Is Yahoo Triple-Billing You For Your Old Flickr Pro Account?

(frankieleon.)

While Yahoo’s photo sharing site Flickr now offers free users a reasonably hefty 1TB of storage, it didn’t use to be so generous, and the only way around those old limits was to upgrade to a Pro account for $25/year. When Flickr stopped offering the Pro tier last spring, Yahoo grandfathered in existing Pro accounts at the same rate. But if you’re still paying for Flickr Pro, you may want to keep an eye on your bank statement when it comes time to renew your account.

I learned this for myself earlier this week when I noticed three separate charges (one cleared, two pending) to my debit card for $24.95 each, all from Yahoo and all with the same Flickr Pro note attached.

Knowing that my bank would say it couldn’t do anything about disputing pending charges, I contacted Yahoo customer service and patiently waited for nearly 20 minutes as the same ill-looped piece of music repeated itself.

The Yahoo CSR I spoke to told me this “is a known issue” in which sometimes Flickr accounts are sent to customers’ banks multiple times. He explained that the duplicate two charges would likely disappear when the bank went to finish processing them.

But in the meantime, fifty of my dollars were not at my disposal because of a glitch that Yahoo is apparently aware of. Luckily, I’m not in a position where having to wait a couple days for those $50 to be released will hurt me, but there are plenty of people for whom the same can’t be said; whether it’s because they are low on funds or because they try to keep as little as possible in no-interest checking accounts.

And indeed, those bogus charges have since been reversed and I can now get back to counting my money. But the question remains: How many other people are having this same issue?

We’ve reached out to Yahoo’s corporate office to see if it could give us some idea of how widespread this problem is and what’s being done to fix it, but have not heard back. A quick Google search turns up multiple-charge complaints about Flickr Pro accounts back in 2010, with Yahoo saying at the time that the issue had been resolved.

We’d like to know if any of you have had similar problems with Yahoo’s billing for Flickr accounts. If so, shoot us an e-mail at tips@consumerist.com with “FLICKR DOUBLE BILLING” in the subject line.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist