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I support the US->EU movement but I've been put off Mistral's Le Chat. https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ I subscribed (and pa

by s_dev 5mo ago

I support the US->EU movement but I've been put off Mistral's Le Chat. https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ I subscribed (and paid) for a year of Pro. They gave me 1 month on the basis that a payment was missed on the second month. They simply stopped providing Pro and continued to take a monthly subscription for the next year (Stripe allows subscriptions to be fixed in the background). I must have changed cards that specific month. I spoke to customer service who told me any sort of refund or complementary tokens was impossible and that I should have been paying closer attention to how much money I was giving them. So I shut down the subscription and now pay Claude $200 a month and deleted the account. Genuinely was shocked at poor customer service can be with EU services sometimes compared to US ones. That said I will keep trying and exploring EU options, hopefully a new EU LLM giant emerges in the next few years.

gitmagic 5mo ago
You should have asked the bank to do a chargeback of the transactions.
- mft_ 5mo ago
  I don’t know whether there’s a US vs. Europe difference on this, but I failed to get my (European) bank to do this a while back when Tesla continued to take money for a subscription after I’d given the car back. (I had to kill that credit card and write the small amount off in the end.)
  - pyrale 5mo ago
    While chargeback laws are a bit more restrictive in some EU countries, you should always have the option to ask your bank to block future charges, without changing your card.
    - 627467 5mo ago
      A couple of years ago i found out netflix account was stolen, email address changed but card continued to be associated with the account. I couldn't login. Called Amex explained the situation and asked to block future payments. They refused on the basis that I agreed (originally) for netflix to take the subscription fee monthly so I had to contact netflix to solve to do this. Amex. The age where consumers have power over who takes money from them is gone
dannyw 5mo ago
There's pretty good consumer protection in the EU. I imagine consumer protection routes probably would apply here. Definitely not really acceptable though nonetheless; you're a paying customer / subscriber that got 'scammed'...
- master-lincoln 5mo ago
  From the perspective of the company he was scamming them by not paying for a previously agreed service. > Stripe allows subscriptions to be fixed in the background Sounds like this is a scheme against customers that GP fell for. Are you claiming for the following months that you paid they denied access? That would be against laws afaik
  - s_dev 5mo ago
    >From the perspective of the company he was scamming them by not paying for a previously agreed service. How could I have possibly scammed them by providing them money while not availing of the service?

by s_dev 5mo ago

gitmagic 5mo ago

You should have asked the bank to do a chargeback of the transactions.

mft_ 5mo ago
I don’t know whether there’s a US vs. Europe difference on this, but I failed to get my (European) bank to do this a while back when Tesla continued to take money for a subscription after I’d given the car back. (I had to kill that credit card and write the small amount off in the end.)
- pyrale 5mo ago
  While chargeback laws are a bit more restrictive in some EU countries, you should always have the option to ask your bank to block future charges, without changing your card.
  - 627467 5mo ago
    A couple of years ago i found out netflix account was stolen, email address changed but card continued to be associated with the account. I couldn't login. Called Amex explained the situation and asked to block future payments. They refused on the basis that I agreed (originally) for netflix to take the subscription fee monthly so I had to contact netflix to solve to do this. Amex. The age where consumers have power over who takes money from them is gone

dannyw 5mo ago

There's pretty good consumer protection in the EU. I imagine consumer protection routes probably would apply here. Definitely not really acceptable though nonetheless; you're a paying customer / subscriber that got 'scammed'...

master-lincoln 5mo ago
From the perspective of the company he was scamming them by not paying for a previously agreed service. > Stripe allows subscriptions to be fixed in the background Sounds like this is a scheme against customers that GP fell for. Are you claiming for the following months that you paid they denied access? That would be against laws afaik
- s_dev 5mo ago
  >From the perspective of the company he was scamming them by not paying for a previously agreed service. How could I have possibly scammed them by providing them money while not availing of the service?