Complaint

These review sites can be helpful. With over 1200 reviews for Musescore and a rating of 2.6 it makes sense for potential customers to at least check out the reviews. A score of 2.6 also correlates with the number of complaints about shoddy practise that we see in these forums. I wouldn't say that Musescore's sales lures would qualify for any 'transparent truthfulness' awards.

Musescore has over 2000 reviews as of today and a 49% 1-star rate - almost ALL of which (I read almost all 50 pages of them today) related to their underhanded and deceptive sales funnel that I ALSO fell prey to today (after being charged $150 for what I THOUGHT was a free trial. Fool me once, congrats, but I still charged back the transaction and filed an FTC report. Forget about the difficulty of unsubscribing and refund policies; the lack of transparency between their free trial and "instant" (nontrial) plans - and, more importantly, which you're signing up for - is enough for the FTC to sue them into oblivion.

Vindictiveness aside, looking back at my experience signing up, their funnel reeks of trying to hide what they're doing behind checkboxes and small print (which I read fully and consented to because I thought I was signing up for a TRIAL). Ultimately, all these practices were made illegal in the recently resolved "America vs. Adobe Inc." trial, where the FTC basically ruled that you as a consumer have protections against "small print" and "gotcha" tactics in funnels AND in terms of service agreements. These are now explicitly illegal practices.

The point: It seems as though "Musescore.com" is defrauding users who want to try it out to see if it's a good fit before spending their money. (i.e. the aproximate 1000 users in the 1-star-50th percentile).

Here's more fun data: of those 1000 reviews -
1) 40% of them occurred in the last 7 months
2) 55% of them occurred in the last 12 months
3) the other 45% happened between Apr 2019 and Oct. 2023

The first two claims are "TERRIBLE FRAUDULENT SERVICE" and "SHADY ways of getting money."

That's 4 years of people consistent complaints followed by over DOUBLE the complaints (for the same issue) totaling somewhere around a minimum of $59,990 in funds appropriated against the stated will of the consumer. It's probably closer to double or triple that if they were like me or if you adjust for the individuals who just didn't say anything about it. $30k of the whistleblowers claimed this happened in the last 12 months.