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One of several reasons I left my first job out of college is that the boss made me remove the ability to cancel a subscription from our web application. I thoug

One of several reasons I left my first job out of college is that the boss made me remove the ability to cancel a subscription from our web application. I thought it was pure jackassery to make people call and then try to wheel and deal to keep them on, but it did make a surprisingly real difference to the bottom line. No doubt something similar is at play with Adobe. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be opposed to a law or regulation of some kind that any subscription you can sign up for from a website you can also cancel from the website. The whole "let's make it hard to cancel" play is so slimy.

leesalminen 10y ago
I can see both sides to the issue. As a consumer, I loathe any company that makes it difficult to cancel. As the owner of a business management platform, we've found that more than half of our cancellations are due to lack of knowledge. The product is fairly complex and has hundreds (possibly 1,000) settings that cover just about any customization a business in our niche could want. People don't want to learn or read documentation, so we offer one on one video calls with our team to support configuration. The cancellations come when they forget about the (free) one on one time and get frustrated with all the configuration. The way we handle cancellations is to follow the "don't be a dick" policy. When a customer requests cancellation (a single email to their acct manager) we remind them about all the resources they still have available and offer to chat with them to see if there's a workable solution for them. If we don't hear back within 1 day, we process the cancellation and refund.
- lamontcg 10y ago
  You're still kind of being a dick to anyone that really does want to cancel. The flip side to the "half" of the customers that you can retain with this policy is the other half of the customers that just want to end their subscription and would be better served by a webpage and not having to get past a customer support script to do it.

leesalminen 10y ago

I can see both sides to the issue. As a consumer, I loathe any company that makes it difficult to cancel. As the owner of a business management platform, we've found that more than half of our cancellations are due to lack of knowledge. The product is fairly complex and has hundreds (possibly 1,000) settings that cover just about any customization a business in our niche could want. People don't want to learn or read documentation, so we offer one on one video calls with our team to support configuration. The cancellations come when they forget about the (free) one on one time and get frustrated with all the configuration. The way we handle cancellations is to follow the "don't be a dick" policy. When a customer requests cancellation (a single email to their acct manager) we remind them about all the resources they still have available and offer to chat with them to see if there's a workable solution for them. If we don't hear back within 1 day, we process the cancellation and refund.

lamontcg 10y ago
You're still kind of being a dick to anyone that really does want to cancel. The flip side to the "half" of the customers that you can retain with this policy is the other half of the customers that just want to end their subscription and would be better served by a webpage and not having to get past a customer support script to do it.