hundreds of dollars for Premium over the past few years without me knowing! I was not aware that I was subscribed to Premium and have never used it. You will notice that their website is designed to make it *unreasonably difficult* to cancel, as well as to trick people into not finishing their cancellation process. **If you try to cancel, make sure the process is complete!!**There really should be a class action lawsuit against this company. There are probably many students getting screwed who can’t afford it, which is truly wrong when college is already insanely costly. I see them in the replies on this page, offering a VERY limited refund, but offering only one refund and only if it is requested in the first 30 days is unacceptable, given the dirty methods they use to trick you into these payments, and how they bury their billing emails in other spammy emails, as others here have described. Nothing less than a full refund of every single payment they have charged to us will be acceptable.I concur with everyone calling Academia.edu a disreputable company. Apparently they got the .edu URL before it was restricted to universities only, so that lends them the appearance of real credibility and integrity without actually having it. Warn your students and colleagues! Teach them instead to use other methods to promote their work, such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, personal websites, social media, and good old fashioned networking at conferences.
