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I honestly tell them yes, because I’ve never done this without making (and recording) at least one good faith attempt to stop a service with full disclosure of

I honestly tell them yes, because I’ve never done this without making (and recording) at least one good faith attempt to stop a service with full disclosure of the date I intend to stop payment if they don’t. I then don’t use the service if they fail to stop it, which at least morally is a key point.

briandear 8y ago
I 100% agree with you if you’ve made a good faith effort to cancel. My earlier comment wasn’t about people that intend to cancel. It was about people that retroactively try to “cancel.” As far as free trials auto-converting, I am not sure why anyone would sign up with a credit card for a free trial in the first place. For my little business, a free trial is just that. You don’t give a card number until we have a reason to need it: meaning, you want to pay us. I am complaining about people that actually agree to pay and then attempt a retroactive cancellation by disputing the charge. The way I run my business is that I will gladly refund people that actually forgot but when their course of action is to dispute the charge, then I fight it fiercely because chargebacks cost me actual money. If I lose a chargeback, it costs me $15. A courtesy refund is gladly provided but accusing me of theft with a charge dispute — that’s an entirely different case.
- gingerlime 8y ago
  As a very small B2C subscription-based service, we bump into this too. And it's rather frustrating. It seems like banks are super happy to let their customers dispute the charges, and so far we were never able to reverse this. Despite sending server logs, our terms and conditions, proofs of emails sent, etc. For the record, we make cancellation very easy (one-click), and we send emails whenever we renew. And if someone forgot to cancel and emails us a few days or a couple of weeks later, we'll refund happily. But going to your bank and disputing charges is just too easy for people it seems, even for services that they clearly consumed. I saw your other comment saying that you were able to "fight" this, but can I ask how? we basically gave up submitting evidence on Stripe, because the manual effort is pretty big, and we were basically never able to "convince" the bank (which seems to have the last word). The amounts aren't worth pursuing outside of Stripe, so we just eat those charges from time to time. Overall, they are still a fraction, but still frustrating.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    Glad to see that you and GP both run your business like I run mine — I follow the same procedures you describe here. To answer your question, I have also lost Stripe challenges even though I've provided server logs and such. But sometimes I win. It seems almost random. Usually when I win it's a long long time later, and there was no apparent reason. Sometimes it helps to forward an email from the customer stating that they didn't actually mean to flag the transaction, but that they just wanted to cancel.
  - mdpopescu 8y ago
    Man, you have great banks over there (and I never thought I'd say this about US banks). It took me eight months to convince my bank to cancel a payment for some concert tickets that were never delivered... and then the ticket company decided to refund the money on its own, so the bank never actually did anything.
  - patio11 8y ago
    (I work at Stripe.) Sorry that is a frustrating experience. I used to run a B2C site and can relate; I also just ate any dispute. You can automate your response to them via our API (or build internal tooling to create a business process around this) if the number is material to you, but most software companies I know don't see that as the best use of their time. We're working on various options for improving this part of the charging money experience.
    - gingerlime 8y ago
      Thanks Patrick. Yes, it's exactly the case for us. Automating the evidence submission has a poor ROI. Especially since we lost all of them when we manually submitted it (albeit only a dozen times or so, I don't have exact numbers, but we've given up seeing only negative responses). Our dispute rates are still slim, and the actual financial hit is low, but it just feels frustrating and unfair. There's also this fear that people would "figure it out" and start abusing it on a much bigger scale, but I guess this is not a realistic risk (or I'd like to believe so). It would be awesome if Stripe helped. e.g. I can imagine doing a one-off or periodic reviews/audits and showing Stripe how we handle cancellations, refunds, etc. From then on, ideally Stripe has a pre-baked appeal ready for us and fights the banks on our behalf. Is it too much to ask?

briandear 8y ago

I 100% agree with you if you’ve made a good faith effort to cancel. My earlier comment wasn’t about people that intend to cancel. It was about people that retroactively try to “cancel.” As far as free trials auto-converting, I am not sure why anyone would sign up with a credit card for a free trial in the first place. For my little business, a free trial is just that. You don’t give a card number until we have a reason to need it: meaning, you want to pay us. I am complaining about people that actually agree to pay and then attempt a retroactive cancellation by disputing the charge. The way I run my business is that I will gladly refund people that actually forgot but when their course of action is to dispute the charge, then I fight it fiercely because chargebacks cost me actual money. If I lose a chargeback, it costs me $15. A courtesy refund is gladly provided but accusing me of theft with a charge dispute — that’s an entirely different case.

gingerlime 8y ago
As a very small B2C subscription-based service, we bump into this too. And it's rather frustrating. It seems like banks are super happy to let their customers dispute the charges, and so far we were never able to reverse this. Despite sending server logs, our terms and conditions, proofs of emails sent, etc. For the record, we make cancellation very easy (one-click), and we send emails whenever we renew. And if someone forgot to cancel and emails us a few days or a couple of weeks later, we'll refund happily. But going to your bank and disputing charges is just too easy for people it seems, even for services that they clearly consumed. I saw your other comment saying that you were able to "fight" this, but can I ask how? we basically gave up submitting evidence on Stripe, because the manual effort is pretty big, and we were basically never able to "convince" the bank (which seems to have the last word). The amounts aren't worth pursuing outside of Stripe, so we just eat those charges from time to time. Overall, they are still a fraction, but still frustrating.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  Glad to see that you and GP both run your business like I run mine — I follow the same procedures you describe here. To answer your question, I have also lost Stripe challenges even though I've provided server logs and such. But sometimes I win. It seems almost random. Usually when I win it's a long long time later, and there was no apparent reason. Sometimes it helps to forward an email from the customer stating that they didn't actually mean to flag the transaction, but that they just wanted to cancel.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  Man, you have great banks over there (and I never thought I'd say this about US banks). It took me eight months to convince my bank to cancel a payment for some concert tickets that were never delivered... and then the ticket company decided to refund the money on its own, so the bank never actually did anything.
- patio11 8y ago
  (I work at Stripe.) Sorry that is a frustrating experience. I used to run a B2C site and can relate; I also just ate any dispute. You can automate your response to them via our API (or build internal tooling to create a business process around this) if the number is material to you, but most software companies I know don't see that as the best use of their time. We're working on various options for improving this part of the charging money experience.
  - gingerlime 8y ago
    Thanks Patrick. Yes, it's exactly the case for us. Automating the evidence submission has a poor ROI. Especially since we lost all of them when we manually submitted it (albeit only a dozen times or so, I don't have exact numbers, but we've given up seeing only negative responses). Our dispute rates are still slim, and the actual financial hit is low, but it just feels frustrating and unfair. There's also this fear that people would "figure it out" and start abusing it on a much bigger scale, but I guess this is not a realistic risk (or I'd like to believe so). It would be awesome if Stripe helped. e.g. I can imagine doing a one-off or periodic reviews/audits and showing Stripe how we handle cancellations, refunds, etc. From then on, ideally Stripe has a pre-baked appeal ready for us and fights the banks on our behalf. Is it too much to ask?