12 ms·

Some companies think customers will accidentally cancel if it's too easy

102 points by passwordoops 3y ago

PrivateButts 3y ago
I mean, some will. We have a two button cancel process and we'll have accidental clicks a couple times a year. However, two incidents a year does not justify the lengths that some companies will go to retain your sub.
RankingMember 3y ago
Title of this post omits a pretty important few words, the full text being "Companies Think Their Idiot Customers Will Accidentally Cancel Their Subscriptions if It's Too Easy"
- passwordoops 3y ago
  Character limits...
- mcv 3y ago
  %s/Think/Claim/
science4sail 3y ago
> “If sellers are required to enable cancellation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancellations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click,” the Association said in a statement. This seems like a non-issue. Shouldn't it be trivial for customers to reactivate their subscriptions if they accidentally cancel?
- Clubber 3y ago
  It is a non-issue for customers. It's the same trap as a gym membership. Ideally, they want people to subscribe and just leave it running without actually using it. The best way to maximize that is to put speed bumps to cancelling. In the instance of a gym membership, you have to go in there to cancel and sign papers and all that. Imagine if everyone with a gym membership actually showed up every day, there would be a line circling the place like an iPhone launch. The issue is they don't want to remove their speed bump because that speed bump equates to a ton of revenue every month without the cost of user load.
neovialogistics 3y ago
I think this article is an example of poor journalism: repeating the claims of the parties concerned without investigating which parts, if any, are bullshit. Sure, the title has an incredulous tone, but the body has no discernable skepticism.
- csomar 3y ago
  I think that's the point of the article. I read it as more of sarcasm.
galleywest200 3y ago
While I do not think the trade industry is correct here, and that the power should go to the consumers.... At my current job (we sell Hosted PBX and SIP Trunking VOIP products) I have had Channel Partners "accidentally" cancel their own sub-accounts and then businesses (such as doctor's offices) do not have VoIP service for 24 hours while the account is rebuilt. Having the ability to immediately turn the product back on works for a lot of things, but certain actions require immediate clearing of our system (number porting is an example, due to laws). Yes, I have had customers "accidentally" port their numbers. Comcast was notorious for this as just LOOKING into service with them might have a customer sign a document that triggered a number port. This is not idiot customers though, this is just sales being sales and clicking buttons that are shiny.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  I once had a Cloud Ops engineer "accidentally" delete an S3 bucket containing all the logos for our whitelisted page. Claims he was cleaning up and didn't think these were important until after the fact. We couldn't just turn this back and had to ask each client (about 50 at the time) to send us their brand guides again. Of course, being the PM this was somehow my fault
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    > Of course, being the PM this was somehow my fault Either PM here being "project manager" or "product manager", that's one of the reasons why PMs never behave like PMs. Anyway, the one in fault is always whoever is closest. That's a very consistent failure of the "people manager" role.
  - LorenPechtel 3y ago
    No backups??
teeray 3y ago
Then create an undo button that’s active for a grace period.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Exactly this, that's the way to handle it. Not to 'on the spot' hard delete a bunch of stuff. Just send them an email with a link that they need to click to re-activate their account and 30 or 90 days within which to do that. No action in that time -> deletion is permanent and data will be wiped.
  - nirvdrum 3y ago
    If I'm deleting my account there's a reason for doing so. I don't want the company I'm trying to leave to continue to hold on to my data for any reason whatsoever. If I did, I'd just cancel or deactivate my account. There are often legal reasons for doing this as well, particularly when handling PII. Incidentally, this is why I not fond of engineering solutions like append-only databases. They deliberately take agency away from your users/customers in order to make life for the engineers easier.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Then we could deal with that by adding another link that says 'if you really want to delete your stuff right now without recourse then click here and it will be done'. This of course would cause a ton of trouble for those cases where someone managed an account takeover or for people who are really clueless. See upthread comment about the number of CS calls such implementation details can lead to. The shorter version: you can't please everybody. There will always be exceptions.
cdelsolar 3y ago
I have an app that lets people delete their accounts. It very clearly in big letters says "THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE". The button is hidden deep in their profile. I get emails, every single day, saying "I accidentally deleted my account, could you please restore it?". It literally drives me crazy.
- californical 3y ago
  One thing that seems to really get the point across is to have someone type the words “permanently delete” in a text box before enabling the button. I’ve seen this UI pattern in a few places, and it is a bit annoying for something you might do semi-regularly, but seems totally appropriate for your use-case. Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think.
  - albert_e 3y ago
    AWS does this for a few irreversible deletes
    - hiatus 3y ago
      AWS is so strangely inconsistent about this. In some places it is "delete", others "permanently delete", and others still it is the name of the resource. Thinking about it more, keeping the user on their toes like that makes it less likely to fat-finger a deletion, I suppose.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Came here to mention that UI option. At an old job, some of the internal tools made you add a flag "--I-am-not-a-moran[sic]-I-know-what-I-do" or "--sudo-make-me-a-sandwich" to important operations, presumably to remind you of their impact and give you a moment of typing to think about it.
  - chrisnight 3y ago
    > Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think. Part of it might be that, but I think it’s also about the previous experiences that people have with programs. How much a person thinks about something is inversely proportional to how much they see it. Typing is just something not many companies have added, so seeing it is off-putting and makes people think. If you had to type “Permanently Delete This” all day to delete random entries in a database, you wouldn’t think twice before you accidentally deleted all of production. This is why having the same warning for two different severities is a big problem. People encounter the first and realize it isn’t a big deal, and then glaze through the second because of their previous experience. Deleting an empty folder is fine, but deleting your home directory might not be, even if both are just “deleting a folder”.
superq 3y ago
Interesting and somewhat ironic that WSJ itself (cited, this really should link to the original) isn't alone among big newspapers in making it somewhat difficult to cancel their subscriptions! This is the original source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-and-advertisers-push-back-at-ftcs-click-to-cancel-proposal-de96960b https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-and-advertisers-push...
tough 3y ago
I guess at the point the customer has cancelled their subscription you're like fine calling them idiots because you no longer have a business relationship withstanding with them? > "Of course they're idiots if they cancelled us."
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  Tell me you've canceled subscriptions accidentally without telling me you've cancelled subscriptions accidentally.
  - tough 3y ago
    I never subscribe
xbar 3y ago
(With apologies to any idiots): Idiots cannot be stopped from being idiots.
didntcheck 3y ago
Dealing with users myself has had the somewhat uncomfortable effect of making me often give the benefit of the doubt to faceless corporations over users when there's a scandal of "$service did $thing without my permission!". Frankly the empirical evidence is that it is impossible to get users to acknowledge something, short of sending a messenger to their house in person. People will ignore any forced messages and click literally any button, and the blame will always land on you It's also why I'm marginally less annoyed now when software prevents me from doing something "for my own good", even when I know what I'm doing. Or proactively prevents "off-label" use cases, because they know that a failure to block a use case will be taken as a commitment to support it And finally, this is also why true zero-trust encryption situations will always be a niche - almost no users can be trusted to accept the ramifications of being the sole keyholder. And that's not even starting on the users who take server message history for granted yet act outraged when they hear that Facebook does indeed have their message history, and include it in their GDPR exports as requested
- treeman79 3y ago
  My person favorite is when something pops and immediately goes away because I was in the middle of typing, clicking, etc. Umm okay well I just agreed or disagreed to something, and I have no idea what. Also after watching my kids, there is nothing they wouldn’t agree to onscreen if gets them to next step in whatever they are doing. Would easily sell soul for a donut.
  - eddythompson80 3y ago
    We have a resource management UI. You could delete resources by clicking ‘delete’ then clicking ‘yes’ on the delete confirmation box. Users complained that that’s not sufficient, “We fat finger it all the time”. Ok, we added a text box to the delete dialogue where you have to type ‘confirm’. “Guess what, we still fat finger it”. Ok, instead of ‘confirm’ you have to type the resource name, id, or type. “Hey, we still fat finger it”. Fine, you can set a resource to un-deletable in its settings, then you have to go to its settings and uncheck that before you can delete it. We get complaints about both how convoluted our delete experience is and about how people still fat finger that. It’s hard to make everything soft-delete with undo and needing to handle all integrity and correctness between deleted, restored and newly created resources etc. Not to mention regulatory things that require actual delete. But it’s becoming more and more expected or you’re “amateurish”.
mcv 3y ago
> The Alliance claimed its members actually receive “very few complaints” about cancellations. Because they make it hard to submit complaints. Too many companies these days go out of their way to hide information on how to contact their customer service. If they have customer service at all.
roydivision 3y ago
- Are you sure? - Please type your full name to acknowledge you want to delete the account Should be enough?
bdw5204 3y ago
I think the right fix for subscriptions is probably to require an affirmative renewal rather than a passive renewal. Since customers are too lazy to affirmatively cancel subscriptions they aren't using, a passive renewal means they keep spending money on it. If you require affirmative renewal then there is no need to offer a "cancel my subscription" option at all because the way to cancel a subscription would be to just not renew it after it expires. I think passive renewal is reasonable for utility services because obviously you want to continue your electric service and the cost of a momentary lapse in service would be potentially catastrophic. But your subscription to a music streaming app can lapse without anything bad happening and be renewed whenever you decide to use the app again. And that means that people who stopped using it but forgot to cancel aren't being billed for it.
- xur17 3y ago
  It would be nice if that were offered, but tbh I would find the volume of "affirmative renewal" messages annoying. I wonder if subscription payments could be handled at the payment provider level. Ideally when I use a payment method at a merchant, I would be able to choose between one time payment, and recurring payment. If I choose recurring payment, a token is generated, and I can revoke / cancel the token from my payment provider's website / app.
  - themoonisachees 3y ago
    To be entirely fair, such volume would only come because everything has become a subscription. Maybe this would drive it back to buy a product and you now have it?
    - xur17 3y ago
      Fair point, and this is actually something I was thinking about last night. I am more likely to spend $500 on a product than I am to signup for a $10 / month subscription.
  - jbombadil 3y ago
    I agree. This is essentially how Apple handles subscriptions. If you created a subscription using Apple Pay, you can go to settings and cancel it from there. It’s one of the reasons I value Apple Pay.
ilamont 3y ago
Wasn't there an HN thread recently on how many people accidentally flag stories and comments? ETA: Found it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36657663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36657663
izzydata 3y ago
What does that say about how easy it is to sign up in the first place? I assume they were ok with that.
- PopGreene 3y ago
  Exactly. I didn't see anything about their problem with idiot customers "accidentally" subscribing.
JohnFen 3y ago
I don't believe that's what they think at all. I think their reasoning is that the more difficult they make cancelling, the more people will get frustrated and give up trying (maybe telling themselves "screw this, I'll try again another day" -- and some of those won't try again another day). It's pure anti-customer BS.
anonzzzies 3y ago
Most companies know that people won't cancel because people are lazy. Making it hard will make them angry customers. I would like to see stats if the 'hidden'/aggressive stance ever works. When you cancel with us, we encrypt your data and give you the key (and wipe it on our side). We delete the encrypted data after 6 months. Not many people cancel (they drop to freemium and that's it usually), but stats show there are 0 accidents as no-one ever reactivated. Disclaimer: I only do b2b ; I know nothing about b2c, so my remarks reflect the former.
kojiromike 3y ago
Many of the comments I've seen here so far seem to focus on whether or not there's a warning, and making folks type exactly the name of what they intend to delete. "THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE! Please type 'owner/account' to proceed." But https://httpie.io/blog/stardust https://httpie.io/blog/stardust seems to suggest that it would be an improvement to let people know just what they're going to lose. That might be a challenge, but it does sound like good UX to me. If a company knows what its users actually (might) value about a system, they could present it that way. "Understand that deleting your account is irreversible. If you are sure, type 'Lose 10000 followers' to proceed."
tensor 3y ago
Looking at the article talking about this proposal, it appears that the requirement is actually that it's as easy to cancel as it is to sign up, not that it is "one click." A confirmation box is pretty standard practice in UX for destructive actions and it doesn't sound like that is prevented. What the proposal DOES do is prevent dark patterns, like having to click through five screens of offers before cancelling. Overall this is a very poorly written article. But it's gizmodo so I'm not sure what else people are expecting! https://gizmodo.com/bluesky-engineer-q-a-twitter-alterative-innovation-1850547030 https://gizmodo.com/bluesky-engineer-q-a-twitter-alterative-...)
xyzzy3000 3y ago
I'm currently on the telephone to Virgin Media (a UK domestic fibre-optic broadband provider) and they are certainly making it difficult. This is the annual price renegotiation dance, which requires a call to the helpline, at least three menu options to get to the 'thinking of leaving us' option. This goes to a first-line call centre operative, who speaks with a 'manager' whilst the caller is on hold and then returns with a not particularly great 'agent discount'. The next step is to politely refuse the initial offer and ask to be 'put through to cancellations'. After a half-hour wait, I will then make it to the second line call centre who can give the actual discount. I have been cut off once during the hold queue music for stage two, and this is my second attempt. The Web-based cancellation form didn't work on my browser, although this may be due to cookie or script blockers. I'm all in favour of a streamlined workflow for cancellation processes, and if users do that by mistake, fine - that's life. Just give clear and unambiguous notices describing the consequences of the user's decision and keep the dark patterns well away from the entire process.
- jacobp100 3y ago
  It’s a lot easier with OpenReach-based providers. Just switch and they’ll call you
  - xyzzy3000 3y ago
    I do have equipment for that but Virgin Media was cheaper at the time that I was setting up when I moved in (new-build) . It's fibre to premises. The result of my call today was an acceptable discount via the UK-based call centre, so I'm sticking with my current provider for the next 18 months. I spent over an hour on the telephone though, which shouldn't be necessary.
    - throwawaymobule 3y ago
      Oh damn. the retention process worked. I think the hack here is to say you're moving and can't transfer your account for whatever reason, and you typically get fasttracked to cancellation. (along with the standard phone-tree escape of holding down a button on your phone) I know many people who, after working phone support themselves, call up just to ask for a discount once a year.
boruto 3y ago
I am currently trying to cancel internet, mobile and electricity contracts as I am moving out in germany. The process is so twisted that there are startups whose products is canceling contracts.
aidenn0 3y ago
The obvious retort here is "If it's so easy to accidentally cancel with the same flow as your sign-up, then how many of your signups are accidental?"
poplet 3y ago
... and use black patterns to make sure it's as hard as possible.
T3RMINATED 3y ago
[dead]

102 points by passwordoops 3y ago

I mean, some will. We have a two button cancel process and we'll have accidental clicks a couple times a year. However, two incidents a year does not justify the lengths that some companies will go to retain your sub.

RankingMember 3y ago

Title of this post omits a pretty important few words, the full text being "Companies Think Their Idiot Customers Will Accidentally Cancel Their Subscriptions if It's Too Easy"

passwordoops 3y ago
Character limits...
mcv 3y ago
%s/Think/Claim/

science4sail 3y ago

> “If sellers are required to enable cancellation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancellations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click,” the Association said in a statement. This seems like a non-issue. Shouldn't it be trivial for customers to reactivate their subscriptions if they accidentally cancel?

Clubber 3y ago
It is a non-issue for customers. It's the same trap as a gym membership. Ideally, they want people to subscribe and just leave it running without actually using it. The best way to maximize that is to put speed bumps to cancelling. In the instance of a gym membership, you have to go in there to cancel and sign papers and all that. Imagine if everyone with a gym membership actually showed up every day, there would be a line circling the place like an iPhone launch. The issue is they don't want to remove their speed bump because that speed bump equates to a ton of revenue every month without the cost of user load.

neovialogistics 3y ago

I think this article is an example of poor journalism: repeating the claims of the parties concerned without investigating which parts, if any, are bullshit. Sure, the title has an incredulous tone, but the body has no discernable skepticism.

csomar 3y ago
I think that's the point of the article. I read it as more of sarcasm.

galleywest200 3y ago

While I do not think the trade industry is correct here, and that the power should go to the consumers.... At my current job (we sell Hosted PBX and SIP Trunking VOIP products) I have had Channel Partners "accidentally" cancel their own sub-accounts and then businesses (such as doctor's offices) do not have VoIP service for 24 hours while the account is rebuilt. Having the ability to immediately turn the product back on works for a lot of things, but certain actions require immediate clearing of our system (number porting is an example, due to laws). Yes, I have had customers "accidentally" port their numbers. Comcast was notorious for this as just LOOKING into service with them might have a customer sign a document that triggered a number port. This is not idiot customers though, this is just sales being sales and clicking buttons that are shiny.

passwordoops 3y ago
I once had a Cloud Ops engineer "accidentally" delete an S3 bucket containing all the logos for our whitelisted page. Claims he was cleaning up and didn't think these were important until after the fact. We couldn't just turn this back and had to ask each client (about 50 at the time) to send us their brand guides again. Of course, being the PM this was somehow my fault
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > Of course, being the PM this was somehow my fault Either PM here being "project manager" or "product manager", that's one of the reasons why PMs never behave like PMs. Anyway, the one in fault is always whoever is closest. That's a very consistent failure of the "people manager" role.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  No backups??

teeray 3y ago

Then create an undo button that’s active for a grace period.

jacquesm 3y ago
Exactly this, that's the way to handle it. Not to 'on the spot' hard delete a bunch of stuff. Just send them an email with a link that they need to click to re-activate their account and 30 or 90 days within which to do that. No action in that time -> deletion is permanent and data will be wiped.
- nirvdrum 3y ago
  If I'm deleting my account there's a reason for doing so. I don't want the company I'm trying to leave to continue to hold on to my data for any reason whatsoever. If I did, I'd just cancel or deactivate my account. There are often legal reasons for doing this as well, particularly when handling PII. Incidentally, this is why I not fond of engineering solutions like append-only databases. They deliberately take agency away from your users/customers in order to make life for the engineers easier.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Then we could deal with that by adding another link that says 'if you really want to delete your stuff right now without recourse then click here and it will be done'. This of course would cause a ton of trouble for those cases where someone managed an account takeover or for people who are really clueless. See upthread comment about the number of CS calls such implementation details can lead to. The shorter version: you can't please everybody. There will always be exceptions.

cdelsolar 3y ago

I have an app that lets people delete their accounts. It very clearly in big letters says "THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE". The button is hidden deep in their profile. I get emails, every single day, saying "I accidentally deleted my account, could you please restore it?". It literally drives me crazy.

californical 3y ago
One thing that seems to really get the point across is to have someone type the words “permanently delete” in a text box before enabling the button. I’ve seen this UI pattern in a few places, and it is a bit annoying for something you might do semi-regularly, but seems totally appropriate for your use-case. Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think.
- albert_e 3y ago
  AWS does this for a few irreversible deletes
  - hiatus 3y ago
    AWS is so strangely inconsistent about this. In some places it is "delete", others "permanently delete", and others still it is the name of the resource. Thinking about it more, keeping the user on their toes like that makes it less likely to fat-finger a deletion, I suppose.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Came here to mention that UI option. At an old job, some of the internal tools made you add a flag "--I-am-not-a-moran[sic]-I-know-what-I-do" or "--sudo-make-me-a-sandwich" to important operations, presumably to remind you of their impact and give you a moment of typing to think about it.
- chrisnight 3y ago
  > Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think. Part of it might be that, but I think it’s also about the previous experiences that people have with programs. How much a person thinks about something is inversely proportional to how much they see it. Typing is just something not many companies have added, so seeing it is off-putting and makes people think. If you had to type “Permanently Delete This” all day to delete random entries in a database, you wouldn’t think twice before you accidentally deleted all of production. This is why having the same warning for two different severities is a big problem. People encounter the first and realize it isn’t a big deal, and then glaze through the second because of their previous experience. Deleting an empty folder is fine, but deleting your home directory might not be, even if both are just “deleting a folder”.

superq 3y ago

Interesting and somewhat ironic that WSJ itself (cited, this really should link to the original) isn't alone among big newspapers in making it somewhat difficult to cancel their subscriptions! This is the original source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-and-advertisers-push-back-at-ftcs-click-to-cancel-proposal-de96960b https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-and-advertisers-push...

tough 3y ago

I guess at the point the customer has cancelled their subscription you're like fine calling them idiots because you no longer have a business relationship withstanding with them? > "Of course they're idiots if they cancelled us."

iLoveOncall 3y ago
Tell me you've canceled subscriptions accidentally without telling me you've cancelled subscriptions accidentally.
- tough 3y ago
  I never subscribe

xbar 3y ago

(With apologies to any idiots): Idiots cannot be stopped from being idiots.

didntcheck 3y ago

Dealing with users myself has had the somewhat uncomfortable effect of making me often give the benefit of the doubt to faceless corporations over users when there's a scandal of "$service did $thing without my permission!". Frankly the empirical evidence is that it is impossible to get users to acknowledge something, short of sending a messenger to their house in person. People will ignore any forced messages and click literally any button, and the blame will always land on you It's also why I'm marginally less annoyed now when software prevents me from doing something "for my own good", even when I know what I'm doing. Or proactively prevents "off-label" use cases, because they know that a failure to block a use case will be taken as a commitment to support it And finally, this is also why true zero-trust encryption situations will always be a niche - almost no users can be trusted to accept the ramifications of being the sole keyholder. And that's not even starting on the users who take server message history for granted yet act outraged when they hear that Facebook does indeed have their message history, and include it in their GDPR exports as requested

treeman79 3y ago
My person favorite is when something pops and immediately goes away because I was in the middle of typing, clicking, etc. Umm okay well I just agreed or disagreed to something, and I have no idea what. Also after watching my kids, there is nothing they wouldn’t agree to onscreen if gets them to next step in whatever they are doing. Would easily sell soul for a donut.
- eddythompson80 3y ago
  We have a resource management UI. You could delete resources by clicking ‘delete’ then clicking ‘yes’ on the delete confirmation box. Users complained that that’s not sufficient, “We fat finger it all the time”. Ok, we added a text box to the delete dialogue where you have to type ‘confirm’. “Guess what, we still fat finger it”. Ok, instead of ‘confirm’ you have to type the resource name, id, or type. “Hey, we still fat finger it”. Fine, you can set a resource to un-deletable in its settings, then you have to go to its settings and uncheck that before you can delete it. We get complaints about both how convoluted our delete experience is and about how people still fat finger that. It’s hard to make everything soft-delete with undo and needing to handle all integrity and correctness between deleted, restored and newly created resources etc. Not to mention regulatory things that require actual delete. But it’s becoming more and more expected or you’re “amateurish”.

mcv 3y ago

> The Alliance claimed its members actually receive “very few complaints” about cancellations. Because they make it hard to submit complaints. Too many companies these days go out of their way to hide information on how to contact their customer service. If they have customer service at all.

roydivision 3y ago

- Are you sure? - Please type your full name to acknowledge you want to delete the account Should be enough?

bdw5204 3y ago

I think the right fix for subscriptions is probably to require an affirmative renewal rather than a passive renewal. Since customers are too lazy to affirmatively cancel subscriptions they aren't using, a passive renewal means they keep spending money on it. If you require affirmative renewal then there is no need to offer a "cancel my subscription" option at all because the way to cancel a subscription would be to just not renew it after it expires. I think passive renewal is reasonable for utility services because obviously you want to continue your electric service and the cost of a momentary lapse in service would be potentially catastrophic. But your subscription to a music streaming app can lapse without anything bad happening and be renewed whenever you decide to use the app again. And that means that people who stopped using it but forgot to cancel aren't being billed for it.

xur17 3y ago
It would be nice if that were offered, but tbh I would find the volume of "affirmative renewal" messages annoying. I wonder if subscription payments could be handled at the payment provider level. Ideally when I use a payment method at a merchant, I would be able to choose between one time payment, and recurring payment. If I choose recurring payment, a token is generated, and I can revoke / cancel the token from my payment provider's website / app.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  To be entirely fair, such volume would only come because everything has become a subscription. Maybe this would drive it back to buy a product and you now have it?
  - xur17 3y ago
    Fair point, and this is actually something I was thinking about last night. I am more likely to spend $500 on a product than I am to signup for a $10 / month subscription.
- jbombadil 3y ago
  I agree. This is essentially how Apple handles subscriptions. If you created a subscription using Apple Pay, you can go to settings and cancel it from there. It’s one of the reasons I value Apple Pay.

ilamont 3y ago

Wasn't there an HN thread recently on how many people accidentally flag stories and comments? ETA: Found it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36657663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36657663

izzydata 3y ago

What does that say about how easy it is to sign up in the first place? I assume they were ok with that.

PopGreene 3y ago
Exactly. I didn't see anything about their problem with idiot customers "accidentally" subscribing.

JohnFen 3y ago

I don't believe that's what they think at all. I think their reasoning is that the more difficult they make cancelling, the more people will get frustrated and give up trying (maybe telling themselves "screw this, I'll try again another day" -- and some of those won't try again another day). It's pure anti-customer BS.

anonzzzies 3y ago

Most companies know that people won't cancel because people are lazy. Making it hard will make them angry customers. I would like to see stats if the 'hidden'/aggressive stance ever works. When you cancel with us, we encrypt your data and give you the key (and wipe it on our side). We delete the encrypted data after 6 months. Not many people cancel (they drop to freemium and that's it usually), but stats show there are 0 accidents as no-one ever reactivated. Disclaimer: I only do b2b ; I know nothing about b2c, so my remarks reflect the former.

kojiromike 3y ago

Many of the comments I've seen here so far seem to focus on whether or not there's a warning, and making folks type exactly the name of what they intend to delete. "THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE! Please type 'owner/account' to proceed." But https://httpie.io/blog/stardust https://httpie.io/blog/stardust seems to suggest that it would be an improvement to let people know just what they're going to lose. That might be a challenge, but it does sound like good UX to me. If a company knows what its users actually (might) value about a system, they could present it that way. "Understand that deleting your account is irreversible. If you are sure, type 'Lose 10000 followers' to proceed."

tensor 3y ago

Looking at the article talking about this proposal, it appears that the requirement is actually that it's as easy to cancel as it is to sign up, not that it is "one click." A confirmation box is pretty standard practice in UX for destructive actions and it doesn't sound like that is prevented. What the proposal DOES do is prevent dark patterns, like having to click through five screens of offers before cancelling. Overall this is a very poorly written article. But it's gizmodo so I'm not sure what else people are expecting! https://gizmodo.com/bluesky-engineer-q-a-twitter-alterative-innovation-1850547030 https://gizmodo.com/bluesky-engineer-q-a-twitter-alterative-...)

xyzzy3000 3y ago

I'm currently on the telephone to Virgin Media (a UK domestic fibre-optic broadband provider) and they are certainly making it difficult. This is the annual price renegotiation dance, which requires a call to the helpline, at least three menu options to get to the 'thinking of leaving us' option. This goes to a first-line call centre operative, who speaks with a 'manager' whilst the caller is on hold and then returns with a not particularly great 'agent discount'. The next step is to politely refuse the initial offer and ask to be 'put through to cancellations'. After a half-hour wait, I will then make it to the second line call centre who can give the actual discount. I have been cut off once during the hold queue music for stage two, and this is my second attempt. The Web-based cancellation form didn't work on my browser, although this may be due to cookie or script blockers. I'm all in favour of a streamlined workflow for cancellation processes, and if users do that by mistake, fine - that's life. Just give clear and unambiguous notices describing the consequences of the user's decision and keep the dark patterns well away from the entire process.

jacobp100 3y ago
It’s a lot easier with OpenReach-based providers. Just switch and they’ll call you
- xyzzy3000 3y ago
  I do have equipment for that but Virgin Media was cheaper at the time that I was setting up when I moved in (new-build) . It's fibre to premises. The result of my call today was an acceptable discount via the UK-based call centre, so I'm sticking with my current provider for the next 18 months. I spent over an hour on the telephone though, which shouldn't be necessary.
  - throwawaymobule 3y ago
    Oh damn. the retention process worked. I think the hack here is to say you're moving and can't transfer your account for whatever reason, and you typically get fasttracked to cancellation. (along with the standard phone-tree escape of holding down a button on your phone) I know many people who, after working phone support themselves, call up just to ask for a discount once a year.

boruto 3y ago

I am currently trying to cancel internet, mobile and electricity contracts as I am moving out in germany. The process is so twisted that there are startups whose products is canceling contracts.

aidenn0 3y ago

The obvious retort here is "If it's so easy to accidentally cancel with the same flow as your sign-up, then how many of your signups are accidental?"

poplet 3y ago

... and use black patterns to make sure it's as hard as possible.

T3RMINATED 3y ago

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