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DoNotPay's new service auto-cancels free trials
- tempsy 7y agoI'm a fan of https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/ and use it for most subscriptions and any site I don't intend to buy from more than once - basically unlimited virtual debit cards you can set a limit for and make recurring or single use (i.e. burner). For subscriptions I don't intend to use past the free trial, I just enter a low limit (e.g. $1) and set as a burner card.
- StavrosK 7y agoI'm a huge fan of it as well, but I use it for a slightly separate purpose: It makes fraud impossible by tying each card to one merchant. If someone steals the card, it's completely useless to them (unless they use it with the stolen merchant, which thieves don't usually do).
- bradknowles 7y agoSadly, Privacy.com makes their transaction information opaque. All the charges show up in your account as being from Privacy.com, and you can no longer see what charge is for what product or service or merchant, etc.... They need to give people a way to make that information easily exportable, so that I can combine this with other information from my credit cards, debit cards, and all other financial transactions.
- techsupporter 7y agoI see them. Two possibilities? One, your bank doesn't show the full ACH details. This is what it looks like for me at my credit union: ACH Debit PINBOARD - PRIVACYCOM - 7/12/2019 - $25 Two, maybe you enabled the "private payments" setting on your account, which omits the merchant data?
- rolltiide 7y agoIsnt this what the pre-authorization is to prevent? Basically ensures it CAN charge the card but then doesnt
- djrogers 7y agoThat's easy enough to get around - accept the pre-auth today, and deny the real charge in 30 days. It's all time bound, so there's no magic required.
- tempsy 7y agoUsually when you sign up for a subscription service you need to provide a credit card but won't be charged until the free trial period end, at which point you would be charged using the credit card you provided when you signed up initially. The point of this service is to actually cancel the service right before the trial ends so you won't ever actually be charged.
- spiznnx 7y ago> The point of this service is to actually cancel the service right before the trial ends so you won't ever actually be charged. The Free Trial Card is a virtual credit card you can use to sign up for free trials of any service anonymously, instead of using your real credit card. When the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines to be charged, thus ending your free trial.
- spiznnx 7y agoNo. Pre-authorization times out after 5 days. The merchant does pre-authoriziation first for a small amount (like one dollar) just to make sure the payment is actually valid, which disappears after 5 days with no capture. It's just a card validation method, it doesn't reserve any funds (besides the single dollar). Consumers would be rightly upset if starting a free trial with no obligation immediately reduced their available funds by a significant amount. This is unrelated to the later charge when the trial ends, which is usually more than 5 days later, and will be a distinct charge for the full amount. There isn't anything unethical about automatically declining purchases. It's not any different, cost-wise, from manually cancelling the trial. The merchant could however continue to provide the service, claiming that you never really cancelled it, then consider you indebted for the declined charges, but that wouldn't go over very well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jv22222 7y agoI've noticed that when I use Privacy.com on a some SaaS sites, the site already declines the signup saying something like "we don't accept temporary cards". I can't remember which right now, but I know I've seen the error message a few times.
- zrail 7y agoPrivacy.com issues you a card that is coded as a prepaid debit card. Most payment providers expose this to merchants, which means that if they choose to decline prepaid debit cards for other reasons you'll get caught in the mix.
- dvtrn 7y agoWhat's the reasoning behind rejecting prepaid debit cards, if there are sufficient funds available?
- s09dfhks 7y agoMaybe the cards are being loaded with illicitly acquired funds
- dvtrn 7y agoThat's a valid risk, but then why single out prepaid cards for this given the rampancy of credit card fraud and theft? Edit: An interesting answer elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20465459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20465459
- ceejayoz 7y agoCredit cards are sometimes used as a proxy for identity (via billing address) or age verification (most under-13s don't have ready access to one).
- cortesoft 7y agoSometimes credit cards are used kind of like collateral... when you stay at a hotel, for example... you give the hotel a credit card for 'incidentals', and it is basically being used as a guarantee that you will pay for things you are going to use. Car rentals are the same. In a sense, it is your credit card limit is basically your credit card company saying "yeah, this person is good for x amount of money". That isn't much for a prepaid card.
- rexer 7y agoOne of my credit cards (Citi) allows creating virtual credit card numbers. I've been hesitant to use them in this way, though, because I'm concerned it could affect my credit. Does anyone know if legally you're on the hook for the paying the service provider? As technically they did provide the service, and you're "refusing" to pay for it. Presumably, if so, they could send the bill to collections and put a black mark on your credit.
- waylandsmithers 7y agoIf it's the cable company- definitely. They will eventually send your bill to a debt collector. I think XYZ Startup won't do that because they would rather let it go for now in hopes that you'll become a paying customer again.
- wolco 7y agoMost sites offer a month and bill on the 30th for next month. Your cable company gives you service you pay for that service a month later.
- buckminster 7y agoIf you sign up for a recurring payment with a company then the company can pursue you for the payment even if the credit card company declines it. This doesn't usually happen though because it's not worth the expense. In this scheme it is DoNotPay accepting the liability (and declining the payment). It might then become economic for a big free trial operator to sue DoNotPay for all the declined payments. But I'm not a lawyer. Good luck to them anyway.
- drakenot 7y agoIt seems like it will do more than just decline payment: "If you want, the app will also send an actual legal notice of cancelation to the service."
- duskwuff 7y agoThis is particularly true of gyms, for some reason. In many cases, gym membership agreements have terms requiring the customer to cancel in person, too.
- m463 7y agoA gym I joined years ago required a certified letter sent to their headquarters. I think it's a public service to tell young people how gyms work. Basically it's high pressure sales ("this discount membership offer only good for today!") plus hard to cancel memberships. Gyms work on a model of human nature + oversubscription. Human nature means that a huge % of people join the gym, go two weeks, and never return. Then it's hard to cancel, so the same people that don't bother coming in, don't bother figuring out the membership cancellation gauntlet.
- d4rti 7y agoMy gym is not like this at all. It's owned and run by a real person. They charge a day fee or a monthly fee or you can pay for 3, 6 or 12 months. I've never given then any credit card or bank details as I pay cash, but I believe they do offer direct debit.
- bxio 7y agoSweet service. When will they start charging a subscription to cancel your other subscriptions?
- wolco 7y agoIt costs 3 dollars per month.
- wetpaws 7y agoCan you auto-cancel this subscription?
- Dylan16807 7y agoThere's no free trial, so auto-cancelling would mean you cancel on day zero. So...yes? Closing the signup form is equivalent to an auto-cancel for this service, so do that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dfps 7y agoIs this a positive service? It sounds like adblock. Sounds great until you consider youre defunding things you want to exist (for free)...
- jimbobimbo 7y agoThis is the service that lets you create a virtual credit card with a specific limit. It doesn't "auto-cancel" - the service that attempts to charge, simply can't make the charge beyond the limit. Check if your bank offers this kind of service. Mine does, and it's very convenient!
- remus 7y agoAccording to the article it can actually cancel the service for you > If you want, the app will also send an actual legal notice of cancelation to the service.
- ikeboy 7y ago>When DoNotPay’s system got that ping, an algorithm the team spent six months building looked at the code request to see if the purchase was for a free trial. Determining that it was, the system approved my transaction. When I tried to use it to buy a $48 pair of Thinx period-proof underwear on that company’s website, it was declined. You can't use this card to make real purchases. if (chargeamount>0){ decline()}
- Nightshaxx 7y agoHalf lf the time I see "AI" or "complex algorithm we spent 2 decades on", it's literally just that.
- judge2020 7y agoStill technically "artificial" and a form of "intelligence"!
- rahimnathwani 7y agoI've seen a charge amount of 0.01 for a free trial. I'm pretty sure it was just a pre-auth, i.e. they didn't follow up and actually complete the charge.
- iancarroll 7y agoThis is presumably an actually hard problem despite the comments. A pre-auth allows the acquiring merchant to capture that authorization and charge you. Sometimes these can be for $1 or more, depending on how aggressive the service is. Pre-authorizations are subtracted from your available credit/balance. If the card approves the pre-auth, they are (presumably, AFAIK) on the hook for that $1 if the merchant captures the pre-auth. If many (unpaying?) users start charging you $1...
- rahimnathwani 7y agoA reasonable heuristic might be: - if less than 0.05, approve (as no merchant would actually charge a transaction for that amount, as they'd spend more than 5 cents on fees) - if more than 5 cents but less than 1 USD, approve it only if the merchant is already known to offer free trials You could be fancier: - match on amount+merchantID combo, not just merchantID - learn a model to deal with previously-unseen merchants
- arkades 7y agoSo what’s the business model here? Last time I tried something similar (unroll.me), I paid in privacy.
- Nightshaxx 7y agoIt's says in the article. 3$ per/mo
- waylandsmithers 7y agoSo if services like this become popular enough, will services start allowing customers to do a free trial without entering their credit card number?
- s09dfhks 7y agoNo because there's still the vast majority that doesn't know services like this exist and will still cough up their actual card number to watch Netflix/HBO/whatever because "it's convenient"
- crispinb 7y agoI'm by no means an outstandingly organised person (ask my ex-partner), yet I find it pitifully easy to pop a date in my calendar reminding me to cancel a trial, and then do it. Is there really money to be made building services to automate things that don't remotely need automating? Maybe I should jump on it.
- rdtwo 7y agoIt’s a real pain with some services, Zipcar and XM radio require you to cancel over the phone and it could take a while
- londons_explore 7y agoCall all the companies at once on a big conference call. Then you can say "Hi Bob from Zipcar, Fred from XM radio, and Kate from FitGym, I'd like to cancel all your services." If one puts you on hold, you talk over the hold music to speak to the other ones on the call. Gets the job done much quicker typically.
- gourou 7y agoWhat if an automated voice asks you to spell out your username/ID?
- londons_explore 7y agoYou just tell the other people on the line to be quiet for a moment while you spell it out. Same for "press 1 for ..." type menus. Sometimes the automated system says embarrassing things like "The balance of your account is..."
- crispinb 7y agoA couple of sentences of mature advice would replace the whole of DoNotPay's business. More tech not always betta.
- TimTheTinker 7y agoI had never heard of DoNotPay. Sounds like a really helpful and useful service -- there's a lot of things it does (check out the app). I lived below the poverty line in college (didn't have loan/grant money; instead I worked 2 days/wk to pay for tuition, rent, gas, and food). The kinds of services they offer would have been so helpful to me back then.
- koolba 7y ago> The Free Trial Card is a virtual credit card you can use to sign up for free trials of any service anonymously, instead of using your real credit card. When the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines to be charged, thus ending your free trial. You don’t have to remember to cancel anything. That’s not how it works. Just because they can’t bill your card does not mean you’re not on the hook. Anybody that’s forgotten about a gym membership on a expired card knows this first hand. Only reason they won’t go after you is that the LTV and PR isn’t worth it. If it is, they will. > As he sees it, companies that require you to put in a credit card in order to sign up for a free trial are engaging in deceptive practices. There’s nothing deceptive about it if the price is disclosed. Far from it. On the sell side it also has the advantage of filtering out people who cannot or would not pay for the service early on.
- mtmail 7y agoMy experience as SaaS provider is those who use virtual credit cards "for free trials of any service anonymously" also use fake names and anonymous email providers like 10minutemail.
- dvtrn 7y agoI was just asking down thread what cases exist to block prepaid cards if sufficient funds are available. Seems like I've found my answer; for you then it seems like this removes a lot of the customer retention/customer engagement cruft?
- rdtwo 7y agoYeah the gym people from la fitness hounded me for years after 21 year old me thought I could just let it expire and they would auto cancel
- taneq 7y agoIt's not deceptive, it's just a super dark UX pattern.
- pure-awesome 7y ago
- ars 7y agoYou can just get a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number and do this yourself without the fee.
- zenexer 7y agoHow would I go about doing that?
- ars 7y ago> How would I go about doing that? You need to get a credit card with Bank of America. As best I can tell they are the only ones who offer it. Make sure you are able to run flash, since the tool for generating the numbers uses flash. Look for "ShopSafe" on their website once you login to your account.
- adrr 7y agoOr you could just use a prepaid debit card that is drained.
- ars 7y agoIt's not just about blocking transactions, with ShopSafe you can set a dollar limit per merchant, you can also do monthly recurring transactions of a particular amount, and stop them when you want, by closing the number. So you can actually pay for a while, then block them. You can set custom expiration dates, which is nice if you have a future transaction, but want to make sure they don't bill after that. Even better each merchant gets a different CC number, so you have a much lower chance of your number being stolen. I'll typically make a 1 year card with a high limit for each online merchant. If it's a one off, I'll make a 1 month card with a dollar limit of exactly the transaction amount.
- caiob 7y agoFYI, HBO does exist in Canada but Bell Media holds all the rights to it so they’ve made it available on their own streaming platform called “Crave”.
- wolco 7y ago"they were in Canada, a place where HBO inexplicably doesn’t exist" It does exist. For a long time under hbo Canada now under the crave brand.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoThis seems to do a lot more than canceling trials, and I really like the idea. Unfortunately, you can't even get into the app without providing your phone number and then entering your banking information. Nope, not happening. It's not that I don't trust the kid making this app. I mean, I shouldn't trust him, but that's not even the issue. He is using a personal developer account, doesn't seem to have a proper company, is involving third parties for app functionality (including the banking info). Even with the best of intentions, he's likely to get hacked or bought out, or his third party SDKs are, and there's no way to protect yourself from that. You would have to be seriously foolish to type your bank username and password into this thing. Maybe someone can make a virtual bank app, so you can sign up for virtual credit card apps...
- sansnomme 7y agoIn a lot of European banks, single issue virtual credit cards through app already exist.
- Sylamore 7y agoprivacy.com allows you to do this, you can generate virtual credit cards that are one use only, one source only, with spending limits, etc. The only gripe I have is that it's linked to your checking account and not your actual credit card.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoIt's because they're acting as a 'credit card processor'. If it was card to card, they'd be eating credit card costs... they currently profit from your usage (interchange fees)
- Sylamore 7y agoI figured that was the case, but I would seriously consider paying a reasonable annual fee to use my actual other credit cards, not every thing I buy online is cheap.
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- dvcrn 7y ago> It's available now through the app DoNotPay, created by 22-year-old wunderkind coder and entrepreneur Joshua Browder. Hmm this needs explanation. Why's he a wunderkind? What did he do? I googled him and found his wikipedia explaining that he created DoNotPay. Is that enough to justify a wikipedia entry or is it because of the forbes 30 under 30 thing? Can I create a wikipedia page about myself for the apps I created?
- zenexer 7y agoYou can, and it probably won’t get deleted immediately. However, if even a novice Wikipedia editor comes long and finds is suspect, there will likely be a deletion request. The process for deletion varies; depending on the path taken, you might have a chance to argue against it, or it might just be deleted.
- xhgdvjky 7y agoI can see how this sounds like a good idea if you don't actually think about it/if you don't try it. doesn't hurt that he basically has unlimited funds from his dad
- adrr 7y agoThe guy won't provide the bank issuing the card but if you have the first digits of the card number you can just go to any BIN lookup website and find the issuing bank. Its not something you can keep a secret since it used to route the transaction on the card network.
- DevKoala 7y agoHow do you pay DoNotPay? What is their business model?
- Bendingo 7y ago> It's available now through the app DoNotPay, created by 22-year-old wunderkind coder and entrepreneur Joshua Browder. This "wunderkind coder and entrepreneur" is son of Bill Browder, wanted in Russia for tax fraud [0]. I realise that most HN readers (and the entire western mainstream media) are sympathetic to Browder senior, no doubt due to his personal war with Putin. Indeed it's difficult to find any detailed criticism of Browder, however if you are interested, here are a few [1], [2]. The docco "The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes" is especially interesting. During it's creation, the film-maker Andrey Nekrasov went from being anti-Putin and believing Browder, to being threatened with libel suits by Browder. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-browder/russia-asks-interpol-to-arrest-kremlin-critic-bill-browder-again-letter-idUSKCN1RL0PY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-browder/russia-ask... [1] https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/?s=browder https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/?s=browder [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnitsky_Act_%E2%80%93_Behind_the_Scenes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnitsky_Act_%E2%80%93_Be...
- jmull 7y agoI actually don't want to automatically cancel free trials. I wouldn't sign up for one if there wasn't a reasonable chance I'd be interested in keeping the service. Anyway, I find this easy and effective (free too, if you already own a phone): When I sign up, I tell my phone to remind me to review on such-and-such a date (or "in 29 days" or whatever).
- lensi 7y agoHere is what I do, which doesn't require an app: Cancel it right away. All services I have done this with still give you the full trial period.
- homero 7y agoPSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) is the new regulation in the EU that requires rebilling consent.
- barli 7y agoI'm putting a reminder into my iPhone and cancel manually