A “Sua Academia” or “Academia” line on your bank or card statement is a charge from Academia.edu, a San Francisco-based platform where researchers share papers. The Sua Academia charge almost always comes from an Academia Premium subscription that renewed automatically, often after a cheap trial rolled into a full-price annual plan somewhere between roughly $80 and over $300. To stop it, cancel the subscription inside your Academia account; to get your money back, ask Academia for a refund and, if that fails, dispute the charge with your card issuer.1Academia.edu Support. What’s This “Academia” Payment on My Bill?
How to Cancel So the Charges Stop
Canceling takes a few clicks in a specific order. If you signed up through the Academia.edu website, follow this path:2Academia.edu Support. How to Cancel Academia Premium
- Click your profile photo in the top-right corner, open Account Settings, and go to the Premium Subscription tab.
- Click “Cancel auto-renewal.” In the pop-up, click “Cancel subscription,” pick a reason or skip the survey, and click “Continue.”
- On the next page, scroll past the list of Premium benefits to the bottom and click “Continue to cancel.” You should land on a confirmation page and get a confirmation email.
If you subscribed through the Academia mobile app on iOS or Android, the website cancellation flow will not work. You have to cancel through your Apple or Google subscription settings instead.2Academia.edu Support. How to Cancel Academia Premium
One thing to watch for: canceling auto-renewal does not cancel installment payments you already owe. If your annual plan was split into two installments of $79.50 and you cancel during the first installment period, the second installment still goes through. You keep Premium features until the end of the current billing cycle, and no partial refund is issued for the unused time.
Asking Academia.edu for a Refund
Academia.edu’s written policy says all sales are final and refunds are available only within the first 30 days of a new subscription. After that window, the terms say you will not get a refund for the current period.3Academia.edu. Terms of Use
In practice the company is more flexible than its terms read. In Better Business Bureau complaints, Academia.edu has repeatedly issued refunds as a “one-time exception” to its renewal refund policy, usually after asking for the last four digits of the card and the billing date, and warning that it will not do the same at the next renewal.4Better Business Bureau. Complaints for Academia.edu
To ask directly, open a ticket through the Academia support portal and choose “Academia Premium Features, Billing & Payments,” or email premium-support@academia.edu. Have the last four digits of your card, the card expiration date, and the billing date ready. If you paid through PayPal, give the PayPal email or transaction ID instead.1Academia.edu Support. What’s This “Academia” Payment on My Bill? Keep the ticket number and every email reply. If the company refuses or ignores you, filing a BBB complaint has produced results for other users and gives you a documented refusal to show your bank.
Disputing the Charge With Your Bank
If Academia will not refund the charge, your card issuer is the next lever. Under the federal Fair Credit Billing Act, charges you did not authorize and charges for services not delivered as agreed count as billing errors. To preserve your full legal rights, send a written dispute to the issuer’s billing inquiry address so it arrives within 60 days of the statement date that first showed the charge.5Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges Most issuers also accept disputes through their website or app, which is faster, but a written letter is what the statute protects.
The issuer has to acknowledge your dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90 days.6Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Do I Dispute a Charge on My Credit Card Bill? While it investigates, you can withhold payment on the disputed amount without being reported as delinquent, but you still have to pay the rest of your bill. Federal law caps your liability for unauthorized credit card charges at $50.5Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges If the bank sides with you, the charge and any related fees come off. If it denies the dispute, it has to tell you why in writing and give you 10 days to come back with more evidence.7California Department of Justice. Credit Cards: Dispute a Charge
Build a short evidence file before you file: the original signup confirmation if you have it, your cancellation email, any support tickets, screenshots of the Premium page in your account, and the statement line showing the charge. Note that if you authorized a $1 trial, the bank may treat the renewal as an authorized recurring charge rather than fraud, so frame the dispute around the renewal terms, any missing notice of a price change, and your attempt to cancel or get a refund.
Why This Charge Keeps Catching People Off Guard
Academia.edu runs a free tier for browsing and uploading papers and a paid tier, Academia Premium, with features like advanced analytics and expanded access. Premium renews automatically on the subscription anniversary for annual plans or on the same calendar day each month for monthly plans, and the company keeps billing the card on file until someone cancels.3Academia.edu. Terms of Use
The most common path to a surprise charge is a $1 introductory or discounted trial that converts into a full annual subscription. Academia’s terms state that accepting a free or discounted trial also means accepting a recurring subscription, and that unless you cancel before the trial ends, billing begins automatically.3Academia.edu. Terms of Use Reported renewal amounts are all over the map — $79.50, $99, $159, $198, and $329 all show up in complaints — and some users report price increases at renewal without advance notice, including jumps from $99 to $299.4Better Business Bureau. Complaints for Academia.edu
You are not an outlier if this happened to you. Academia.edu has 214 BBB complaints over the past three years, 100 of them in the most recent 12 months, with the largest categories being product issues (110), billing issues (46), and sales and advertising issues (24). The company is not BBB-accredited and holds a B rating.8Better Business Bureau. Academia.edu BBB Business Profile The recurring themes in those complaints are the same ones you likely ran into: annual charges hitting without clear notice, a cancellation flow that is easy to miss, confirmation emails that sometimes never arrive, and template replies from support.9Better Business Bureau. Complaints for Academia.edu, Page 15 Cancel first so nothing renews again, then work the refund angle.