Feedback: Deceptive Cancellation UI and Mid-Subscription Product Degradation (CPA Concerns)

[Jexposition]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Copilot in GitHub

Body

I Find It Strange How Companies Are Able To Sell A Product That Is "Trained" On Open Source , Copy Wright, Public Data.

Should They Not Be Required To Open Source Their Models? Since the model weights consist of non propriety data?

Also Github Copilot Of All Services I find This Example to be the strangest.

Its a platform built on community. But it seems to only go one way. Is it just me or is the dynamic seem strange as of late?

This Ai era baffles me and it raises alot of questions, especially after a recent interaction i had with the platform

I am writing this to document a serious issue regarding GitHub's billing and cancellation flow for Copilot Pro/Pro+ plans.

My experience, which I have already escalated through official support channels, involves a deceptive cancellation UI that failed to disclose "partiality" or "proration" at the point of action. When I clicked "Cancel and refund subscription," the interface did not explicitly state that the refund would be partial or that I would forfeit prior subscription fees. Given that South African consumer law (CPA) requires clear, plain language and conspicuous disclosure of financial penalties before confirmation, I find this UI behavior unacceptable.

Furthermore, this cancellation experience occurred in the wake of unilateral mid-subscription changes to the Copilot product. Users are seeing aggressive rate-limiting and the removal of models after the billing cycle has already been paid for. I am now forced to either accept a degraded service or move to a more expensive tier that applies severe penalty multipliers (30x for Opus 7, 7x for GPT 5.5) just to access functional models.

The current business practice of taking subscription fees for a set service, unilaterally degrading that service, and then using a non-transparent, partial-refund UI when the user attempts to exit, is an unconscionable practice.

I have formally notified GitHub support of these violations under the South African Consumer Protection Act, specifically Section 41 (Deceptive Representation) and Section 54 (Right to performance). I am also in the process of escalating this to the National Consumer Commission (NCC) and the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud (CGSO).

I am sharing this publicly because this is not an isolated billing error. It is a systematic failure to provide transparent, reliable service to individual consumers. We deserve better than opaque billing, predatory throttling, and hidden refund terms.

If you are a user who has experienced similar mid-cycle product degradation or opaque cancellation flows, please share your feedback below.

[github-actions[bot]]

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