MyHeritage Charged Us $149 After We Declined the Subscription
If you are searching MyHeritage charged me $149, you are not alone.
This is what happened to us, step by step, and what we did to get the charge refunded.
We recommended MyHeritage DNA kits. We need to update that recommendation.
On this site, we talk a lot about DNA and what your genetic variants may mean for your nutrition and health. Naturally, many of our readers buy DNA kits.
We have pointed people toward MyHeritage in the past because the kits were often inexpensive — sometimes under $20 on sale.
We need to update that recommendation.
Here is why.
What happened
We purchased two MyHeritage DNA kits for $19.99 each. During checkout, MyHeritage offered a free trial of the Complete Plan subscription.
We declined it.
One month later, a $149 charge hit our PayPal account for a "MyHeritage Complete Plan" annual subscription.
The kits were still sitting unopened on the desk. No DNA sample had been mailed in. No results had been received. We had not used any subscription service.
When we looked closer, we found that an account existed and an annual renewal was already scheduled for the following year.
That is when we started searching — and we found many other customers describing similar surprise subscription charges.
The problem is not the DNA kit. The problem is the subscription trap.
MyHeritage DNA kits can still produce raw DNA data, and that raw data may be useful. The issue is what can happen around the subscription offer attached to the kit purchase.
As of June 2026, MyHeritage advertises a DNA kit bundled with a 30-day Complete Plan trial. The fine print says that after 30 days, the subscription converts into a paid annual plan unless canceled.
That may sound straightforward if you intentionally enroll in the trial.
But in our case, we declined the subscription offer and were charged anyway.
That is the part we are warning readers about.
The kit may be cheap. The surprise subscription charge is not.
What we did
This is not a how-to. We are not lawyers, and we are not telling anyone what to do. We are sharing what we did, in case it is useful to know that the option exists.
We filed in several places at once, instead of waiting for one channel to finish.
We filed a PayPal dispute
We opened a dispute in PayPal's Resolution Center about the $149 charge. We framed it as a billing and subscription issue, not as an undelivered item — because the DNA kits did arrive. The issue, for us, was the separate subscription charge that we did not believe we had agreed to.
In our description, we said clearly that we had purchased physical kits and been charged for them separately, that we had declined the subscription offer at checkout, that we had not opened the kits, and that we had not accessed any subscription service. We attached our PayPal transaction PDFs and a screenshot of the checkout.
We filed a Better Business Bureau complaint
We went to bbb.org, found MyHeritage's BBB profile, and filed a complaint there as well. We stuck to the facts: kit purchase date, kit price, subscription charge date, subscription amount, and the refund we were requesting.
MyHeritage is BBB accredited. The public BBB profile shows the company does respond to complaints, and many recent billing complaints there resolved in refunds.
We filed a state Attorney General complaint
We are in Michigan, so we used the Michigan Attorney General consumer complaint page. We kept it factual and short, and referenced our open PayPal case and BBB complaint.
Most states have something similar. We mention this only because we did it. Whether it is the right move for anyone else is their call.
We emailed MyHeritage directly
After the three complaints were on file, we emailed MyHeritage support and let them know — in one short, factual message — that we had filed in all three places, with the case reference numbers included. We requested a full refund of the $149 charge.
We cancelled the renewal — both sides of it
We logged into the MyHeritage account that had been created and stopped automatic renewal there. Then we went into our PayPal settings, found the billing agreement listed under Manage Automatic Payments, and cancelled it on the PayPal side as well.
We wanted to be sure the same charge could not happen again the following year.
What happened next, in our case
The same night we filed everything and sent the email, MyHeritage issued us a full refund of the $149 charge.
The PayPal, BBB, and Attorney General processes were still open at the time. The refund came directly from MyHeritage, before any of those processes had to run their course.
We are sharing this because the outcome was real, in our case. We cannot say what will happen for anyone else. Companies handle these things differently from one customer to the next.
One more thing worth knowing
A 30-day trial sounds reasonable until you remember how DNA kits work.
You order the kit. It ships to you. You collect your sample. You mail it back. The lab receives it. Then the DNA has to be processed. That process can take weeks.
So if the subscription trial starts when you buy the kit, the trial period may be over before many customers have even received or reviewed their DNA results.
That is the structural problem: the trial and billing window can close before many customers have even had a chance to receive, process, and understand what they thought they were buying.
Can the kits still be used?
That was our next question. The kits were already paid for, and we did not want to throw them out.
Based on what we read in MyHeritage's own help pages, the raw DNA data file appears to be downloadable from the account after results are ready, and the raw DNA file is what foodZipper reads. We have not tested the kits yet, so we will report back. If anything changes about that process on their end, we will update this post.
Once we have our raw DNA file, we plan to bring it into foodZipper the same way our readers do.
How our recommendation is changing
For now, we are pulling back our older suggestion to start with a MyHeritage kit just because it is cheap. The kit price is not always the full picture, in our experience.
What we are doing differently from here on:
Reading the subscription terms more carefully at checkout, on any DNA kit purchase — not just MyHeritage.
Taking a screenshot of the checkout screen before clicking buy, so we have a record of what was on the page.
Checking our PayPal billing agreements and our credit card recurring charges after the purchase, regardless of what the checkout said.
That is what we are doing. We are not telling anyone else what to do.
Not all DNA test kits are created equal. We covered the differences here.
The DNA kit may be cheap.
The surprise subscription charge is not.
Unlike MyHeritage, foodZipper is 100% completely free. No subscriptions. No upcharges. No surprise billing. No $149 annual charge buried behind a trial. foodZipper is a gift to our community — built to help people understand what their DNA may mean for their nutrition, without making them afraid to click the wrong button.
Change the way you eat. Change the way you feel. That's foodZipper.
— B+
foodZipper is free. Your file never leaves your device. Upload your DNA and see your report.