I once worked for a company that switched to a subscription model. The entire thing was designed to be as difficult to cancel as possible, so that people would keep paying long after they stopped needing to use the service. The whole thing was fucking disgusting and I kept getting reprimanded for pointing out how insidious it was.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I didn’t realize canceling streaming subscriptions was difficult. Is this some sort of proactive measure?
It isn’t, generally. We went through a whole market transformation when streaming came in where we lost the whole “12 month contract” thing. It affected TV, phones, utilities services, banking products, etc. and now we have “cancel anytime” as the norm
But plenty of companies have tried to be sneaky around the “cancel anytime” approach. For example, the New York Times has a very easy subscribe process: click product, pay. But to unsubscribe, you can’t go through the same way, you either have to ring or go through their online chat, because it gives them an opportunity to retain, upsell, or even delay to get you to stay or give up unsubscribing. I feel like these kinds of tactics are what the FTC are going for.
Can't you just cancel the direct debit with the bank in those instances?
Yeah but in practice that’s a pain in the arse. Ringing your bank is not the thing most people want to be doing while they’re working, especially if they have to be on hold for an hour or more.
Huh, every banking app I use here in the UK has a feature where I can simply cancel direct debits/standing orders through the app.
In fact, the banks will encourage you to do this so they have less people calling/coming into branch.
Most people don’t pay for things with a direct debit from the bank. The standard is for the service to charge your credit card every month. You can call the credit card and stop payment but that is very different from canceling the subscription so most places will keep your account active and tell you that you’ve missed a payment and owe a debt.
I don't think it's just streaming services. FTC quotes gym memberships as an example as well, and they're notorious for bad cancellation policies.
This is simply a positive thing. Corporations have the right to conduct their businesses, the consumers should also have the right to abndon those businesses they no longer wanted, as easy as adopting them.
Corporations: FREE MARKETS!!
Us: ok
Corporations: Wait, not like that!
For nearly the past 20 years, cancelling XM radio (and now SiriusXM) required a phone call to customer service to cancel an account. Literally you could log in, add new radios, upgrade subscriptions, etc from the website, but you could NOT cancel online.
I was pleasantly surprised that they finally seem to have listened and you can now unsubscribe online without making a phone call. I guess they realized the labor costs were more than the number of customers they were retaining with the dumb policy.
Having a good CC merchant can’t short circuit this. Had a pay as you go phone provider with nearly the same thing. Called once and got shuffled around and hung up on.
Called the CC merchant and said I tried to cancel but they keep charging me. But that the service is no longer approved. They filed a chargeback on the last purchase and, at my request, stopped allowing future charges to the account. That canceled the service. Granted, as with most chargebacks, they canceled my account and sent me a strongly worded email but fuck it, I was done anyway.
Yeah, most people don't realize your bank has your back. If you paid by card online, you're protected in situations like this - the vendor then has 14 days responsibility to respond to your bank and tell them why they refused to cancel the service for the customer with a good enough excuse otherwise the customer almost always wins a chargeback.
I will say mileage can vary. When I was a wee lad I had a tendency to use a debit card with my bank at the time (Suntrust), that had a visa logo. They would constantly not honor this, to the point of even joyfully over drafting me . And in fact on the day I went to close that account because the said if a vendor charged they account, it was out of their hands. Anyway I walked into a branch with cash to zero out the balance and close the account and they tried to tell me cash deposits were not immediate. I had to loudly read the agreement on their own pamphlet that cash deposits were immediate and they needed to close the account or stop all transactions right then.
So some banks are shitty. Don’t use those banks, it’s your money and they have a fiduciary responsibility to honor your wishes on how it gets used.
This is also the reason I don’t use debit cards or expose my bank accounts directly. I always use a Credit Card now and just pay that monthly. It gives me leverage on fraud charges.
For the few services I have to have a bank account (ie: Venmo, cashapp, etc) I use a secondary bank account with a minimal balance tied to it to reduce risk b
Lol yeah, my friend works at one of the larger banks and things are very different - she handles chargebacks and oven deals with people who file chargebacks on a $5 hot dog they just bought claiming they got food poisoning 10 minutes later. It's insane what some banks let fly.
Sucks suntrust is such a crummy bank - I would look elsewhere for banking lol.
Yeah that is crazy. I really only handle chargebacks as a final “nuclear” option. But some companies are just setup that it’s really the only recourse.
I also have a pretty long and fairly steady history witb said CC merchant. So it’s clearly not a pattern or abuse. I’m thinking I’ve maybe filed 3-4 in the last 10 years. And that’s with an average of 200-500 transactions a month on the account.
I really only handle chargebacks as a final “nuclear” option
As it should be. I have to deal with customers who literally wait until they see I generate a tracking number and scanned in at the post office before they call their bank later that day and file chargeback because they know half the time small businesses aren't diligent enough to respond within the 14 day window provided by the banks in the chargeback process for refuting a dispute.
I also have a pretty long and fairly steady history witb said CC merchant. So it’s clearly not a pattern or abuse. I’m thinking I’ve maybe filed 3-4 in the last 10 years. And that’s with an average of 200-500 transactions a month on the account.
Yeah, as I've recently discovered, credit unions tend to offer better customer service than banks these days for all things from loans to banking in general.
Yep. That’s why we are exclusively credit union customers.
I don’t even carry an atm/debit card. Just a credit card. Also don’t do autopay for bills unless they will charge a CC. No autopay from bill pay at all.
ATT mobile does this. Had to do a chat to cancel, took like 25 minutes instead of a simple cancel button
AT&T Mobile too? Hot damn I had AT&T Internet for a few years and they REALLY screwed up. I started having intermittent signal issues where the reception would drop to less than 1megabit per second. They kept sending techs out who would look at their ipad and say the box in the neighborhood is showing a good signal and it MUST be all the 3D printers I have in my spare bedroom (not realizing that those printers don't even have wifi connections lol).
Finally after a dozen techs all told me I was crazy, I switched to cable internet and when I unplugged my DSL AT&T modem, it turns out the phone cable was loose (poor crimp job by the AT&T install tech when they installed the unit a few years earlier) - if one single tech had physically unplugged my modem to test signal quality from my end they would have caught the issue - but nope. So I called AT&T to cancel and they refused to cancel - they transferred the call to an account retention specialist who kept refusing to let me cancel the service - trying to offer me better rates and such. I was shaking I so angry, I told them they had a dozen chances over six months to fix the issue and never did.
Just for context on why rules like this are definitely needed. AOL still has people paying them subscriptions as of 2 years ago.
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