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I absolutely hate the dark pattern of fully controlling your subscription online, including changing it to a different service, but canceling requires a phone c
by tjsnyder 10y ago
I absolutely hate the dark pattern of fully controlling your subscription online, including changing it to a different service, but canceling requires a phone call during very specific business hours where you are very likely to forget.
It's disgusting and way too many companies are utilizing these tactics rather than building a solid business model.
More companies that are doing this should be called out. Ive seen naturebox, justfab and others just to name a few.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoIt should be, I think, a reasonable demand of reputable business that any subscription must be able to be cancelled via the same medium as it is signed up for.
- vanviegen 10y agoMany European countries have a law that makes this a requirement. I haven't encountered this pattern for quite some years (in The Netherlands).
- wildpeaks 10y agoeFax in Europe also does that.
- brandnewlow 10y agoLook ye, to http://Truebill.com http://Truebill.com for relief! (disclaimer, I am an investor)
- levemi 10y agoWow, look at this huge list for how to cancel from these kinds of sites: https://www.truebill.com/how-to-cancel https://www.truebill.com/how-to-cancel That's pretty awesome. I'm just going to check this list from now on before I put my credit card info into a web form.
- JimmyM 10y agoHow does Truebill make money? It seems a little too good to be true to be free. I mean, I can think of a bunch of perfectly acceptable ways to make money off this (selling anonymous information about what makes subscribers unsubscribe to companies, for example), I would just like to know before I sign up what exactly I am signing up for.
- levemi 10y agoeFax does it everywhere. I paid $0.99 to send a fax and ended up with two monthly statements for $16.99 that were not refundable. It's disgusting and it should be illegal.
- narrowrail 10y agoYou should check out YC-backed Hellofax: https://www.hellofax.com/info/pricing https://www.hellofax.com/info/pricing
- MichaelGG 10y agoeFax is part of patent troll J2. They own patents on something like "fax, but with the Internet" and go after every VoIP company that gets big enough.
- petercooper 10y agoFor anyone else who runs into problems with eFax. E-mail them, say you're deaf and therefore unable to call. It worked for me. Often dark patterns have great dark patterns that work in response.
- levemi 10y agoThis is lying. I don't want to lie.
- dawhizkid 10y agoT-mobile! Worst cancellation experience ever. Won't even let you cancel in-store. Should be illegal IMO.
- SwellJoe 10y agoI suspect T-Mobile is just deeply and embarrassingly incompetent, rather than actively user hostile. Everything, including spending more money with them, often takes a phone call. Changing plans online is impossible about half the time (depending on what you're trying to do, and it doesn't fail more often for downgrading service than upgrading). They are a phone company that barely knows how to do business as a phone company; they definitely aren't a technology or internet company, as they fail remarkably on those fronts.
- newjersey 10y agoKept getting bills every month even though I had cancelled and I was supposed to be on the free for life plan of 200MB. The representative acknowledges it was their fault every time. They removed the item from the bill every time within fifteen minutes of me dialing. Then I changed address. They might still be billing me for all I know.
- jerf 10y agoIf you are in the US (reasonable guess for a(n ex-)T-Mobile customer), you might want to exercise your right to pull a free credit report check and make sure it's not screwing it up. Since it is actually a bit challenging to correctly pull your free credit report, start here: https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/get-my-free-credit-report https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/get-my-free-cred... (Simply Googling "free credit report" and clicking willy-nilly can lead to sadness.) In fact I'm overdue to pull mine myself; thanks for reminding me.
- imglorp 10y ago> deeply and embarrassingly incompetent Correct. Former vendor, worked with their cell network crew on many occasions. To be more fair, all the large carriers are mostly laden with corporate procedures and bureaucracy so it's hard for worker bees to make progress even if they know what's needed. T-Mo's procedures are just more broken.
- dingo_bat 10y agoWhat would happen if you send them an email stating your wish to cancel and then asked your CC company to deny any charges from them? I'd think that would be a legal and valid way to cancel any service.
- viraptor 10y agoI removed subscriptions from a few services that way and none gave me any problems. Even reactivated some of the accounts later on when I decided to go back. Most of those used paypal, so I think they got cancel notifications straight away. I can't remember the names of most of the companies though. One was definitely Match, because they expect you to call them to cancel (or did at the time)
- greenleafjacob 10y agoThey send to collections. Personally I find a certified letter to their registered agent is the best method when I think a company might be shady and I don't wanna wait on the phone.
- euyyn 10y agoWhat's the registered agent of a company?
- fleitz 10y agoIt's the person on record who should be contacted for legal matters, correspondence, etc. Essentially, if these things ever get to court if you contacted someone other than the agent they can claim they weren't notified, didn't know, etc, if they are shady, but a registered letter to the registered agent is like the gold standard of having contacted them.
- dredmorbius 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_agent
- 10y ago
- hvidgaard 10y agoI have been in that situation before. I send them an email stating I wanted to cancel and I got the run of the mill "call this number". The reply proved that they're reading it so I send a reply back that I was unable to call, that they must forward the mail, and they're welcome to call me if they think it isn't me that is canceling. Then I refused any future CC payments and that was the end of it.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoWhen I encounter these types of windows that I can't seem to "close" I use Google's developer console to inspect the element and then...delete it. The box goes away and I can read the rest of the news article. It's a pain but it's better than clicking anything that might lead to further annoyances.
- dhimes 10y agoSame. Would be nice to have a "make this recur" button so when page reloads I don't have to keep doing it. EDIT: If it's just text I'm after, I'll also go in with elinks.
- _asummers 10y agoYou could use something like Greasemonkey and set up rules for that domain, though it'd be nice if this was automated from the action of deleting an element.
- sp332 10y agouBlock Origin has an element-selector built in. It pops up a little editing window, and you can modify and save the element to your own block list.
- knowaveragejoe 10y agoThe downside is that web pages often change, so this might not work for long.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
- e40 10y agoHere's my trick: use a virtual credit card number (which is safer, anyway, since you don't expose the # of your original CC), and revoke it when you want to cancel. Or, make a VCC# with a $ limit. I don' t know if anyone other than Citibank has them anymore. They are fantastic.
- throwanem 10y agoBank of America has them; their Apple Pay support is built on them. You can create one directly via their online banking interface, although it's pretty deeply buried and (IIRC) requires Flash, which is weird.
- jib 10y agoWatchESPN (at least their college app). Requires a personal email to cancel, can do everything else on their site. So tired of those guys. They got an extra 20 euro from me by using this too, so I guess it works? (If they want no money from me ever again).
- dajohnson89 10y agoYou were going to cancel anyways, so they're still up ahead.
- banku_brougham 10y agoI have a few credit cards dedicated to this purpose, that I cancel when I run into this problem. This article made me realize how messed up it is that we have come to this.
- criddell 10y agoI don't think cancelling a credit card always works. I've had cards that have been cancelled that still process new charges for some reason.
- gedrap 10y agoIn general, managing subscriptions for each media source sucks. I'd rather trust one company to manage it and have it all in one place rather than a few different ones with varying level of quality.
- harryh 10y agoPro tip: Email them to cancel. When they tell you they only cancel on the phone, tell them you're deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.
- levemi 10y agoWhy do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie. This is terrible. This doesn't make it any better or easier to cancel. I don't want to lie and I shouldn't have to.
- nksjndfdf 10y agoHack their shit and cancel it yourself. Works every time.
- throwanem 10y ago> Why do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? Because the service provider is dishonest already.
- 794CD01 10y agoThat doesn't make it okay to lie to them. Where did you learn morality? Ancient Babylon?
- throwanem 10y agoWhether it's okay to lie to them has no obvious bearing on whether it's necessary. Where did you learn morality? A shallow reading of the New Testament?
- 794CD01 10y agoFrom my parents, thanks. I fail to see how it's "necessary" in any sense here. Nobody's going to die because I called the company to cancel my account instead of emailing them.
- takno 10y agoGot one of those for wine yesterday - get the initial cheap (but not free offer) purchase, and then only through well-learned suspicion do I check through enough to realise they've auto-enrolled me on a £25/month subscription. On the upside they answered the phone immediately outside office hours and it was all cancelled in less than 30 seconds, so it's not always a hard sell on the phone
- taneq 10y agoLinkedIn's "free trial" does this too (although they are /somewhat/ transparent with it). They send invites to trial their premium product pretty regularly, but in order to activate the trial you have to essentially sign up for the service, and then remember to cancel again before the trial runs out and you start getting billed.
- Spooky23 10y agoNewspapers are so desperate, they'll do anything. The answer is only use a customer focused card, or insist on invoicing, preferably where you pay in arrears. My local paper even plays games with invoicing. They bill on a weird cycle (10 week) and will send you out of cycle/overlapping invoices that you don't actually owe. Sometimes those out of cycle invoices casually jack the rate up 20-30% -- if you pay it, you're accepting new terms.
- pkaye 10y agoMy local paper does the same thing. Didn't realize this was their new strategy and that the billing department was not incompetent. They will send fake bills ahead of time with higher rates and say that my previous weeks have run out but my wife keeps everything logged and sets them straight everytime. Also long as you are willing to "play chicken" to cancel the service, they are willing to renegotiate to your terms (just like Comcast.)
- tamana 10y agoWhy not just cancel? Is it really worth having this battle, over a newspaper? I'll do it for my internet because that's an esssenit to survive.
- a13n 10y agoOne time I was trying to cancel my plan with Bally's fitness in New York and they wanted me to send a physical letter to Nebraska or something. I filed a better business bureau complaint and it was taken care of very quickly.
- wldcordeiro 10y ago24 Hour Fitness has a similar policy you can put your account on indefinite hold at a location but to cancel you have to mail some letter to their headquarters. Stupid bullshit to keep their numbers up artificially.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoMy local fitness place had a deal where for $5 a month they'd put your membership 'on hold'. What a deal! I discovered by erasing my credit card on their payment site I could do it for $0 a month.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoJust be careful that they don't take you to collections for "missed payments". Regardless though, fuck these kinds of practices where signing up is easy and leaving is hard. That should be something massively illegal with fines in the millions to billions for the number of affected customers.
- illumin8 10y agoThere's even worse ones - Gyms that make you sign up for a membership that auto-renews every year and bills your credit card monthly. They require you mail a physical letter requesting cancellation via certified mail! And you must prove you are the account holder and then wait 6-8 weeks for them to process your cancellation, so you might just end up auto-renewed for another year unless you cancelled two months in advance. It's actually a wonder some of these business models based on theft by deception/fraud don't get prosecuted/sued out of existence...
- themartorana 10y agoA agency of some sort that protected consumers from these sorts of business practices would make a lot of sense. I wonder if Elizabeth Warren is doing anything...
- specialist 10y agoMy state's current Attorney General, who has jurisdiction, is pretty good at this sort of thing. Previous guy was quite a bit more laissez faire.
- specialist 10y agoEvery year there's a genuine effort to reign in payday lenders in my state. Alas, those businesses know how to lobby. Bills die in committee, key votes won't budge, etc. "Petty" issues like this don't light the activists' fire sufficiently to bring the heat required to push thru change. Another similar issue is predator towing operations. Every one agrees they have to go, but they're far down on the list of priorities.
- rham 10y agoI just cancelled a membership at a gym which utilises these cancellation practices. When I found out that I'd have to mail a physical letter, I called my bank instead. If you use your credit card, you can wiggle your way out of it if you explain that these cancellation processes are absurd. Call the gym and ask if they'll cancel your membership over the phone first. After they refuse, tell your credit card company about it and ask them to try calling the gym with you on the line to get your membership cancelled. If the gym persists in its refusal you should be able to dispute and block the charge. For me though this happened to be linked to my debit card (and I never ever put monthly billables on my debit card so I'm not sure what I was thinking when I signed up). However, because I had no other services linked to my debit card, I was able to have my bank just send me a new card and that was that.
- marstall 10y agocall center hours at the globe are listed as 6AM-5PM M-f, 8AM-2PM Sat/Sun. Seems pretty generous to me. Keep in mind this is 140 year old company which can't change all at once.
- kevando 10y agoTo cancel my gym membership I need to mail them a letter. It's laughable, but this shit works. I still belong to the gym
- wtetzner 10y agoComcast does this as well. It's actually worse than just cancelling. You can't even downgrade to a lower internet speed without calling, but you can upgrade to something more expensive online.
- seanp2k2 10y agoYup, and when you call to downgrade, it's not a quick conversation. They have to try to negotiate with you and try to actually sell you more when you're asking for less. The person I spoke to finally capitulated after about 10 minutes of trying to sell me packages, ask me what my internet was used for, trying to explain why I might want not-their-cheapest thing, trying to tell me it's a bad deal, etc. It was super annoying and a stressful experience honestly to drop from 100mbit peak download to 35mbit service; $65 a month vs $105 for the 100mbit, 100mbit came as a package deal with basic cable which I didn't use since I don't have a TV. It was $10 cheaper than without TV, priced at $60/month for 6 months as a promo, the TV bundled so they can inflate their subscriber numbers to attempt to publicly minimize the effects of cord cutting. I'd do anything to have a different ISP, but my apartment building has the choice of Comcast or 768k ATT DSL for the same price since I'd have to also get a phone line.
- wtetzner 10y agoSo I've discovered that the trick to a faster downgrade phone call is to call and say you want to cancel your service. Then you get someone who's trying to keep you as a customer, and they are willing to do more to please you.