6 ms·

How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

• stavros 3y ago
  In general, I use privacy.com everywhere I can. I don't even bother unsubscribing, I just pause the card.
  • CodesInChaos 3y ago
    Does that work in the US? In Germany stopping to pay does not cancel your subscription, and the provider can apply the usual debt collection measures.
    • stavros 3y ago
      I wouldn't know, but they're welcome to send their debt collectors to Greece.
      • mtmail 3y ago
        They'd just contract a Greece debt collector. I'd would cost you extra fees.
    • Seklfreak 3y ago
      It does work in the U.S., legal agreement or not, I think debt collection is far less successful in the U.S. so most companies will just cancel the subscription for you. On the other hand in the EU it's much easier to cancel subscriptions thanks to legal requirements on cancelation methods…
      • kevincox 3y ago
        > so most companies will just cancel the subscription for you. This isn't "it working" really. It is just that for most companies it is not worth chasing down the debt that is rightfully owed to them.
        • Seklfreak 3y ago
          Fair point, but it works great for the consumer
  • mtmail 3y ago
    Speaking as a SaaS business owner that is real bad customer behavior. Is spending a couple of minute clicking "unsubscribe" too much work?
    • capableweb 3y ago
      Wouldn't it be the same if the card was rejected for any other reason, including that the card is no longer active, don't have enough funds or anything else? What makes this particular behavior "real bad customer behavior", compared to the other reasons a payment could be rejected?
      • mtmail 3y ago
        A lot of services don't stop the day payment wasn't received but try for weeks to follow up, be automated or manual. In our (small scale) B2B SaaS we give benefit of doubt and the last thing we want is to stop access, which might break some production system on the customer side. I'm more concerned about the "I don't even bother". Some companies might hide their unsubscribe feature, that's frustrating, a lot others make it super easy.
        • capableweb 3y ago
          Ok, so what's the issue exactly? The person is no longer using the service, so won't matter if you retry one time one day then cancel VS retrying for weeks, their usage wouldn't impact you, and eventually the account will be deactivated/suspended?
          • kevincox 3y ago
            Maybe payment processors will charge significant fees for declined transactions and it may hurt your reputation with them, possibly resulting in overall fee increases or outright being kicked off of the platform.
            • capableweb 3y ago
• Nextgrid 3y ago
  You dispute the transactions and let the card network handle it. Too many such incidents and they'll lose their ability to process card payments altogether, so they'll be on top of it.
  • taf2 3y ago
    I did this to sprint in 2002 because they refused to let me cancel my contract as I was switching to AT&T. I spent 2 hours on a call being passed from one agent to the next. I decided to just call my bank and stop payments. In 2020 or 2019 right before the t-mobile merger I decided for work I wanted a back up mifi device so I walked into a sprint store. The manager eventually came out and told me they can’t do business with me because of a bad credit issue. So at least 15 years later and I was like damn oh yeah I remember I couldn’t cancel my service … so I got myself a t mobile mifi instead as backup. Still amazing to me - I even remember a big lawsuit over their cancellation policy…
    • Nextgrid 3y ago
      The only reason they can do that is that most people aren't aware of the rights the card networks give them, so most never bother and just submit to being scammed by the big company. Even on HN, it's disappointing to see how little is known. It's a literal "one weird trick companies don't want you to know" and it works wonders when a company doesn't want to hold up their side of a deal. If everyone used chargebacks like they should, companies wouldn't be able to get away with this as they'd quickly run out of customers (and if they did, a competitor would quickly appear to take up all those banned customers).
    • hermitdev 3y ago
      Circa 2004, my last words to Sprint after 3 weeks of back and forth trying to get my phone working again: "Close my fucking account." I also switched to T-Mobile. Called them up immediately afterwards, spoke to a rep in the US (or at least spoke clear English with no cross-ocean lag) and had a phone overnighted to me the next day. Painless. Background on it: I'd upgraded my phone w/ Sprint. And not long after receiving the new phone, it fell out of my pocket and landed in the toilet. Dead dead. No amount of rice was going to save it. This wasn't Sprints fault, never said it was to them. But, I still had my previous phone, so I call up, explain what happened and asked them to reactivate my old phone. And they did, great so far. The old phone worked fine for a month or so until it just didn't work anymore. I could still contact them using the phone via whatever their "*" number was, but I couldn't make any regular calls. I spent upwards of 40 hours over 3 weeks trying to get it resolved before I'd had enough. The final call started with a recap of the issues and lack of progress and me stating that if the issue wasn't resolved tonight, I was closing my account. After another 2 hours on the phone, they gave up and told me "the only person that knows how to do this has gone home for the night". So I told call the rep to call them. They wouldn't. Lost customer. Switched to T-Mobile and haven't looked back. It's been nearly 20 years, still with T-Mobile. I've not had any issues like that, and every time I have had an issue, support has been great. I was dreading the Sprint acquisition, fearing support would tank. Thankfully, I think I've been wrong on that fear.
• vizzah 3y ago
  thankfully, my credit card just expired when I no longer needed the service. Try <frank.sterling@apilayer.com> who was then chasing me to resume paying.
  • millzlane 3y ago
    Send a copy to the to whatever government agency handles fraud or consumer abuse, and copy your banks fraud dept. I guarantee someone emails you back within a few hours.
  • bonton89 3y ago
    Some credit card companies seem to offer a "service" where they send updated information to recurring charging merchants when you get a new card. I haven't encountered this as an issue myself but I was reading about it as something to watch out for the other day.
• exabrial 3y ago
  Chargeback for certain, and always keep a paper trail!
• mtmail 3y ago
  That matched what I see on their public Twitter timeline. I'll be transparent that I'm competing with one of APILayer's APIs. Ever since APIlayer was acquired by Idera the support went downhill. The support team doesn't seem to be connected to their social media or engineer team. The specific API we're competing with (not MarketStack) was down 12 full days once, and twice a week down this year. No explanation given, promised post-mortem was never delivered, they still claim 99.9% uptime on their website. They ignore all Github issues including "Are you guys still in business?". *) https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1700845882051039550 https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1700845882051039550 , https://twitter.com/lionelkubwimana/status/1694636360777289753 https://twitter.com/lionelkubwimana/status/16946363607772897... , https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1698315294765199857 https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1698315294765199857 > Does anyone have any contacts there? If you get no response maybe escalate to the parent company Idera (https://www.ideracorp.com/ https://www.ideracorp.com/).
  • a13n 3y ago
    What is the name/website of your company?
    • mtmail 3y ago
      https://opencagedata.com/ https://opencagedata.com/ In 8 years only one credit card dispute but we believe that was a stolen credit card.
  • tentacleuno 3y ago
    Yikes, that Trustpilot is absolutely dreadful. According to one, they completely ignored him, while he was asking for the service to be cancelled for 3 months... then they say they don't offer refunds. Over here, that would be something for the Ombudsman to investigate. Straight up malpractice. The kicker is that they don't appear to even reply to the reviews.
    • mtmail 3y ago
      They're aware of the reviews, I mean they replied to some of them.
• upon_drumhead 3y ago
  Privacy.com card and then close the virtual card is how I do it when companies make it a pain to cancel.
• zeruh 3y ago
  Funny thing, they just sent us a legal notice for not paying them $70, LOL