Billing issue: Unauthorised charges & unjustified retroactive deductions

What is the name of the domain?

N/A – global billing account issue, not tied to one zone

What is the error number?

N/A

What is the error message?

N/A

What is the issue you’re encountering

We’ve been charged for plan upgrades we did not order or activate, and when we raised the issue, Cloudflare issued partial refunds using vague credit memos that included retroactive deductions for services that were never invoiced or substantiated.

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

We have opened multiple high-priority support cases and submitted formal documentation of the discrepancies, requesting a full refund reconciliation and clear explanation. Cloudflare has silently acknowledged our original claim that we were incorrectly charged $250/month for a Business Plan in April, May, and June 2025 (totalling $750), yet provided no explanation or accountability for how those charges occurred.

When issuing refunds, Cloudflare introduced retroactive deductions for alleged services between November 2024 and March 2025 — services that were never previously invoiced, not supported by any usage records, and have no contractual or billing trail. These offsets appeared only in vague credit memos.

Even the refund amounts do not match Cloudflare’s own stated logic. For example, the April $250 charge was only partially refunded at $175, with no explanation for the missing $75. We are now raising the issue here to highlight what appears to be a systematic billing failure and to seek resolution, transparency, and broader visibility into potentially widespread practices.

Billing issues requre a Billing ticket with Support

Case #01537283, Case #01612355, Case #01636916

In what area can we help you?

Refunds

What are the steps to reproduce the issue?

There are no technical steps to reproduce this issue on our end — the problem stems from systemic failures within Cloudflare’s internal billing, refund logic, and support escalation procedures. The same account was repeatedly charged for services that were never activated, then partially refunded using undocumented and retroactive offsets. This behaviour has persisted across multiple billing cycles and support cases, despite clear evidence, formal complaints, and repeated requests for resolution. The lack of coherent internal checks, customer communication, or accountable case handling points to a breakdown in billing governance and support procedures. (See attached: excerpt from Cloudflare’s own credit memo showing their refund calculation and the undocumented $250+ offset.)

Screenshot of the error

Support will need to assist you on that case.

The Community cannot assist with Billing, Account, Trust & Safety, nor Registrar issues.

Screenshot 2025-02-28 at 7.33.37 AM

If you already have a ticket, Support will respond to you on that ticket. Questions about billing will need to be resolved by the Customer Support team and cannot be resolved on the Community.

Thank you for the response, however I’d like to clarify that my question here is not about a specific refund or account, but about a platform-wide billing reliability concern that the community and Cloudflare users deserve clarity on.

How is it that a known billing system issue, publicly acknowledged by Cloudflare as early as October 2024, remains unresolved almost a year later? The problems described then — unauthorised charges from failed plan modifications, missing invoices, and retroactive inconsistencies — match exactly what we are experiencing now, yet support tickets continue to go unanswered or are handled with vague, contradictory logic.

This raises a serious question about Cloudflare’s internal billing governance, and about whether affected users have ever been proactively informed or compensated for these issues.

That’s not a ticket-specific concern. That’s a systemic question that Cloudflare, as a platform, should be willing to answer transparently

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