A DOCUSIGN charge on your card: a signature plan that renewed by itself

A line that says DOCUSIGN or DOCUSIGN INC. is a Docusign eSignature subscription: the service people use to sign and send contracts.⁵ It is sold on an annual commitment, and the annual plan renews automatically at “the then-current fee” unless you cancel at least five business days before the term ends.⁶ That combination is why the line is so often a surprise: the plan you bought a year ago is not the price you are charged this year, and nothing on the statement says which of the two it is.²

What the state’s card data shows

The State of Delaware publishes every purchase its employees make on state cards, with the merchant name as the bank received it. Counted on 28 October 2026, the data has 166 lines with DOCUSIGN in the name, from 25 March 2020 to 23 September 2026, paid by 23 state offices, schools and courts: 152 charges totalling 127,303.39 and 14 credits totalling 2,892.17. The smallest charge is 6.00 and the largest 13,100.00.⁵ The name appears in two forms, and they carry two different merchant categories:

These are agency cards, so the plans are not those a household would buy. What the lines show about the way Docusign bills can still be counted.⁵

• The name changed, and the two names ran side by side for years. DOCUSIGN INC. first appears on 18 May 2023. The older DOCUSIGN keeps appearing until 16 April 2026. In seven different months (May 2023, June 2023, January 2024, November 2024, March 2025, November 2025, April 2026) both forms were used by different offices in the same month, and on no day do both appear. One office, the Academy of Dover Charter School, used both spellings three days apart in November 2024 (96.00 as DOCUSIGN INC. on the 27th, 120.00 as DOCUSIGN on the 29th). So a card that shows one spelling one month can show the other the next, and an office searching its statements for last year’s spelling will not find this year’s charge.
• A price of 300.00 recurs across units and years. 24 charges of exactly 300.00 were paid by 13 different offices between 2020 and 2026, most of them once a year, several of them on the same calendar day: Woodbridge School District on 9 June in 2024, 2025 and 2026; Delaware Military Academy on 18 April in 2022, 2023 and (17 April) 2024, then 600.00 on 18 April in 2025 and 2026; the Judicial branch 210.00 on 10 July in 2023, 2024 and 2025. The data does not say what each office bought, so it cannot tell you which plan the 300.00 paid for.
• Monthly billing looks like three lines a month. Newark Charter School paid 40.00 twenty-two times between 22 April 2020 and 22 January 2021, three lines in each of the first six months, on the 21st and twice on the 22nd, then one a month from October 2020, then nothing. There are three credits from the same school: 18.67 and 17.33 on 13 October 2020, which add up to 36.00, and 80.00 on 16 February 2021, which is two months of 40.00. We do not know whether that was one user on a monthly plan or several.
• The annual renewal repeats to the day. Early College High School paid 13,100.00 on 15 November 2024 and 13,100.00 on 15 November 2025; before that, 11,040.00 on 25 May 2021, 3 May 2022 and 23 May 2023. Several offices pay on the same date every year without a gap — Edison Charter on 10 or 11 May in each of 2022 to 2026, Woodbridge on 9 June in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Delaware Military Academy on 18 April in 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026 and on 17 April in 2024 — which is what an auto-renewing annual plan looks like from outside. When the amount changes between two renewals, the data does not say whether the price changed or the plan did.
• Fourteen credits against 152 charges. Besides the Newark ones, the credits are 295.07 and 274.93 (14 July 2020), 591.78 (5 October 2020), 300.00 (8 April 2021), 14.79 (7 March 2022), 280.33 and 319.67 (5 June 2023), 100.80, 75.60 and 43.20 (13 May 2025, from the same school; 100.80 and 43.20 are each the size of an earlier charge of that school, 75.60 is not) and 480.00 (12 August 2026). A credit is not a refund to a card: it is a reduction of what that office owed, and the data does not say why any of them was given.

What a plan costs, and why the renewal can be larger

Docusign sells eSignature as Personal at $11 a month, Standard at $30 per user a month and Business Pro at $45 per user a month, each on the page as “Annual | Billed monthly”: “you enroll in a full year of service but pay your subscription in monthly installments” — so the Personal plan is “an annual commitment of $132”.⁸ None of that is a monthly plan you can leave at will; the pricing page says that if you cancel an annual subscription after the first 30 days, “you’ll be required to pay the remaining balance on your annual subscription, including any taxes or overage costs”.⁸

The renewal itself is priced at “the then-current fee associated with the Subscription Plan”, and the terms say the plan “will automatically renew for the same time period” unless you cancel.⁶ There are four ways the amount can move between two renewals, and the statement shows none of them:

• More seats. Standard and Business Pro are priced per user, and closing or deleting a user does not by itself change the number of seats billed; Docusign has a separate task for reducing seats before renewal.²
• Prorated charges for a seat or plan added partway through the billing period, which “may appear on different invoices”.⁴
• Envelope overage. An annual plan includes up to 100 sent envelopes per user a year, a monthly plan up to 10 a month, and anything above that “may incur an additional fee”.⁴
• A promotional price ending. The terms say that if you bought with a promotional code, “each Renewal Term will be charged at the original, non-discounted price”.⁶

Docusign does not send a renewal notice to everyone: its own article says an auto-renewal email goes to the administrator, billing contact and renewal manager 90 days before the renewal date for “Enterprise and Commercial customers”.² We found no page that says a notice is sent to a Personal or Standard plan bought on the website, and the people quoted below say they got none.

What Docusign refunds, in its own words

The refund policy sets the window by plan type and region, and the differences are large:¹

Three qualifications matter as much as the table. The “one-time risk-free offer applies to a person or entity”, so it can be used once; the pricing page says the 30-day refund option “may only be used once per customer”.¹⁸ A plan bought from a sales representative is outside the online flow entirely — “cancellation and refund rights are governed by your service contract”, and during the contracted term you cannot cancel or ask for a refund online.¹⁷ And a renewal is treated separately from a first purchase: Docusign says that if an annual plan renewed within the past 14 days, you may ask for a one-time exception, but only if it is your first annual renewal, you have sent no envelopes in the new term, and you have never had such an exception before.²

Two rules sit above all of it. The terms say flatly that “Customer’s payments are non-refundable except as expressly provided in these Terms”, and a refund goes back only to the original payment method — you cannot ask for it on a different card.⁶¹ In the UK and the EU, consumer law adds a withdrawal right of 14 days from the day after the contract is concluded, and the terms carry that right for consumers resident there; it is not available to a business buying for its trade.⁶

What cardholders say they found

The people below wrote in Docusign’s own community forum and on Reddit. These are their own accounts, not our findings, and we have not heard Docusign’s side of any of them. We picked them because each says what happened to a card.

• Cancelled in February, charged in March. A writer said on 5 March 2025 that they had submitted a cancellation on 11 February 2025 and had an email from Docusign about it, that after the expiry date of 28 February 2025 Docusign “still charged $120 from my credit card”, and that the account still showed as a free account, which they said left them unable to open a case. A Docusign employee replied the same day with a workaround: submit a case from the bottom of the support page without signing in.¹⁰
• Cancelled in March, charged again in April and May. Another writer said on 14 May 2025 that they had cancelled a paid subscription in March 2025, that Docusign kept charging, that they had already had one charge refunded after involving PayPal, and that a further invoice had arrived. They wrote that they could find no way to close the account themselves. A community moderator replied on 23 May 2025 that the account had been closed.¹¹
• A monthly plan that renewed higher. A writer said on 7 May 2025 that they had bought a month of Docusign in April for “68 dollars and change”, cancelled in mid-April, and were charged “148 dollars and change” on the May renewal date while the account showed the free version, and asked why a renewal would not be 68. A community moderator answered that billing issues cannot be handled in the public forum and pointed to the support case form; there is no later post from the writer in the thread.¹²
• Cancelled in October, charged the next April. A writer said on 18 May 2026 that they cancelled on 15 October 2025 and had proof, that their card was charged on 18 April 2026 anyway, and that they could find no way in the account to remove the stored card. They said a ticket opened on 3 May was answered that the charge was “non-refundable per policy”, a second ticket was closed as a duplicate, and that they had asked their bank to freeze the card. On 9 June 2026 they wrote that 240 GBP had reached their bank on 18 May 2026, and that they had then been charged HKD 700 on 11 May 2026 on a card that appears nowhere in the account’s billing history.¹³ These are the writer’s statements about their own account; we have not seen the invoices.
• No renewal reminder, no refund. On Reddit in November 2024 a writer said that without any renewal reminder Docusign charged them for another year, that the cancellation options were buried, and that support told them “no refunds for renewals”. They cited California’s automatic renewal law and said they had disputed the charge with their card company.¹⁴
• Charges with no account at all. In March 2025 a writer said their card had been charged roughly eight times by Docusign for over $3,000, that they had no Docusign account, and that a new charge got through three days after the bank closed the card and again five days after that. The replies suggest someone opened an account with the stolen card details; that is the commenters’ explanation, not something either side confirmed.¹⁵

How to find the account and stop the charge

1. Find it Search every inbox — including work, school and club addresses — for “Docusign”, “signature request” and “envelope”. A paid account is the one that has an Admin menu; a free account can sign documents but cannot send them, and a trial turns into a free account by itself when it ends, without needing to be cancelled.¹⁶ If nobody you know has an account, treat the card as stolen and read step 4.
2. See what was bought As an administrator, open Admin → Plan and Billing → Billing History and open the transaction. Compare the invoice’s Total with the amount charged, and compare it with earlier invoices; added seats, prorated amounts and envelope overage each leave a trace there.⁴
3. Stop the next one Manage Subscription → Cancel subscription → confirm. Docusign says the account downgrades to the free version at the end of the term, and that you should not choose Close Account if you only want to stop the renewal.³ Do it at least five business days before the term ends, which is the notice the terms require.⁶ Keep the confirmation email and take a screenshot of the date. Deleting the card is not an alternative: Docusign’s article on payment methods says “Docusign requires at least one valid payment method on file for an active paid subscription to support automatic renewal”, and its only steps are to update or add one.¹⁸
4. Ask for the money back, in the window The same flow checks eligibility and issues the refund if the account qualifies; if it does not, it says so on screen.⁷ For a first annual renewal inside 14 days, Docusign’s renewal article says to contact support with the invoice.² A refund goes back to the original card, and Docusign quotes 5–7 business days for a card refund under $1,000 and 7–10 for one above it.¹
5. If support will not take it Free accounts can still reach a person: Docusign says every customer can start a live chat from its Get Support page and that a phone callback is available for free and trial accounts too, with the workaround of submitting a case without signing in.¹⁷¹⁰ Put the dates in writing — the cancellation email, the charge, the ticket numbers.
6. Then the card company If the charge was not authorised, or a cancellation you can prove was ignored, write to the card issuer with your name, address, account number and what the mistake is, so that the letter reaches it within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent; the issuer must acknowledge in writing within 30 days and resolve within 90, and you may withhold the disputed amount while it does.⁹ Ask for a new card number if the account is not yours, because a stored card number can keep being charged.

Is this a scam?

The name is real and the charges are ordinary: public bodies in one state paid it on 166 lines over six years, and the pricing, the refund windows and the renewal clause are all published by the company.⁵¹⁶ What the record shows is a billing model that is easy to enter and hard to leave: an annual commitment that renews itself at the current price, a monthly plan in the US that carries no refund at all, and a cancellation path that several people describe as hidden. A DOCUSIGN line you cannot match to any account is a different matter — someone else may have used the card — and belongs with your bank the same day.

Why this page is on a site about held money

This site records payment companies that hold back money that belongs to someone else. Docusign is not in the incident record. This page is here because a charge that renews without a notice you saw is where a dispute starts, and because the refund rules differ so much by plan that the answer depends on which one you bought. Other software that renews by itself is under GRAMMARLY CO*, ADOBE *ADOBE and OPENAI *CHATGPT SUBSCR; a plan sold per seat to businesses, like this one, is under SMK*SURVEYMONKEY. For the e-signature product that sits in the same group as pdfFiller, see AIRSLATE INC. Other lines are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. Docusign Support, “Docusign Refund Policy”, updated 23 October 2026: the eligibility windows by plan and region, the one-time offer, the sales-purchased exclusion, refund timings by amount and method. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026. The web archive had no copy of this page on that date.
2. Docusign Support, “Docusign Renewals”: the 30-day window on a new annual plan, the first-renewal exception (14 days, no envelopes sent, no earlier exception), the 90-day auto-renewal notice for Enterprise and Commercial customers, seat reduction. support.docusign.com; and “Does my Docusign subscription plan automatically renew?”, updated 4 June 2026. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026. No archived copy existed on that date.
3. Docusign Support, “Cancel a Docusign subscription or stop auto-renewal”: the four steps, the downgrade to the free version, and the warning not to choose Close Account to stop a renewal. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026. No archived copy existed on that date.
4. Docusign Support, “What do I do if I was charged an unexpected amount on my Docusign invoice?”, updated 26 October 2026: Billing History, prorated charges, envelope allowances and overage. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026.
5. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields “merchant”, “merch_descr”/“cat_descr”, “trans_dt”, “merchandise_amt” and “dept_name”. Lines whose name contains DOCUSIGN. Queried and counted on 28 October 2026: 166 lines, two forms, 23 paying units, 152 charges totalling 127,303.39 and 14 credits totalling 2,892.17.
6. Docusign, “Docusign Sites & Services Terms and Conditions”, last updated 13 January 2025: 4.4.2 (automatic renewal, five business days’ notice), 4.4.5 (no refunds), 4.4.3 (a promotional price ends at renewal), 11.17.2 (the UK consumer’s 14-day cancellation right). docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026, which the archive stores under the /legal/ address the page redirects to). Read on 28 October 2026.
7. Docusign Support, “Docusign Refunds”, updated 26 October 2026: the online cancellation and refund flow, the eligibility check, the warning that the flow “can remove access to saved agreements”, and the exclusion of plans bought through a sales representative. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026. No archived copy existed on that date.
8. Docusign, “Docusign Pricing | eSignature Plans for Personal & Business”: Personal $11, Standard $30 and Business Pro $45, each “Annual | Billed monthly”; “an annual commitment of $132”; the terms of cancelling an annual plan after 30 days; the 30-day refund option once per customer. ecom.docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026). Read on 28 October 2026.
9. Federal Trade Commission, “Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges”: how to write to the card issuer, and the 60-day, 30-day and 90-day periods. consumer.ftc.gov. Read on 28 October 2026.
10. Docusign Community, thread “charged my credit card but still a free member”, 5 March 2025: the writer’s account of the 11 February cancellation, the 28 February expiry and the $120 charge; the Docusign employee’s reply the same day with the signed-out case workaround. community.docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026). Read on 28 October 2026.
11. Docusign Community, thread “I want my account closed NOW!”, 14 May 2025, with the writer’s follow-up of 20 May 2025 and the moderator’s reply of 23 May 2025. community.docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026). Read on 28 October 2026.
12. Docusign Community, thread “Issue with Billing and No Support”, 7 May 2025: the April purchase, the mid-April cancellation and the May charge, with the moderator’s reply. community.docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026). Read on 28 October 2026.
13. Docusign Community, thread “Charged without consent after cancelling last October”, 18 May 2026, with the writer’s follow-up of 9 June 2026 and the moderator’s replies. community.docusign.com (archived copy of 28 October 2026). Read on 28 October 2026.
14. Reddit, r/docusign, “Feeling Frustrated with DocuSign’s Renewal Policy”, posted 13 November 2024, with the replies. reddit.com (archived copy of 6 March 2025). Read on 28 October 2026. Reddit blocks this site’s direct reads, so the text was read in the archived copy.
15. Reddit, r/docusign, “Fraudulent Charges by Docusign But I Don’t Have a Docusign Account”, posted 10 March 2025, with the replies. reddit.com (archived copy of 13 March 2025). Read on 28 October 2026 in the archived copy.
16. Docusign Support, “What are the differences between a Docusign Trial account, Developer account, and Free account?”, updated 22 October 2026: the trial converting to a free account on its own, and what a free account can do. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026.
17. Docusign Support, “How do I contact Docusign Customer Support?”: live chat for every customer, email for paid and trial accounts, and phone callback for free and trial accounts. support.docusign.com; and “Important Changes to Docusign Support”, updated 4 June 2026, which says support was fully digitised in 2024 and gives the live-chat steps for free accounts. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026.
18. Docusign Support, “Update your payment information”, updated 16 October 2026: the supported payment methods, the steps under Plan and Billing, and the sentence that “Docusign requires at least one valid payment method on file for an active paid subscription to support automatic renewal”. support.docusign.com. Read on 28 October 2026. The article has no step for removing the only saved card.

What this page does not claim. We found no Docusign page that states the billing descriptor it sends to card networks; the two spellings above are the ones in one state’s published card data, which may not be the only ones. The Delaware data does not say what any office bought, so the amounts on this page are not a price list. The verification date for every fact here is 28 October 2026.