A customer pays €1.99 to create and download a CV. Two weeks later, €21.99 appears on the bank statement. The customer understood the first payment as a one-off purchase. The business treated it as the start of a monthly subscription.
On 30 July 2026, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets, ACM, reported that dozens of consumers had raised this concern about CVmaker.nl. The offer converted after 14 days into a subscription costing €21.99 a month.
Following ACM intervention, CVmaker changed the website information about subscription costs and duration. The company also committed to stop collecting outstanding amounts where agreements had not been formed under the applicable rules. It said it would no longer charge statutory collection costs.
The ACM handled the matter through an improvement process. The business lesson remains sharp. A subscription problem that begins with the size or placement of text can move through customer service, billing and debt collection. By the time it reaches the accounts, the original €1.99 sale may have created a receivable that is difficult to defend.
The contract story must stay consistent
A low trial price can be a fair way to let a customer test a service. The weakness appears when the trial receives all the attention while the recurring charge, duration or automatic conversion sits outside the customer’s natural line of sight.
Dutch consumer rules require businesses to explain the price and duration before the customer enters the agreement. Consumer prices must include VAT and unavoidable costs. Optional extras should appear separately, rather than arrive preselected.
For distance contracts, consumers generally have a 14-day withdrawal period, although exceptions and starting points vary by product or service. Current ACM guidance also requires an accessible online withdrawal function for relevant online purchases. It must remain easy to find, work without forcing a customer to create an account, and confirm the request after use.
The route out is part of the online service itself. The advert, landing page, payment screen, confirmation email, invoice and cancellation route should tell one recognisable contract story. Terms hidden elsewhere cannot carry the whole burden.
When each stage gives a different impression, the business has not designed one customer journey. It has assembled disconnected explanations and left the customer to reconcile them.
Revenue needs more than an invoice
The CVmaker intervention is also a revenue-quality issue. An invoice shows that the billing system created a claim. It does not settle whether the customer clearly accepted the commercial commitment behind it.
Imagine a small software company celebrating a rise in monthly recurring revenue. Its dashboard shows more subscriptions. Finance sees a growing debtor balance. Customer service receives messages marked “unexpected charge” and “I did not know this renewed.” The payment provider records more disputes.
Meanwhile, an external collection partner keeps sending reminders because nobody has told it that customers challenge the formation of the agreement. These are not separate departmental problems. They are four views of the same weakness.
Conversion can look healthy because refunds, chargebacks, support hours and disputed debts sit elsewhere. The company may report billed revenue while losing the cash, time and trust required to keep it.
A founder should therefore read subscription income beside cancellation requests, refund reasons, payment failures and disputed receivables. A rise in “unknown subscription” complaints deserves more attention than a polished conversion chart. It may show that the commercial promise understood by customers differs from the model recorded by the business.
Complaints belong at the management table
The ACM received almost 84,000 reports in 2024, nearly 10 per cent more than in the previous year. Those reports covered many subjects. For a small company, the useful point is that consumer reports help direct supervisory attention.
Complaint coding is more than customer-service housekeeping. Repeated language about unexpected payments, difficult cancellation or collection costs can reveal a design weakness early. A manager who treats every complaint as an isolated difficult customer may miss a pattern forming across ordinary conversations.
The same operational lesson appeared in an ACM intervention involving telecom providers in May 2026. Nine of the ten providers investigated removed online cancellation barriers and clarified their cancellation information.
The question travels well beyond telecom. Why should joining take three clicks while leaving requires a search, a login and a telephone call?
For a small digital business, the answer often lies in divided responsibility. Marketing owns the offer. A developer builds checkout. A payment provider handles renewal. Support explains cancellation. An accountant receives the totals. A collection agency pursues unpaid balances.
Each supplier may perform its task properly while the complete customer journey remains inconsistent. That is where management needs to look.
A practical review starts with one real journey
The most useful check is modest. Choose one current offer and follow it as a customer would, preferably on a telephone. Start with the advert. Continue through the order button, confirmation, first invoice, withdrawal route, renewal notice and cancellation.
Read only what an ordinary customer sees. Do not fill gaps with staff knowledge.
Then place that journey beside the last quarter’s complaints, refunds, chargebacks and collection cases. Look for repeated confusion rather than isolated irritation. When customers consistently misunderstand the same price, date or exit route, changing the support script will not solve the underlying issue. The offer itself needs attention.
It also helps to retain dated records of material website and checkout changes. Screenshots, confirmation messages and cancellation records show what customers encountered at a particular time. They support internal learning and make later disputes less dependent on memory.
The customer who expects a one-off CV download should not need to study the company’s internal structure to understand a monthly charge. Nor should the founder mistake every automated renewal for dependable income.
A sound subscription is clear when it begins, workable while it runs and straightforward when it ends. That is what makes recurring revenue worth trusting.
Want a practical review of your subscription journey, billing records and cancellation controls?
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
References
- Website CVmaker voortaan duidelijk over kosten voor gebruikers na actie ACM | ACM
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt - Price transparency and recurring charges
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt - Withdrawal rights and the new online withdrawal function
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt - Cancellation friction as a supervisory concern
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt - Online influence and dark-pattern risk
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt - Consumer complaints as a supervisory signal
- Autoriteit Consument & Markt
