At Jezebel, we’ve long been into Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty lingerie line and her (sometimes imperfect) efforts to make the brand inclusive. But it turns out customers are fed up with a surprising fee lurking in the brand’s VIP membership, which many signed up for unknowingly.
Vox’s The Goods reports that the monthly membership fee, $50 a month, has been angering customers who didn’t realize they had signed up for it. Writer Kaitlyn Tiffany found that the site pushes buyers towards VIP items specifically, which all call for joining the membership to access them, but the recruitment process is trickier than that. “Even if you don’t click on anything VIP at all, and simply add a product that initially appears full price, the site will still automatically add a Savage X Monthly Membership and a VIP discount,” she writes.
Customers can delete that membership from their carts, assuming they read the sidebar text explaining it. “If you don’t stop to read what might be considered by shoppers to be an irrelevant wall of text, you’re likely to end up with a recurring monthly charge of $49.95 for as long as it takes you to notice,” Tiffany writes. Early buyers of the brand in a certain window have a yearly membership, others have a monthly, the latter of which you can’t cancel online but only over the phone.
All of this is giving me sweaty flashbacks to the one time I had to cancel a dreaded gym membership. So buyers beware, check your statements and make sure you’re cool with paying $50 a month to Rihanna.