A CHEGG ORDER charge on your card: a subscription that kept renewing, or a textbook order

Chegg sells two kinds of things: textbooks, rented or bought, and monthly or yearly subscriptions to study help, writing and math tools.² A statement line that says CHEGG ORDER does not tell you which. In the card lines of one US state, the name appears in four forms between 2014 and 2025, and none of them carries a product name.⁵ What makes the line worth a closer look is a federal case: in September 2025 the Federal Trade Commission announced that Chegg would pay $7.5 million to settle its allegations that Chegg made cancelling a subscription extremely difficult and kept charging some people after they had cancelled.¹

What the state’s card data shows

The State of Delaware publishes every purchase its employees make on state cards, and schools and school districts use them. The data has 107 lines with CHEGG in the name, from 14 August 2014 to 23 May 2025, paid by 13 different state units: 37 charges and 70 credits.⁵ By form:

These are school and agency cards, so the sizes are not those of a personal plan, and the data does not say what each line paid for. Every one of the 107 lines is filed under the merchant category “Book Stores”, including the 2025 ones. A few things can still be counted.⁵

• No charge repeats from month to month. A plan that renews at a fixed price would show as the same amount, for the same unit, in month after month. Among the 37 charges no unit is charged the same amount in two different months; the repeats are on one day (four of 2.61 on 3 January 2020, two of 159.84, two of 10.45, two of 14.95) or nine days apart (109.49 on 1 and 10 September 2018, the second credited the same day). That says only that these cards do not show a pattern; it does not say what Chegg bills to other cards.
• Credits outnumber charges. The 70 credits include the 40 of 33.49 and the 15 of 72.99 above. The remaining 15 are single credits, and in January 2020 four charges of 2.61 on 3 January were followed by four credits of 2.61 on 6 January. We do not know the reason for any of them.
• The newest lines are the 2025 ones. Nothing in the data comes after 23 May 2025; the file may simply not hold later lines for this name, or the name may have changed again.

What the FTC alleges, and how it ended

On 15 September 2025 the FTC announced a complaint and a proposed settlement with Chegg, Inc., filed in the federal court for the Northern District of California. Its press release alleges that:¹

• Chegg continued to charge some consumers after they cancelled, and “since October 2020” charged nearly 200,000 consumers after they had requested cancellation;
• the online cancellation processes for its various subscription services were buried on its websites and required multiple clicks to locate;
• even after finding them, consumers had to get through a confusing and cumbersome process.

The complaint itself describes the Chegg Study flow that existed “until around September 2024”: after clicking Cancel subscription, a coupon page headed “Give us another shot”, then further pages, before the cancellation finished.³ It quotes Chegg’s own staff: in January 2024 a vice president reported that eight to ten percent of the consumers who cancel each month contact customer service, over a third of all its contacts, and that a commonly reported issue was “canceling in the past and being surprised by continuing charges”.³

The settlement is a stipulated order: Chegg pays $7.5 million, which the FTC says will be used to provide refunds to consumers affected, and has to keep a simple cancellation mechanism, as easy to use as the one the consumer used to sign up. The order says that Chegg “neither admits nor denies any of the allegations in the Complaint”.⁶ The press release adds that stipulated orders have the force of law when the judge approves and signs them. The FTC’s case page, whose newest entry is dated 19 September 2025, still showed the case as “Pending” when we read it on 26 October 2026; we did not find a page that says how, or when, refunds will be paid.¹²

How Chegg says to cancel

Chegg’s help page, in the copy the Internet Archive saved on 20 September 2026, gives these steps for a Chegg Study subscription: use a desktop or laptop computer, go to My Account, click Orders, find the subscription on the right and click Cancel Subscription, and then select the orange Cancel Subscription button at the bottom of the next screen. Once confirmed, it says, the subscription is cancelled, you will not be charged again, and you keep access for the rest of the current billing period. The same page offers a pause of up to six months, and a Payment Methods page under My Account where the card on file can be changed.⁴ The page gives no steps for Chegg’s other subscriptions. The complaint says that on the BibMe, Citation Machine, Cite This For Me and EasyBib sites you have to go to chegg.com to finish cancelling, and cannot cancel in a mobile browser; Mathway can be cancelled on mathway.com.³ We read the help page’s steps in the archived copy.

What cardholders say they found

The people below wrote on Reddit. These are their own accounts, not our findings, and we have not heard Chegg’s side. They are four threads out of many; we picked these because the writer says what happened on the card. We did not count them.

• Which account was it? One writer, in June 2021, says they locked their card when they saw a pending Chegg charge, that Chegg told them it would investigate since they could not say which account it came from, and asks whether to dispute with the card company or wait. The most direct answer in the thread, from another user, is to call the card company and dispute it, and that if it wants to take it up with Chegg, it can.⁸
• A card Chegg could not find. A writer in March 2023 says they were charged on a debit card, that a phone agent told them no card matching their details was in the system, and that their statement showed charges for months. They say they were told to call their bank. A commenter answers that a subscription can keep charging an old card number, and that the bank may link it to the current account. That is the commenter’s explanation, not something either side has confirmed.⁸
• Reactivated after graduating. A writer in August 2022, in a university forum, says a subscription they believed inactive was reactivated and charged 16 dollars a month from December, that they noticed only when their bank balance ran low, and that their card had expired in March. They also say that cancelling does not always stop the charges and that the only sure way is to cancel the card. That is one person’s experience; we cannot check it against Chegg’s records.⁸
• Two dollars in, two dollars out. A writer in April 2024 says 2 dollars from “Chegg Inc St. Louis” appeared in their bank account and was taken out again, that Chegg support told them it had authorized no charges to their card, and asks whether to contact the bank. The first answer says to treat the card as compromised and to ask for a new one, or else to keep watching the card.⁸

How to find out which one it is, and get the money back

1. Read the line CHEGG ORDER, CHEGG *ORDER and CHEGG INC. are the forms we found in the data. Chegg sells textbooks and subscriptions, and none of the forms says which. Another Chegg product, such as Mathway or EasyBib, is under the same company in the FTC’s complaint, so a charge for one of them can come from an account you do not think of as Chegg.³
2. Find the account Search every inbox for “Chegg”, receipts and renewal notices included. If you find an account, sign in and open My Account, then Orders, to see the subscriptions and the date of the next charge, and Payment Methods to see which card is on file.⁴ Ask the people who use your card, and any student in the house.
3. If you want it to stop Follow Chegg’s steps above on a computer. Keep a screenshot of the confirmation. If you cannot sign in, Chegg’s help page offers a chat and a phone number.⁴ Then look at the next statement: if the line comes back, write down the date and send Chegg the confirmation.
4. If it is not yours at all Tell Chegg through its help page, with the date and amount, and ask your card company to replace the card, because a stolen number will be tried again. If a charge is on a debit card, the bank’s own rules apply and it is the bank who can tell you what they are.
5. If that does not settle it Send your card company a written dispute with your name, address, account number and what the mistake is, so that it reaches them within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent. The company must acknowledge it in writing within 30 days and resolve it within 90, and you may withhold the disputed amount while it does.⁷ Say in it what you tried with Chegg, with dates.

Is this a scam?

The name is real: public bodies in one state paid it on 107 lines over eleven years, and a federal agency has filed a case about the company’s cancellation practices, which the company settled without admitting or denying them.⁵⁶ A CHEGG line you cannot match to an account is a reason to ask Chegg and your card company, not a reason to keep paying. It does not by itself show that the charge was made by Chegg: one commenter in the 2024 thread says a card number that was tested elsewhere can also produce a small, odd line.

Why this page is on a site about held money

This site records payment companies that hold back money that belongs to someone else. Chegg is not in the incident record. This page is here because the statement line has no product name, because a federal case is about money taken after people asked to stop, and because a charge you cannot explain is where a dispute starts. Other software that renews by itself is under GRAMMARLY CO*, OPENAI *CHATGPT SUBSCR and CANVA*; a newspaper whose refund now depends on whether you cancel by phone is under D J*WSJ; an education plan whose subscription refund depends on the country the account is in is under UDEMY ONLINE COURSES. Other lines are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. Federal Trade Commission, press release “Ed Tech Provider Chegg to Pay $7.5 Million to Settle FTC Allegations Concerning Unlawful Cancellation Practices”, 15 September 2025: the allegations, the nearly 200,000, the proposed order, the note on court approval. ftc.gov (archive). Read on 26 October 2026.
2. Federal Trade Commission, case page “Chegg, Inc.” (File C4782): case status “Pending”, newest timeline entry 19 September 2025. ftc.gov (archive, saved 14 February 2026). Read on 26 October 2026. The company’s products, textbooks and subscriptions, are listed in the complaint, paragraphs 10 and 11 (source 3).
3. Federal Trade Commission v. Chegg, Inc., Complaint, 15 September 2025, Case 5:25-cv-07827, N.D. Cal.: products (paragraphs 10 to 13), the cancel flow until September 2024, cancelling on the other sites (paragraph 42), the internal messages quoted in paragraphs 75 to 77, with the vice president’s figures in paragraph 76. ftc.gov (PDF). Read on 26 October 2026. These are the FTC’s allegations.
4. Chegg, Customer Service “Frequently asked questions”: cancel, pause and payment-method steps. chegg.com (archive, saved 20 September 2026). The text was read in the archived copy on 26 October 2026.
5. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields "merchant", "trans_dt", "merchandise_amt" and "dept_name". Lines whose name contains CHEGG. Queried and counted on 26 October 2026: 107 lines, 13 paying units, 37 charges totalling 16,399.57 and 70 credits.
6. Federal Trade Commission v. Chegg, Inc., Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment, and Other Relief, filed 15 September 2025: findings paragraph 3, simple cancellation mechanisms, judgment of $7,500,000. ftc.gov (PDF). Read on 26 October 2026. This is the proposed order as filed.
7. Federal Trade Commission, “Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges”: how to write to the card issuer, the 60-day, 30-day and 90-day periods, and withholding the disputed amount. consumer.ftc.gov. Read on 26 October 2026.
8. Reddit threads, each the writer’s own account: June 2021 (reddit.com, archive); March 2023 (reddit.com, archive); August 2022 (reddit.com, archive); April 2024 (reddit.com, archive). Read on 26 October 2026. The archived copies were saved in 2025.