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Baremetrics required a phone call to cancel
- arduanika 6y agoWho do they think they are, Spectrum?
- andrenotgiant 6y agoI am pretty sure Baremetrics wouldn't be able to do business in California with that policy. CA passed a law in 2018 requiring companies that allow people to signup online to also allow them to cancel online https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB313 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... "In addition to the requirements of subdivision (b), a consumer who accepts an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall be allowed to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online"
- tgtweak 6y agoIt is also not permitted by Visa/MasterCard terms regarding recurring services without a contract period.
- hkai 6y agoNow I know why some magazines won't let you subscribe online - they take your credit card details on paper so that you can only cancel by calling them. I would rather close my credit card than call.
- mtmail 6y agoBaremetics customer here, disapointed to read those updated terms. At least in California there seems to be a law preventing this. https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance... "The law states that customers who accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online must be able to cancel the service online. [...] The law means you won't have to make anymore phone calls to obscure customer service hotlines to cancel services like news subscriptions, music streaming or meal plans, for example."
- NightMKoder 6y agoThe law you’re referencing sounds like https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=7.&chapter=1.&part=3.&lawCode=BPC&article=9 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x... . There’s an interesting set of exclusions that includes: A bank, bank holding company, or the subsidiary or affiliate of either, or a credit union or other financial institution, licensed under state or federal law. Not a lawyer so not sure if this applies in this case. I did find the exclusion list interesting (and saddening).
- kfifi 6y agoI think you should make a complaint to the attorney general / CA regulator. I know the WSJ exclusively built a self service cancellation option for CA residents (as soon as you change your address to CA, the button shows up). I’m guessing if baremetrics doesn’t allow this for CA customers, they are breaking the law.
- smalter 6y agothere's a distinction between consumer and business-to-business contracts and the california law applies only to the former. per https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=7.&chapter=1.&part=3.&lawCode=BPC&article=9 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...: 17602 says, "It shall be unlawful for any business that makes an automatic renewal offer or continuous service offer to a consumer . . . " where 17601 defines a consumer as "any individual who seeks or acquires, by purchase or lease, any goods, services, money, or credit for personal, family, or household purposes."
- umvi 6y agoLet me guess, it's one of those Comcast style calls where you call to disconnect your service but end up upgrading instead because you are bad at saying "no" to the silver tongued person on the other line... (and plus they just gave you mates rates) They do claim "it's not a sales rep" though, so the only other motivation I can think of is manual feedback collection.
- Silhouette 6y agoI don't understand the thinking at businesses that do this. They're obviously not going to keep this guy's business, their new terms for cancellation may or may not be enforceable where he is, they're risking getting hit with chargebacks if they try to force the issue by charging the card anyway... and they're fighting him in full view of the Internet. Surely they understand that this is going to do the rounds on social media and tech forums, and that a significant proportion of their entire global market is likely to have heard about the dispute within the next few days? And that looking both incompetent and untrustworthy, as they obviously do here, is going to risk both losing existing customers and deterring potential new ones?
- khalilovcmd 6y agoYes, I am equally puzzled, and I think the EU laws will favour us here – considering that we are incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, EU.
- chris_wot 6y agoHang on, does this mean they are making you call at international call rates?!?
- Silhouette 6y agoIf you were being hit with this as a private individual so consumer protection laws would apply, I wouldn't fancy their chances at all, but if I've inferred your situation correctly that's not the case here? I'm afraid EU law is often very bad at protecting small businesses, so while I wish you luck in fighting the good fight, I wouldn't be so confident about your legal position as a corporate entity. But of course, take proper legal advice, as it looks like you are. And maybe Irish national law can help you even if the European provisions don't.
- dpritchett 6y agoThe owner visibly cashed out recently. CSR could be under orders to tighten up some internal metrics under new management.
- minimaxir 6y agoWould threatening a chargeback have changed the response from Baremetrics? That's usually the nuclear action to these type of shenanigans, and the threat of it is often the proper deterrent.
- gk1 6y agoI think that's what they are calling a "dispute"? Essentially they are daring OP to go ahead and request a chargeback.
- khalilovcmd 6y agoI did actually, and their last email reply yesterday was: "Got it! Let me know how I can help with the dispute process." I didn't post that update on Twitter I think.
- Buttons840 6y agoWow. If I were in your shoes I would have gone from not wanting to call to being glad I get to call. Count your blessings, you get a chance to call Brian and give him and ear full. I'd tell Brian I'm recording the call as well.
- colechristensen 6y agoAre you in CA? File a complaint with the attorney general, they are breaking the law.
- khalilovcmd 6y agoAh, so we are incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, EU. I am talking to our lawyer today.
- colechristensen 6y agoYou can file a complaint here https://oag.ca.gov/ https://oag.ca.gov/ this is not like filling a lawsuit but often gets good results. The AG is like the lawyer for the state. Considering baremetrics is based in san francisco, you might get some interest. Likewise you could file a complaint with Stripe. What we have here is inexperienced people in a startup acting stupid, but a little suggestion from the attorney generals office or their payment processor usually gets some really good attention.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoTell them you'll issue a chargeback.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spondyl 6y agoThe irony of this sort of stuff is that I've gone back to a number of services over the years where I cancelled and deleted my account but never to a service that made it hard to leave. Looking at you, New York Times
- crooked-v 6y agoNetflix has definitely gotten money out of me by making it very easy to cancel/resubscribe/cancel/resubscribe that they wouldn't have gotten if canceling had been a pain the first time.
- demadog 6y agoPluralsight too
- hawkice 6y agoI routinely cancel Netflix and come back to it when I want. Sometimes I come back and immediately cancel (this is so easy that I haven't bothered looking if there's a way to do non-recurrent billing). I just don't use it that much and I probably wouldn't ever use it if it was just going to add to a pile of un- or under-used subscriptions on my credit card statement.
- omarhaneef 6y agoI have experienced this with: Comcast Verizon AT&T And I think it becomes more common if there isn’t a mechanism to push back. All kinds of dark patterns (you have to remember a code you supposedly set with AT&T when you first signed up that — get this — is never used for any other service). Verizon just paused my billing and then started again (presumably because the original person assisting didn’t want to have a ding on her record). Sad thing is this must be effective or they would not keep doing it. There used to be a service that would charge $5 just to cancel Comcast but I can’t find them anymore.
- ev1 6y agoI was able to cancel Comcast service over live chat (~15 min wait) in California. Signed up online, so must legally be required to cancel online. I hope they are not intentionally blocking this in other states.
- gk1 6y agoThe gall is astounding. When it's this clear you won't retain the customer, what possible reason do you have for denying them the cancellation? Either complete lack of judgement or childish spite. I've met Brian. It's so disappointing to see him do this.
- usiegj00 6y agoHey hey--not Brian leading this--it's me. See my chat above. You can call me directly at 855 252 6050.
- threwawasy1228 6y agoI think the point is that none of us will ever want to call you. Please stop posting your number.
- ianmobbs 6y agoAny response to the comments pointing out this is illegal in CA? Isn’t the Baremetrics office in SF?
- renewiltord 6y agoI genuinely mean no offence by this but this is one of the funniest possible responses you could have come up with. It's like something from a skit. I am dying of laughter here. This is great.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't pile on like this, regardless of how you feel about cancellation policies. Maybe you don't owe a company better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- renewiltord 6y agoIt was truly, genuinely, not intended to be a pile-on. I thought he was at least partly being playful with that comment, since I could see myself doing that a little. Could be a misread on my part and I'll apologize in case it is. I didn't even vote him down.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoIt’s not a consumer service. You’re a business, make the damn phone call.
- ireflect 6y agoAgreed. I don't understand the outrage. There could be any number of legitimate reasons why their internal process requires a phone call. Sure it would be nice if they would do this over email, but the telephone is still a normal way to conduct business. What next? Outrage that you can't cancel your doctor's appointment via twitter?
- babelfish 6y agoIf you could book your doctor’s appointment via Twitter, but couldn’t cancel, I’d sure as hell be angry about it.
- lodovic 6y agoI haven't done business over the phone in a decade. Actually, the other day I removed my phone number from my company's listing as all the calls I ever received were telemarketeers.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoI don't think they have "legit" reasons. They can do it that was just because they want to. It's perfectly fine for having a phone call to cancel as just part of the deal, and if you don't like it, too bad. It's pretty common with other services. Customer feedback is one benefit, and yes, retention is another. Worry about actual shady shit out there instead.
- tgtweak 6y agoJust use a virtual credit card and you can "cancel" any service you want by pausing the card. Privacy.com and payaware are two I would recommend for this.
- Silhouette 6y ago<response type="standard warning"> No, you can't just cancel any service by blocking your card payments. Legally they are quite distinct actions, and depending on the situation, you may find yourself with debt collectors chasing you quite rightly for money you legally owe, damaged credit, etc. If the service provides a reasonable means of cancelling, just use it. If it doesn't, take other action as appropriate, but don't just silently block payments without making a reasonable attempt to tell the service you are cancelling. </response>
- bamboleo 6y agoHe sent an email, he has a response denying the request. Why would that not be enough? The company here is at fault for outright refusing a written request.
- Silhouette 6y agoEmail isn't secure. It's unreasonable to expect that to be sufficient to cancel anything with consequences on its own. I agree that the company is in the wrong here, but not because they wouldn't take significant and possibly irreversible action based on just an email that could have come from anyone.
- thisisit_0987 6y agoEmail isn't secure is why we can't cancel an account? What makes you think security has anything to do with this?
- joshmanders 6y ago"Email isn't secure, that's why you must make a phone call because the only way we can verify it's actually you is by hearing your voice, which we've never heard before" MAKES SENSE. /s
- usiegj00 6y agoHi guys--Jonathan here at Bare. I've forced everyone's hand on this because... whelp... we've recently acquired the business and we ended up finding that we can be critical to Stripe Webhooks processing for folks on the older Stripe API. We literally will take down your invoicing on Stripe when a customer cancels. Then we have the unsavory task of working with customers that have canceled, did not complete their deprovisioning and then flame us for causing them outages. I love a lively debate but if you're a customer and love us, reach out to me NOW and I'll hear your feedback. If you're not a customer, then please, please if you never want to talk to your vendor, please go to ProfitWell or ChartMogul. Patrick and Nick are great guys and are crushing it and will gladly take your business. We are getting eaten from the bottom by platforms AHEM Stripe that are inspired by us, folks that clone us and you can see from our revenue transparency that we're the last in line for making money. That is going to change--by helping customers that really want to make more... make more. If you'd like to give me direct feedback, give me a ring at 855 252 6050. (I'm also a CISSP™, CREST CRT™ and Brown Cybersecurity dude--so if you've any legislation that speaks to this, let me know--for you folks quoting CA--we have business customers and they are over 13.)
- rahimiali 6y agoPeople are complaining that they don’t want to call you. And here you are asking people to call you.
- usiegj00 6y agoHiya--we're not a consumer service, so yeah, I'm asking people to call me. I'll respond a bit to this thread because HN is read by lots of folks, but it's also filled with trolls. Businesses talk to businesses. Especially when we're going to screw something up with low bandwidth communication. I'm a real dude and happy to chat to real folks running real businesses. Consumers should not be using our platform.
- AntiImperialis2 6y agoSo, you're discriminating against deaf people? Boy, you're going down big. You have no idea.
- Tomminn 6y agoThe worst case I had with this was with a gambling website, https://www.tab.co.nz/ https://www.tab.co.nz/. I was disgusted that you couldn't delete your account without making a phone call.
- spondyl 6y agoTicketmaster is another NZ case that suuucks: https://help.ticketmaster.co.nz/hc/en-nz/requests/new https://help.ticketmaster.co.nz/hc/en-nz/requests/new They link to a Zendesk instance but the actual form doesn't seem to render at all hence no ticket can be submitted. Presumably this is caused by one of the various ad/tracker blocking items I have running but the fact you can't submit a ticket via what should otherwise be a plain HTML form is kinda nuts
- jimueller 6y agoI 100% agree, if you can sign up without a phone call, you should be able to cancel without one. However, at the end of the day, it's just a phone call. It gets a bit dramatic.
- alpaca128 6y agoIt's just a click on their side, no reason to make it more complicated than necessary. For many people a phone call is not "just a phone call". Companies doing this know why they force customers to call. So did this one when they changed the terms of service recently. No, it's not the end of the world for most. But it sure shows how they treat their customers.
- hansvm 6y ago"Just a phone call" can get pretty bad. You can wait their entire working day on hold trying to contact the MN department of public safety, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that there exist people who would rather not blow one or more vacation days on such a riveting adventure.
- bamboleo 6y agoIt’s a matter of principle. Plus I don’t want to be forced to hear them beg to stay. You know I want to leave, let me leave and stop being abusive.
- indemnity 6y agoImagine I live in a country outside of the US, and Baremetrics office hours are my 2am, and a long distance phone call also. I would make it a mission to never do business again with such a customer hostile company. The Stripe angle is interesting, someone should see how Stripe feels about endorsing such behaviour.
- khalilovcmd 6y agoWhich is indeed the case for us. We are (I am) based in Ireland, and there is a significant time different. Even though that's not the main culprit here but still applicable.
- napsterbr 6y agoThat's infuriating. Thanks @cmdkhalilov for bringing this up, I know for a fact I'll not forget this kind of behavior. As someone with intense social anxiety, forcing me to call someone is a sure way to trap (extort?) me in your service. I guess a credit card charge back would warrant a call as well.
- usiegj00 6y agoHey dude--we're not a consumer service so rest easy! If you're running a business, you want a vendor that you can call (why folks running real businesses love Rackspace and hate AWS when things aren't working).
- jakelazaroff 6y agoWhat a condescending response. This could be a case study in how not to handle a crisis. Hey dude, you can rest easy! I promise that no "real business" I'm involved with will ever use Baremetrics while you're running it.
- kilburn 6y agoYou keep digging this hole deeper. Some reasons why your message is just terrible: - You are nobody to tell us (business owners) what we do or don't want. - Can call and have to call are two very different things. - Your reference to "real businesses" is prepotent and condescending. Also, I enjoyed the irony given you just admitted in another comment that Baremetrics is a sinking ship.
- jevgeni 6y agoI like vendors that listen and are responsive. You seem to be committed to ignore what people are telling you.
- shash7 6y agoNeed a bigger shovel bud?
- indemnity 6y agoAt least I can delete things on AWS without calling a CSR.
- tgtweak 6y agoI have one that is even better. Bell Canada. They require you to speak to the "loyalty" team before you can have a service cancelled. That team is only available by phone. That team has a 1 hour wait time during the hours that they are open. That team likes to hang up on you. That team calls you back from numbers that cannot accept calls. That team is not available by chat or email and every other department has no access in the tools to effectively cancel a service. I escalated to the crtc and opened a case. I got a call back from someone who was very good at apologising for this policy but was at the same time very clear that this was within their legal rights as a service provider. Super convenient that I can sign up to any service with one click though.
- c_s_guy 6y agoI've had a very similar experience with Fido Solutions a few years ago. When I eventually gave up and called, the representative tried to convince me not to cancel by describing the various scenarios in which emergencies could happen (including my family getting hurt) and I wouldn't be reachable without the phone plan.
- QuinnyPig 6y agoJesus, that's some Oracle level of customer intimidation.
- glaive123 6y agoIsn't it one thing when a faceless corporation does this, and another thing when a startup is doing this to learn about why customers are churning so they can improve their product?
- loopz 6y agoYes, the difference is the scale of abuse.
- glaive123 6y agoAnd also the intention? Big companies like Comcast are just doing this to extract every penny. A startup trying to survive and make their product better for customers--or fix something that went wrong--is completely different situation IMO.
- altdatathrow 6y agoAdd SiriusXM to the list of companies to never work with because they pull the same shit.
- glaive123 6y agoI personally don't think this is bad as long as: 1) They make it easy to cancel when you call 2) They only try to offer you some free stuff to stay as a customer My guess is the startup here is trying to learn why customers are cancelling so they can improve the product and they care about keeping customers happy. Almost all non-web companies make you call to cancel, so I don't see what the big deal is. The only mistake here is with the email back and forth. Probably the customer support person didn't understand WHY the startup was doing this and made the situation worse.
- GoodJokes 6y agoI implore you to make more excuses for them.
- minimaxir 6y agoFrom a survey/data collection perspective, requiring an answer to a prompt will almost always result in garbage/inauthentic data.
- hansvm 6y agoFor anyone on here who needs to hear it, that also applies to harvesting my email before telling me what your product actually does. You'll get garbage/inauthentic data 100% of the time, and a lot of it if you're too insistent.
- mafuy 6y agoIf you are desperate for feedback, pay them for providing it. If it's not worth that to you, then don't annoy them.
- googlryas 6y agoI think a federal consumer protection law here would be good - something along the lines that it needs to be possible to cancel an account using the same communications method you used to create the account. If you made an account with a web form, you can cancel with a web form. If you had to call to set it up, its reasonable to have to call to un-set it up. But you should never need to call when you've set it up over the web (except in exceptional circumstances). Some areas have something along these lines, but not many in the grand scheme of things. Also maybe something about notifications of pending recurring charges. Those two tactics are pure slime from my perspective.
- colechristensen 6y agoCalifornia has this law, and it is apparently required to process Visa cards as well.
- GoodJokes 6y agoWall Street Journal does this too and this reminded me I still haven’t called them, because I work during thee day on the west coast and they keep east coast hours for their phones. This really should be illegal.
- isoprophlex 6y agoThis guy flaunting his phone number everywhere just begs for a prank call... "Yeah id like to cancel, can you email me on xxx@yyy.com to discuss details?"
- gkoberger 6y agoIt's been downvoted to hell (rightfully so), but I wanted to surface this comment in this thread from the guy who bought BareMetrics about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25514825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25514825
- spondyl 6y agoI saw the comment got flagged. Would you be able to share the gist of what it said for those of us who were late to the party?
- gkoberger 6y agoI think there's a setting to turn on flagged messages! But here it is: > Hi guys--Jonathan here at Bare. I've forced everyone's hand on this because... whelp... we've recently acquired the business and we ended up finding that we can be critical to Stripe Webhooks processing for folks on the older Stripe API. We literally will take down your invoicing on Stripe when a customer cancels. Then we have the unsavory task of working with customers that have canceled, did not complete their deprovisioning and then flame us for causing them outages. I love a lively debate but if you're a customer and love us, reach out to me NOW and I'll hear your feedback. If you're not a customer, then please, please if you never want to talk to your vendor, please go to ProfitWell or ChartMogul. Patrick and Nick are great guys and are crushing it and will gladly take your business. We are getting eaten from the bottom by platforms AHEM Stripe that are inspired by us, folks that clone us and you can see from our revenue transparency that we're the last in line for making money. That is going to change--by helping customers that really want to make more... make more. If you'd like to give me direct feedback, give me a ring at 855 252 6050. (I'm also a CISSP™, CREST CRT™ and Brown Cybersecurity dude--so if you've any legislation that speaks to this, let me know--for you folks quoting CA--we have business customers and they are over 13.)
- spondyl 6y agoAh, so there is! The "showdead" option. I had assumed the flagging worked on the level of editing the comment permanently for some reason rather than just hiding it
- 02thoeva 6y agoLong time customer of Baremetrics here. And this shady practice is really really offputting, to the extent where we are now looking into cancelling (without a phone call, of course)
- pandesal 6y agoIsn't this the same company whose CEO said he wouldn't hire anybody with a resume that had "short stints"
- woutr_be 6y agoAre people like that so rare? Heck, I've been questioned and rejected from potential jobs many times because most of my roles have been under 2 years. I've always explained that I changed jobs because that was the only way to get a promotion / salary raise. Most companies do a default 1-5% yearly increase, whereas when I move to another company, I can get an instant 15-25%.
- going_to_800 6y agoas a business owner I wouldn't want a job switcher or how it's this called in English. When we hire we want something long term, not someone who is prepared to leave next year. You don't get the 20% rise, but you get stability, comfort, possibility to advance to a better role (maybe leadership position), better CV, etc
- woutr_be 6y agoWhich is fair, but you're also missing the entire reason as to why I'm switching. As an employee, I want to work for a company where I can keep growing, and where my skills and salary is fairly evaluated over time. I don't want to work for a company where my only salary increase is a yearly 1% one, or where my only chance to get a promotion is once a year. If I need to switch a company to get both, then I'll definitely do that. Things like this are a two way street, yet companies often don't treat it as such. EDIT: Because you've changed your answer after I typed my response. Some people might be okay with having to stay 10+ years in a company to finally get that role they wanted. I'm not, if I think I deserve better, I'll ask my company for it, if they tell me that maybe in 5 years I can get a better thing, then I rather switch jobs now instead of holding myself back.
- nitendoraku 6y ago
- jwmoz 6y agoExperian do this (they made money from my laziness to close it). After essentially threatening them they immediately closed my account.
- steve_taylor 6y agoBear in mind that Baremetrics removed self-serve account cancellation back in 2015. The founder admits in a blog post that it’s to reduce churn, and reduce churn it did, by 15%. https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-we-reduced-churn
- 02thoeva 6y agoYep, although the phone call requirement is a new one and was introduced by a sneaky update to their terms: https://twitter.com/rtwlz/status/1341581686216245248 https://twitter.com/rtwlz/status/1341581686216245248
- pieterbeulque 6y agoThe blog post you're linking to was an experiment back in 2015. We re-enabled self-service cancellation right after that, and that was the go-to cancellation method since. We made the change to call-to-cancel on December 1st, as part of the playbook Xenon installs at every company they acquire.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tdeck 6y ago> We made the change to call-to-cancel on December 1st, as part of the playbook Xenon installs at every company they acquire. Sounds like there's a long list of SaaS apps to avoid: https://xenon.io/ https://xenon.io/
- scrollaway 6y agoThanks. Indeed bookmarking that list and won't be getting anywhere within earshot of these apps.
- Griffinsauce 6y agoWat. Any explanation as to why Xenon installs this policy? Without any further background that list of companies is going straight to the red-flagged list that will never get my business.
- sneak 6y agoI fucked my credit in Germany because cell phone plans and fixed line DSL contract term commitments auto-renew for another 24 months automatically and have to be cancelled in writing. I sent them cancellations, but it only works if you send the cancellation in the last 90 days (or something) of the 24 months. Miss the window and you're on the hook for 24 more payments. It's the most customer-hostile experience I have ever had with a company in the global west. I decided it was easier to just let them try to collect, and stopped the autodebit to them. Some say you can still hear their dunning emails to this day, when the wind is blowing...
- mafuy 6y agoWhat are you talking about? All German phone plans I've ever seen renew for 12 months, not 24. Only the very first period after signup is 24 months. And you most likely have to cancel while at least 90 days remain in the current period, not later. You can even sign up and immediately cancel in the future at the 24 months mark.
- sneak 6y agoAhh, yeah, that's what happened. It was some years ago at this point.
- bamboleo 6y agoMy European country used to do that with phone contracts as well, then it was outlawed. Now some of them will just make you pay a penalty if you recede early, but you can still cancel at anytime.
- dayjobpork 6y agoBizarre. In Australia I can literally call up a new ISP and get switched over in minutes, and it automatically terminates my old ISP (and many will refund the remaining monthly charge)
- nojvek 6y agoNY times does this too. You have to call to unsubscribe. Subscribe is one click quick process. I have come to accept the fact that US corps run via a “grow at any cost” algorithm/herd mentalofu. They will bend and twist every law to their favor even if it’s a terrible user experience.
- rchaud 6y agoEvery magazine that I know of does this. I'm in Canada and the Globe & Mail has the same process. It's similar to phone companies; you say you want to leave, they offer a discounted price to get you to stay. That's fine by me. The call to cancel has never been too onerous, and the CSR reps never did this kind of back and forth. Don't want the discounted offer? No problem, your subscription is now cancelled.
- supermatt 6y ago> “Sorry making a call to cancel is causing anxiety, what is the cause of that?” How fucking ableist. Where are these scumbags based that they think they can get away with this nonsense?
- hawkice 6y agoI'm going to go out on a limb and say this is pretty bad aside from that. If you truly, deeply don't care about your customers, what difference does the way you express that make?
- noodlesUK 6y agoLook, baremetrics people, stop digging. You’re mismanaging a really really low hanging fruit of a PR crisis. Just stop. Learn from this, listen to public outcry, change your policy, and for fuck’s sake, stop entrenching your position publicly. You are in the wrong, and even if you think you aren’t, the way you’re handling this right now proves the point.
- khalilovcmd 6y agoThe story couldn't have ended when we first send them an email asking for cancellation (specifically since I mentioned the reason and gave feedback upfront). It could have been done at "Sure, we will cancel it and delete your account data now."
- bradvl 6y agoAbsolutely rubbish. If only they were alone in doing this rubbish. Another reminder of why we're building https://cledara.com https://cledara.com though...
- bandris 6y agoAVAAZ is similar. I supported them monthly for years with a small amount, then this year I wanted to direct my funds to some other cause and they asked me to send an email explaining why I wanted to cancel my monthly payment. Luckily my card expired shortly after so I didn't bother, and since then they send weekly emails telling me that updating my card info is just "one click away". Sorry AVAAZ. Since then I am very careful to only use PayPal for recurring subscriptions or donations.
- tsjq 6y agoIsn't it the same case with NYTimes, WSJ,etc sites too ?
- rexreed 6y agoYou might want to read this: https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics [1] Xenon Partners, who acquired Baremetrics has a "Playbook". The guy who is shown in the twitter image is Brian Sierakowski (https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansierakowski/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansierakowski/) who is in charge of running the "Xenon Playbook" for Baremetrics. What Xenon does is acquire floundering / stagnating / doing ok SaaS companies from founders who want to sell. They buy the company with a structured acquisition (see above) and then they run their "playbook" to pump revenue and profits. Then they will sell the company for some multiple. They will arbitrage their payments to the founder to make sure that cash flow works out. So, what you're seeing here is the Xenon playbook in action: accelerate revenues, decrease churn, slow payables, all that. I wonder what else is in their playbook. Xenon was itself acquired by a firm called DreamFactory which seems to have started the model in 2017 or 2018, and then took on the Xenon brand themselves to operate their SaaS Private Equity / Hedge Fund model. [1] HN discussion on the acquisition here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045325
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