Cheapnews continues to send notices to accounts it said it was deleting

Usenet provider Cheapnews is still sending payment reminders to inactive customers, after previously making unjustified debits from former users. That's what tweakers on the forum say. In some cases, users even receive messages from collection agencies.

Cheapnews is making the charges despite promising that the accounts have been deleted. Last month, Tweakers wrote that Cheapnews suddenly started debiting money from inactive accounts. This was allegedly due to an error that occurred during a software update, which caused customers with an inactive status to be classified as active. The company carried out that update to 'remove unnecessary data in accordance with GDPR guidelines'.

It now appears that that process is still not going well. Several tweakers report on the forum that they still received a reminder, even after Cheapnews deleted the data. “I just received a reminder from Cheapnews threatening that if I don't pay, it will be given as a claim to a national collection agency,” writes tweaker killer8, who has not been a customer of the company since 2019.

Cheapnews told killer8 that his account had now been deleted, but still sent a reminder. Tweakers rfbroek and Bisamrat have also received such payment reminders. Other tweakers, such as Evius, say that they have created a ticket in which they request Cheapnews to delete their account, but that those tickets can no longer be found in the ticket system.

Cheapnews has told some recipients, including tismij and phoney870, have announced that they can ignore the reminders. Tweakers asked the company for a response, but did not receive an answer. It is therefore unknown how many customers have received an unjustified reminder and why Cheapnews was unable to prevent this. It is also not known whether the accounts of old, no longer active users have also been deleted.