An Open Letter to Medium: Why Have You Been Charging Me for a Membership I Don’t Have?

Dear Medium,

I recently tried to downgrade or cancel what I believed was my Medium membership.

That should have been a routine task. Instead, I discovered something rather strange: Medium has apparently been charging me $5 per month for three years for a membership that my Medium account says I do not have.

I am publishing the documentation here because Medium’s support form does not allow me to attach the screenshots that demonstrate the problem.

Medium Says I’m Not a Member

I started by going to Settings → Membership and payment, expecting to find the controls for my subscription.

There was nothing to cancel.

Instead, Medium offered me the opportunity to “Upgrade to a Medium Membership.”

In other words, the account I am logged into is being treated by Medium as a free account.

But Medium Is Charging Me $5 Every Month

I next checked Google Play in case I had somehow purchased the subscription through Android. There is no Medium subscription there.

Then I checked PayPal.

There it was.

On August 10, 2026, PayPal processed a $5.00 payment to A Medium Corporation. The transaction identifies the merchant as A Medium Corporation and says that *“PAYPAL MEDIUM.COM” will appear on my credit card statement.

The PayPal transaction ID is 94G29949NX9375748.

So I started looking backward through my PayPal history.

The Charges Go Back to August 2023

I found a charge on August 10, 2023: another $5 payment to A Medium Corporation.

The PayPal transaction ID for that payment is 4TA02248T0583761H.

The payments continued at $5 per month. My available PayPal statements document the recurring charges, which PayPal describes as “PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment” transactions to A Medium Corporation.

From August 10, 2023 through August 10, 2026, that is 37 monthly payments of $5, totaling $185.

Am I Actually Receiving a Medium Membership?

I wanted to make sure this wasn’t merely a display problem with Medium’s account settings.

So, while logged into my Medium account, I attempted to read a member-only story.

Medium stopped me at the paywall.

It offered me a “Welcome Offer,” told me to “Unlock every single story,” listed “Read member-only stories” as one of the benefits, and presented me with an “Upgrade now” button.

So this does not appear to be merely a missing cancellation button. The Medium account I use is actually being denied one of the principal benefits of a paid Medium membership.

And Here Is the Particularly Frustrating Part

The PayPal receipts do not tell me which Medium account I am supposedly paying for.

They identify A Medium Corporation as the merchant. They show the amount, payment method and transaction ID. But they provide no Medium username or email address identifying the account receiving the subscription.

That leaves me in a remarkable situation:

• Medium has been taking $5 from me every month.
• My Medium account says I am not a member.
• Medium will not let that account read member-only stories.
• There is no membership in my account settings for me to cancel.
• The PayPal receipts do not identify what Medium account I am supposedly paying for.

I am therefore paying for a subscription that I cannot identify, access, manage or cancel.

What I Am Asking Medium to Do

I am not assuming that Medium intentionally did anything wrong. There may be a perfectly innocent account or billing problem behind this.

But after three years and $185 in charges, I think I am entitled to an explanation and a resolution.

I am asking Medium to:

1. Identify the Medium account associated with these PayPal charges.
2. Explain how I was supposed to identify and access that membership from the billing information provided to me.
3. Immediately cancel the subscription and all recurring billing associated with it.
4. Confirm that no additional charges will be made.
5. Refund the $185 charged from August 10, 2023 through August 10, 2026 if Medium cannot demonstrate that I was provided access to the paid membership during that period.

Why I’m Posting This Publicly

I initially attempted to contact Medium Support directly by email.

Medium responded that it “no longer allows submitting new support requests via email” and directed me to its online support form.

The support form, however, does not provide a way for me to attach the screenshots documenting the problem. It does allow me to provide a link.

So that is the purpose of this page.

This page gives Medium Support access to the documentation accompanying my support request and provides a single chronological record of what happened.

If Medium identifies an account that has actually been receiving the membership I’ve been paying for, I would very much like to know what it is.

If it cannot, I would like my $185 refunded.

Dan