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It's kind of like a tax on the entire industry. I've had so many experiences with subscriptions being excessively tough to cancel that I'm very reluctant to sta
by ufmace 5y ago
It's kind of like a tax on the entire industry. I've had so many experiences with subscriptions being excessively tough to cancel that I'm very reluctant to start a subscription to anything. Unfortunately, it isn't in many people's interest to make it smoother.
- PaulKeeble 5y agoI am the same. If I am not sure even about something free just asking me for an email address I may very well just walk away because I have no idea the amount of abuse they might put me through and how hard it will be to cancel it. The bad actors in the industry are ruining everyone's confidence in potentially new interests and products. It might have been manageable if the entire review industry had not put itself on sale and is largely just affiliate farming to make money. I would pay for a good review site but I got burnt by Which lying about having reviewed a product and then making cancellation hard. Honestly the way most companies behave is shockingly bad so I tend not to sign up to much new now, until the GDPR breaching companies and all these dark pattern sites are cleaned up by regulation there isn't a way to safely do it and not have an email account end up getting spammed.
- mumblemumble 5y agoI just did that this morning. I probably should have been an easy conversion. I went directly looking for a certain kind of thing. I was in a state of feeling frustrated about not having that thing. I found a company that seemed initially promising. But, as soon as I found out that I would have to give them my email address in order to find our more about their service, I just closed the browser tab without a second thought. I didn't have a conscious reason for doing so at the time, but, in retrospect, it's probably because I strongly associate that kind of aggressive conversion funnel with a poor - oftentimes even emotionally abusive - offboarding experience.
- PaulKeeble 5y agoIt became a bit of a pattern recommendation on Hacker news to do this and I think its ultimately wrong. Make it easy to minimally sign up but it has to come along with some reassurances too and if there isn't enough information up front about what the thing is and what will happen to that email address it turns into an anti pattern and a big warning sign.
- ufmace 5y agoI agree that there's a really annoying trend where seemingly every website constantly spams popups to try and get your email address. Or browser notifications now. No, there's zero chance I want your news site or blog to constantly spam my email or notifications with updates. If you can't be bothered to put a website up saying what your site or service is about, I definitely don't want to get email about it.
- b112 5y agoI can't even believe 99% of these sites get any real sales / draw from their spam regardless. I'm convinced it is all "monkey see, monkey do", they read some reddit post, and it mentioned marketing 101 aka email emails!!, and so they need to spam.
- tartoran 5y agoI feel the same too and this could easily be solved by using a junk email address for that. I still don’t bother though, the amount of deception has permanently switched my behaviour to simply ignore any such service that asks for email address before I even know what it does.
- Nextgrid 5y agoI recently had to cancel Which? as well and was disappointed and surprised considering the organisation’s mission. My original idea was to re-subscribe when I need the service again but that’s now off the table.
- marban 5y agoI hate to put in a good word for Paypal but being able to cancel paid subscriptions on your own is a godsend when signing up for services that take it as payment processor.