[HN Gopher] The FTC wants to ban tough-to-cancel subscriptions
___________________________________________________________________
The FTC wants to ban tough-to-cancel subscriptions
Author : elashri
Score : 655 points
Date : 2023-03-23 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| But those unused gym subscriptions subsidize the gym membership i
| do use. Please don't take that stimulus away.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I got the run-around one time when I tried to cancel my
| membership at Planet Fatness. After my evil twin got me in
| trouble at the gym I made sure to bring along my 6'3'' son and my
| 300 pound probably-autistic and foul smelling friend (also
| offended by my evil twin) for backup and had no trouble canceling
| "our" membership.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Also the NYT! You should be able to cancel your subscription
| online.
| dangwhy wrote:
| I there a law preventing me from canceling recurring
| subscriptions on my credit card?
|
| Why does my bank want me to write them some letter and create a
| case which they may or maynot look into.
|
| Merely changing the card number wont work because bank updates
| vendors with the new card. I've asked but they they _have_ to
| update vendors, i don 't understand why though.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Nope. Use Discovercard, I've used them to cancel services for
| me. All you have to do is say you tried yourself and then
| they'll close your account, and open a new one. It's not enough
| for them to change your number, as the old number will still
| work. Problem is it will cancel every autopay connected to that
| card, so it's a nuclear option.
| drewg123 wrote:
| What does that do to your credit score? I seem to recall that
| closing and opening cards can both lower you score..
| ModernMech wrote:
| No impact. The thing that would lower your score would be
| if it resets the account lifetime. But every time I've done
| it, the account lifetime has been the same, and there are
| no inquiries on my account, so it seems like Discover has a
| way to do it where it doesn't impact your credit.
| pimterry wrote:
| > I there a law preventing me from canceling recurring
| subscriptions on my credit card?
|
| No, but there may be a contractual agreement between you and a
| provider where you have promised to pay for a service, and
| merely 'not paying' is not sufficient to cancel that. This
| makes far more sense in a non-digital world though, where you
| might pay for expensive services after the fact, rather than in
| advance.
|
| In practice, most digital services will happily cancel
| themselves if you do just block upfront transactions. Many
| modern financial services/neobanks I've used have some kind of
| built-in functionality for this, even paypal has a page where
| you can manage & cancel all current subscriptions directly,
| blocking all future payments:
| https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/autopay/.
|
| > Merely changing the card number wont work because bank
| updates vendors with the new card. I've asked but they they
| have to update vendors, i don't understand why though.
|
| I believe it's because the 'card details' part is effectively a
| fiction for e-commerce. When you subscribe, the payment
| provider uses your card details to get a persistent token,
| which they can use to authorize future payments, and then they
| throw away the card details entirely. They just use the token
| alone to authorize future charges.
|
| That token is somewhat independent of the specific card, by
| design, as unlike card details this means it can't really be
| stolen or leaked (it's only authorized for certain purchases
| from that one vendor) and it means all your normal ongoing
| payments don't break in the common case where you _do_ want
| payments to continue when your card is replaced. Bits About
| Money has some more background on this here:
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/improving-cards-under...
| dangwhy wrote:
| > but there may be a contractual agreement between you and a
| provider
|
| Yes i understand my obligation to the vendor but why is the
| bank enforcing that ?
| willcipriano wrote:
| The capital class has an easier time emphasizing with one
| of it's own over it's customers.
| pimterry wrote:
| That's your bank's (bad) choice I'm afraid - it's certainly
| not a requirement.
|
| Revolut for example will let you see & block all
| subscriptions directly from the app:
| https://www.revolut.com/subscriptions/. In the UK, it's a
| legal requirement that all banks let customers block any
| recurring card payments on request (at least via
| phone/email/letter) with no questions asked, as long as you
| ask at least a day before the next payment:
| https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-
| money/banking/sto...
| whiterace1488 wrote:
| Why not? You don't want your bank to honour eg your
| electricity payments that you authorised? Or do you want
| your bank to cherry pick the transactions (you've already
| authorised) to honour?
| zo1 wrote:
| In some countries, it's legislated and the banks are
| obligated to treat these things a certain way.
| dangwhy wrote:
| Is it the case in US? I remember looking but couldn't
| find anything but i was also not sure what exactly i was
| searching for.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Merely changing the card number wont work because bank
| updates vendors with the new card. I've asked but they they
| have to update vendors, i don't understand why though.
|
| I wish my bank had to do that. It would make my life a whole
| lot easier sometimes.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Merely changing the card number wont work because bank
| updates vendors with the new card. I've asked but they they
| have to update vendors, i don't understand why though.
|
| Do they? My bank recently decided to send me a new CC for no
| clear reason (old one had like two years left to expiry) and
| without my asking for it, and it's been a huge pain in the ass
| because seemingly _nothing_ updated automatically.
| tzs wrote:
| > Merely changing the card number wont work because bank
| updates vendors with the new card. I've asked but they they
| have to update vendors, i don't understand why though.
|
| They update vendors because most people who get a replacement
| card with a new number have way more subscriptions that they
| want to keep going than they have subscriptions that they want
| to drop but for which the procedure for cancelling was too
| complicated to time consumers.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Credit card companies should have special handling for recurring
| billing. You should just be able to tell them "I don't want to
| pay this bill anymore" and put a stop to it without having to get
| a new card and a new number.
| jabbany wrote:
| The problem is that with credit cards, recurring bills aren't
| "special" compared to normal purchases.
|
| This is different from digital-native payment systems like
| PayPal which do have (albeit also riddled with dark patterns) a
| way for you to de-authorize recurring bills from a vendor, at
| which point they need to wait for you to initiate a payment
| instead.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. I can't recall specifics but back in
| the day a trick to get out of these was to report a card lost
| or stolen so you'd get a new number. But some banks now allow
| recurring charges to continue on the new number for
| "convenience" reasons.
|
| Therefore you need to use a throwaway or cancel the card.
|
| I got a card from X1 and am using it solely for my recurring
| services, since you can create unlimited virtual numbers and
| put price caps/age limits on them.
| jabbany wrote:
| That's the issue. Cards generally don't let you control
| billing "by-vendor" or "by-billing-series".
|
| As for the "allow recurring charges to continue on the new
| number", none of my banks allow this (I know because I had
| my internet bill lapse once after an old card expired and
| subsequently got declined. The number didn't even change,
| only the expiration and CVV). I don't know how it works,
| but if I had to guess, banks get to decide whether a charge
| goes through and they could probably let you pick by vendor
| but probably aren't incentivized to do this.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (1) the government could make them or (2) it's a feature
| which could help attract and retain customers. Credit
| cards a a highly competitive business.
|
| Larger picture, we could really use a reformed payment
| system (government demands it) that address many
| inefficiencies of the system so that banks would have
| less wriggle room to claim the high fees they do. If
| there was less fraud and fewer chargebacks the banks
| could charge lower fees, as it is they con't have a lot
| of motive to crack down because they can make us all pay
| for it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They should change the system so it is. They introduced chip
| cards to improve the system and they can introduce this
| change too.
| jabbany wrote:
| They should, but it's the businesses that pay the fees to
| the payment processors and not the consumers, so...
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I'd sign up for a new credit card just for this feature alone.
| benced wrote:
| Note that this does not nullify your legal contract.
| gpm wrote:
| Sure, but your credit card company should be paying people
| who you direct them to, not paying people who claim that you
| owe them money.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The credit company should write it into their contract so
| that it does. The credit card company should send a
| notification that you cut them off as soon as it happens.
| nijave wrote:
| Chase Bank (in the US) will list who has stored your card data
| and whether it's for recurring payments but unfortunately don't
| offer the option to disable/remove them
| dikaio wrote:
| How about the tuff to cancel WSJ?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| These things are insane. I tried to cancel a month-to-month gym
| membership from a small local gym, and they told me
| "cancellations become effective on the 1st of the following
| month" and "require two months advance notice" thereby
| effectively charging me for three additional months after I gave
| notice. Apparently, this was all in the agreement I signed,
| although it was written so unclear, that nobody would even
| suspect this is how they interpret it.
|
| I told them if you don't cancel it effective _right now_ I am
| posting this dishonest predatory practice on every social media
| and review site in town, as well as telling all of my friends I
| met in here what you are doing, and asking them to please quit in
| protest. I 'll also be doing a credit card chargeback, and a
| small claims court case to recover the time it takes me to deal
| with all of this. I will also take action to recover my back
| membership fees, because they repeatedly failed to maintain
| equipment in a usable condition, so I didn't get what I paid for.
| They did concede, and canceled it immediately.
| bob1029 wrote:
| This is why I always prepay for my gym membership up-front and
| do not enter into any agreement. There are a few places that do
| this. Last one I went to, I prepaid for 90 days. I confirmed
| they weren't even storing my payment information because I had
| to provide it again to renew the next quarter.
|
| The best part of this is that when you decide you are done, you
| simply do nothing and its all over. Sure, you will get some
| marketing text spam for a few weeks but that's about it.
| booi wrote:
| There's also the added benefit of being able to take
| advantage of "new memeber" offers
| Waterluvian wrote:
| They prey on people who don't want to rock the boat, don't know
| that they can try to rock the boat, or are just too busy for
| this absolute nonsense.
|
| The leadership of any company that does anything like this
| should be _very consciously aware_ that they 're mediocre
| leftovers of the professional world. Real leaders of real
| companies don't have to be predatory. It is a screaming
| confession of incompetence.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > Real leaders of real companies don't have to be predatory.
| It is a screaming confession of incompetence.
|
| There's a certain toxic element of business culture that
| preaches dominance as a virtuous thing, ether overtly, or
| through dubious terminology/beliefs in ideas like "alpha
| males." It argues that if you aren't dominating someone, then
| they necessarily must be dominating you in this interaction.
|
| It is an extremely reductionistic view that has trickled down
| into certain parts of Weird Internet, too.
| prawn wrote:
| I imagine there are consultants that go around to gyms
| (especially chains) and say "We've got x things that are
| trivial to implement and will guarantee you make $123 more
| per customer on average. Cost for our analysis and
| recommendations is $12,345 with an assurance that you will
| make this back in the first 6 months." And one of the things
| is adding a paragraph to the sign up terms.
|
| It's a bit like the toothpaste consultant story.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Real leaders of real companies don't have to be predatory
|
| I dont think it works as your described. Amazon is plenty
| predatory.
|
| What happens is a company tries to see what it can get away
| with. If they don't get in legal trouble, and customers don't
| abandon them in droves, then other companies start doing the
| same. It becomes industry standard.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| You might be right. Though I think this is a cousin of "I'm
| just following orders." Too many people don't speak up. Is
| there nobody who feels embarrassed that this is what
| they're a part of?
|
| "Hey dad, what did you do at work today?"
|
| "I worked with some lawyers to make an indecipherable
| contract so that we can extract extra money for a service
| someone doesn't want."
|
| I guess the answer is some mix of "make the org structure
| so complex that everyone can feel innocent because no one
| person is pulling the trigger" (I don't buy it, that just
| means incompetent managers) plus a heaping scoop of
| cognitive dissonance.
| daemedeor wrote:
| There's two layers to it.
|
| With a sufficiently large enough org, you can build it in
| discrete enough parts (assuming it's a building something
| based) that only the one who creates the final part is
| the one who knows what the ultimate goal is or the one
| who pulls the trigger. These people are also high enough
| to be inured to any effects of their decision. The second
| layer is even if you can see where it's going and you do
| care, is it worth it to speak up and get fired? I know
| whistleblowers are meant to be protected (speaking only
| for the US) but with at-will employment and certain
| conditions that favor employers, how do you know they
| won't cycle in someone who will do it anyway?
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| My experience is that they somehow delusion themselves
| into thinking they are doing a good thing and providing a
| good service.
| knodi123 wrote:
| such a depressingly common trope.
|
| them: "Sorry, there's nothing I can do, I simply can't help
| you!"
|
| customer: "I'll be really annoying."
|
| them: "I figured out how to help you!"
| themitigating wrote:
| This is exactly how most people operate. Reactive instead of
| proactive.
| phil21 wrote:
| > I'll also be doing a credit card chargeback
|
| Maybe you would since it's a local gym, but if it's a national
| chain credit card companies won't even let you initiate the
| chargeback whatsoever.
|
| I had to go so far as to completely cancel my Amex account to
| get Lifestyle Fitness to stop billing me. American Express
| utterly refused to either chargeback, or deny future billings.
| To the point a new card number issued didn't even fix it. I was
| quite happy to sign a waiver that I'd take all liability.
|
| This was after moving states, calling to cancel, and them
| saying I needed to fly in to cancel in person. Outright scam
| that the banks help enable.
| tibbon wrote:
| I wonder why Amex plays ball with them? They are normally
| really firm about their chargebacks
| dangwhy wrote:
| > Outright scam that the banks help enable.
|
| I think first logical step is to legislate banks from
| enabling this. That should cover most of the problem without
| a wide ranging laws.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| my amex processed my chargeback for gold's gym just fine.
| They said it was a no obligation free trial I could cancel at
| any time and then when I called to cancel before the first
| bill they said no, you have to come once a week for that to
| be true..?
| bombcar wrote:
| A chargeback is distinct from a "never let this company
| charge me again" - the latter some places can't do.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| We should have a github repo for these scamming activities.
| louison11 wrote:
| The opposite happened to my partner here in Portugal. She
| signed up to a gym ($100/month), and they literally forgot to
| start charging the account until 5 months later. Everything
| tends to be so inefficient here. I guess at least in this case
| the inefficiency worked in our favor. Now let's hope they won't
| take 5 months to stop charging when we cancel ;-)
| cloverTiger88 wrote:
| honestly there will be a delay from the government taking
| action on smaller local gyms too so I feel like there should be
| a way to submit the businesses for inspection at least to
| threaten them to improve their policies
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm thinking as an added protection measure we should always
| use a secondary phone line plus a secondary email and fake
| address for these types of subscriptions. You don't know what
| they are going to do.
| bombcar wrote:
| When you have to utilize dark web techniques to get a gym
| membership, maybe it's time to do something else.
| bgun wrote:
| Even though they conceded, you should still follow through on
| all of the above. You aren't hurting a person, it's a
| corporation that will only change when forced financially or
| socially to do so.
| SanderNL wrote:
| A small local gym is not "a corporation".
| pc86 wrote:
| As someone who used to own a couple small local gyms, they
| absolutely are.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The "small local gym" sure was pulling some corporate B.S.
| on their supposed "neighbor".
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Yes, all business entities, with the loose exception of a
| sole-proprietorship, is a corporation under the law.
|
| There are four general types of corporations in the United
| States: a sole proprietorship, a Limited Liability Company
| (LLC), an S-Corporation (S-Corp), and a C-Corporation
| (C-Corp).
|
| People who whine about corporations fail to realize that
| 99% of the businesses they deal with everyday are
| incorporated entities under the law. Your pizza shop,
| tanning salon, dentist, ice cream shop, sandwich truck...
|
| A business entity can be a good or bad actor. Their legal
| status as a corporation does not mean they are
| automatically bad, regardless of the size or public/private
| status. Their actions and policies define them as either
| good or bad.
|
| Words have meaning and they should be used appropriately.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Even if it is an individual, the predatory behavior
| deserves to be financially ruinous. If they cannot run
| their business without scamming people they should never
| have had a business.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Legally it usually is, isn't it? It would be unusual for it
| to be a sole proprietorship.
|
| In any case, predatory/scammy practices are bad no matter
| what the ownership structure is. Being small and local
| doesn't excuse you from abusive behavior.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Except legal entities are literally manifest in order to
| absorb the fallout from situations like these. So don't be
| shy about using existing processes and tools to issue
| corrective action.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| Technically, many small companies are corporations.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Honestly, I was mostly bluffing... I didn't have time to do
| all of that, which is why I also had to quit the gym. I was
| planning to temporarily quit/suspend and then rejoin when I
| was able to, but they lost out on that possibility.
|
| I think these kind of predatory cancellation things must be
| in part a generational thing, and these policies are so old
| they haven't responded to the times. Older people I know seem
| to expect it or be okay with it, but millenials and younger
| will tend to be outraged and refuse to do business with them
| on principle. America Online, Sirius XM, etc. were able to
| retain some customers by making it hard to quit, but I think
| turned away far more without realizing it.
| jiayo wrote:
| Great example. I like broadcast radio. I don't like picking
| and choosing podcasts, I like to just listen to "what's
| on". I really like some of the live music content on
| SiriusXM (celebrity DJs, etc). I'm their ideal customer.
| And they'd have captured $300-400 of my value over the past
| 1.5 years, if they only had self-serve subscription and
| cancellation like Netflix or Disney+. But since they have
| decided to go the NYTimes route of "everyone pays a
| different price, and cancelling is next to impossible",
| they get nothing from me.
| OJFord wrote:
| Just cancel the payment, I wouldn't even bother to talk to them
| if it's clear it'll be difficult. They'll send you a letter or
| something saying if you don't update the payment method your
| access will be cancelled. Ok?
| temporallobe wrote:
| I had a similar situation. During covid, a gym I was attending
| shut down some of their locations because of covid, forcing all
| those members to crowd into fewer locations. Those gyms became
| unusable to me because of equipment hogging and overcrowding (I
| typically counted on one hour to complete a full workout and
| was extremely pressed for time, now it would take me at least
| twice that). I tried to cancel, citing my reasons, but I got a
| similar runaround to you. I also had to submit my cancellation
| in writing and mail it into their corporate office. I refused
| to do any of this, so I called my credit card company and
| complained that they were fraudulently charging me and
| requested that they block further charges. Sure enough, a few
| months later I got letters and emails threatening to cancel my
| membership because there was an issue with my payment method.
| Since the membership was month-to-month, they couldn't hold me
| responsible for anything beyond the month for which I had
| already paid.
|
| I joined a small private gym that works on a monthly prepaid
| membership. Just pay for the month in advance, and you have
| access. Don't pay? No access, no pressure, no worries. Leave
| for months at a time and come come back with no hassle.
| grammers wrote:
| My daughter had dancing lessons in the past (never again!), we
| quit because she did not want to go anymore. They told us we
| can only quit by the end of the quarter with a month's notice -
| it was beginning of March, so too late to quit for end of June.
|
| Then Covid hit, classes got cancelled; we still had to pay
| until end of September. This fine print is totally insane.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Careful, many gyms will send you to collections for failing to
| pay to the terms of the contract.
| bluGill wrote:
| Depending on the law though, you may be able to ignore
| collections, and you can dispute it if they put anything on
| your credit report. Just because something is in a contract
| that doesn't mean it is legal an enforceable. See a lawyer
| for details as this is different in every state and country.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Collections is mostly meaningless if you are otherwise
| financially responsible.
|
| The entire system is quite abusive. You may try experimenting
| with "I don't give a shit", assuming your other ducks are in
| order. I have found it to be therapeutic.
| EastSmith wrote:
| I think you should do what you told them you would do anyway -
| posting on each and every social network.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I personally had to get cc dispute started, because,
| $my_local_gym_that_is_not_a_chain also uses the same scummy
| tactics including, but limited to starting to add more charges.
| They also said, I need to fax my hand written cancellation to
| their HQ. I did, but as you can guess there is a reason I
| opened a dispute with CC.
| kemitche wrote:
| I had a gym membership that I wanted to cancel because I had
| moved, and their closest location was no longer convenient.
|
| First, they tried to tell me I had to go back to the location I
| had originally signed up at in order to cancel. No phone
| cancellation options or anything. I guess if I had moved more
| than a few miles away, I'd be out of luck.
|
| After some fighting, the closer location let me fill out a
| paper cancellation form. The cancellation form had a very clear
| section that showed "paid in full" and "$0 remaining due."
| Despite this, I got a bill a month later for my "final month."
| I refused to pay it, obviously. They harassed me, calling me
| daily. Only once I posted a poor review online did someone
| finally decide the $50 (or whatever it was) wasn't worth it.
|
| They gym itself was a fine gym, but these billing practices are
| scummy scummy scummy. I refuse to sign up for any other gym
| (except maybe a local rec center) until there's more
| legislation to protect my consumer rights. The cancellation
| nonsense isn't worth my time.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm guessing you probably won't win a chargeback unless you can
| show that you sent them a letter telling them to cancel (and
| because of this, they actually will cancel if you send them a
| letter).
|
| I think another aspect of this problem is that credit cards
| don't just let you mark a transaction as "don't allow any more
| of these." Of course that probably wouldn't solve the problem.
| The gyms would probably just continue charging you and
| eventually send you to debt collection.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > credit cards don't just let you mark a transaction as
| "don't allow any more of these."
|
| Ironically, they _do_ almost all support this, you can mark
| any merchant as non-future-billable and prevent all future
| charges from a given merchant. Unfortunately, you have to
| call in and ask a phone rep to do it for you, most cards don
| 't let you set this yourself.
| dreen wrote:
| Sometimes people you talk to have powers to change the outcome
| in your favour, sometimes all you need to do is ask.
|
| I had an experience like that last year. I was cancelling my
| broadband in UK with Virgin, and got a PS280 disconnection fee.
| The person who informed me said I will have to pay it in my
| final bill. Then over a month later I got a call from someone
| who's task was to see if I need a new connection where I was
| going. I said no, I was leaving the country. He asked if there
| was anything else he could do for me. I said, "you could cancel
| that huge penalty fee I got.." And he was just like "Sure, no
| problem, done."
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| A "disconnection fee"? This has to be the most absurd charge
| I have ever heard of.
|
| What does "disconnecting" a customer involve, anyway? I
| recall having to return equipment or face a penalty to cover
| costs (high, but still somewhat understandable), but I have
| never had to pay to get off a broadband contract.
| ipqk wrote:
| Often if you sign a yearly contract that includes a
| discounted monthly rate, if you cancel it before the end of
| the year, you have to pay the remainder of the contract
| remaining.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's common where there's a significant installation fee
| (perhaps installing a fibre thing on your house) which was
| waived in return for a 12 or 24 month contract.
| amalcon wrote:
| That's just the beginning. My favorite is the concept of
| the pre-payment penalty: a lender can (in some
| jurisdictions) charge you a fee if you attempt to pay down
| the principal on your loan sooner than you are required to.
| sclarisse wrote:
| It's somewhat reasonable. If you make a loan, and it's
| paid early, you stop making the expected profit and there
| is no guarantee you can reinvest the funds at the same
| rate. Therefore you will either disallow prepayment,
| charge for it, or price the risk of prepayment into your
| interest rate. If you can't do any of those ... you will
| invest elsewhere until the rates go up, for there is lots
| of competition for capital.
|
| But borrowers should know what they're getting into, and
| have options.
| [deleted]
| pmalynin wrote:
| Canada has this for mortgages no?
| heffer wrote:
| Yes, other countries too, like Germany.
|
| It's supposed to compensate banks for lost profit from
| you not paying interest for the entire term. Equally, a
| bank can't cancel your mortgage before the term ends for
| the sole reason that it would be able to charge higher
| rates for a new mortgage.
| dcomp wrote:
| Most likely an early disconnection fee during the minimum
| term. Nearly everyone has a minimum term with virgin media
| as they only apply promotional discounts if you have a
| 12,18 or 24 month minimum term and the price shoots up as
| soon as you roll over onto the monthly.
|
| [1] https://www.virginmedia.com/legal/fibre-optic-services-
| terms...
| bombcar wrote:
| This is it exactly; it's kind of understandable given how
| they want you subscribe for a long time, and most have an
| exception that a high-enough ranking person can mark
| (even if it's just "military exception" misused).
| dreen wrote:
| Yep, something like that. I would have had to know if and
| when Im moving a year in advance, which is ridiculous. I
| mean it's not like I read the fine print on that, so all
| the better that they had no problem cancelling the fee.
| OJFord wrote:
| I haven't heard of (or it called) a 'disconnection' fee,
| but 'exit' fees are common. There's no pretence with that
| that there's _work_ to do in terminating your contract, it
| 's just, oh, you signed up for 24m, you want to leave in
| month 18, ok no problem but we'll sting you for PSX because
| the alternative is probably you have actually technically
| committed legally to 24 months so in a way although it
| doesn't feel like it we're doing you a favour. ... It's
| pretty shit I think for tenants in particular where the
| available service periods don't necessarily line up with
| the time they actually spend in the property.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| Revoking ACH authorization is an effective tactic. The CFPB
| dictates that if you give 3 days notice, companies are
| obligated to honor this. If they charge you afterwards, your
| bank will be more than happy to reverse the charge. To be
| clear, this doesn't void the contract you have with them,
| you're simply revoking their privilege to charge your payment
| method. If they want your money they'd have to take you to
| small claims. Here is a sample email which I've used many times
| to great effect:
|
| May this email serve as your notice to revoke the ACH/Bank
| Access/Debit Card authorizations of both the below primary bank
| account and debit card, from [company] effective today, [date]
|
| [Bank Name] Checking Account x** Savings Account x** and Debit
| Card x**
|
| Additionally, I am revoking withdrawal authorizations from any
| other accounts associated with my personal information, listed
| below
|
| name: DOB: phone #: email:
|
| I am also revoking your further access to my banking accounts
| and have already removed your authorization with the Bank
| directly.
|
| THIS REVOCATION APPLIES FOR THE NEXT PAYMENT DUE DATE AND ALL
| FUTURE DUE DATES.
|
| Kindly, I ask that your response to this email shall be
| confirmation of receipt and you agree it is at least 3 business
| days prior to any scheduled repayments or membership fee
| deduction.
|
| Note that in accordance with 12 CFR Part 1005.10(c) (Regulation
| E) you MUST HALT PAYMENT.
|
| FAIL TO COMPLY and I will submit a report to the Bureau of
| Consumer Financial Protection. Additionally, you will be
| responsible for any fees, including overdraft fees, incurred as
| a result of your failure to halt payment
| nijave wrote:
| Some companies report this type of thing to consumer trust
| worthiness services (similar to credit bureaus). Other
| companies use these services to gage customer risk before
| initiating new service so you can effectively get yourself
| blacklisted.
|
| Not saying this answer isn't the way to do it, but it's not
| without additional collateral damage in some cases.
|
| Even if it doesn't impact other companies, the company in
| question may refuse to do business with you in the future
| (which may or may not be of concern).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > If they want your money they'd have to take you to small
| claims.
|
| No, they'll just send it to collections, and now your credit
| is dinged for seven years because unless they violated their
| contract with you, you're still liable for the charges.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've let a few things go to collections over the years.
| Comcast disputes, etc. Never really saw any impact from
| this. Total charge-offs probably around $1000. Not once
| have I had an issue getting financing or mortgage.
|
| If you are intending to pay cash for everything, you don't
| even need a credit score. No one cares about who you are or
| what you did when you walk in the door with a bag of cash
| in each hand.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Ive never heard of gyms doing that. Is it real? They are
| not a lender and are not lending money to you, so I don't
| see how they can affect your credit report. There's no
| credit involved.
|
| Anyone actually have a credit report with an unpaid gym
| membership in the report?
| TylerE wrote:
| There is credit involved, because the contracts are
| worded such that's, say, a _12 month_ contract paid in
| monthly installments. The credit is the outstanding
| balance vs. if you had paid for the full year in cash up
| front.
|
| Your credit report is answering one question: How good
| are you about paying for things you've agreed to pay for.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Worked on collections software for XX years. I definitely
| knew of a few clients that collected on behalf of gyms.
|
| You'd be surprised what gets sent to collections. I
| recall one client that collected on behalf of a fried
| chicken restaurant.
| bluGill wrote:
| Seems unlikely - collections only want to work with bills
| large enough that their odds of payment make it worth
| talking to you. Collectors never gives full price, they
| pay the person you owe some smaller amount, and when you
| pay they collect the difference.
|
| There are levels of collections though the first is for
| things where they expect you will pay, you just need a
| payment plan (some medical labs don't do billing in
| house, they always sell it to collections), so
| collections will buy the bill for the pull price minus
| $50 (or some minimal amount in that range): since most
| people are going to pay collections just needs to setup
| the details for which $50 is a fair price. At the other
| end there are bills that they know you are not going to
| pay, collections will buy the a multi-thousand dollar
| bill for $1, and see if they can get any form of payment
| at all out of you.
|
| Anyway, the bottom line is for a gym you are never going
| to owe enough that it is worthwhile for collections to
| touch it.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't think they can do this- generally credit is tracked
| by social security number (in the USA). If you don't
| provide them with one, they will not be able to report you
| to a credit bureau.
| [deleted]
| preommr wrote:
| And people actually reply to that?
|
| What do you do if they tell you no one got this email?
| pc86 wrote:
| You mean what do you do if someone knowingly lies in order
| to continue fraudulently charging you for something? Sounds
| like a crime to me.
|
| But more realistically, at that point you've already filed
| a claim with the CFPB so who cares what they say? It will
| get settled one way or the other.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Unfortunately, "ACH authorization" is a collective delusion,
| as there is no technical mechanism in the protocol to prevent
| ACH pulls.
|
| Better to use something like a Privacy card in the first
| place so you can revoke it on your own terms.
| tyingq wrote:
| >there is no technical mechanism in the protocol to prevent
| ACH pull
|
| Nothing in the protocol, but many individual banks have
| their own in-house ways of failing the pull.
| yuliyp wrote:
| It's not a delusion. From a legal perspective, the bank
| treats actions which are authorized by you and actions
| which are not differently. If you enter into an agreement
| that says you're authorizing entity X to charge you based
| on a contract and they charge you, the bank is likely to
| side with them, and tell you to go sue them if you want
| your money bank. If the bank knows that you did not
| authorize the ACH transfer, they're supposed to reverse the
| transaction.
| benced wrote:
| Bits have color, no matter what us software engineers
| think: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
| [deleted]
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| The mechanism is when the bank authorizes or denys the ACH
| pull.
| foobarian wrote:
| Are there privacy cards that work? I find that once a
| recurring charge is established and tied to an account it's
| very hard to cancel, surviving expired cards or even
| canceled card numbers.
| astura wrote:
| You can revoke a subscription in PayPal.
| pc86 wrote:
| Privacy generates a valid CC # with protections you set
| up (one-time use, monthly maxes, per-charge maxes, etc).
| fouc wrote:
| I think they're referring to privacy.com specifically,
| which should give fully cancellable virtual cards. Or so
| I heard.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| citi, capital one, and others call it "virtual cards".
| They allow you to set charge limits and exp date. I
| always choose the current month + 1 for expiration and
| for charge limit, $1 more than the anticipated charge
| flutas wrote:
| Or just get you dinged for $200+ of fraud and they will
| refuse to do anything about it.
| kube-system wrote:
| It is common for gyms to only accept ACH
| HWR_14 wrote:
| There doesn't have to be a technical mechanism. There is a
| legal one.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Mine had a clause if I moved 30 miles away I could cancel. And I
| moved to the country, so I canceled. They wanted a letter from my
| preacher to prove it, my power bill wasnt enough for them.
| ipqk wrote:
| I assume the side effect of this happening is that everyone's
| rates will go up.
| asah wrote:
| is there a link to provide public commentary?
| benguild wrote:
| Can't wait for all of the deceptive corporate marketing against
| this!
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I hope this extends to every business. I wanted to cancel an
| arts&craft subscription package for my son (he lost interest) and
| had to call during business hours and be on hold forever to get
| through, which I never managed to do because ... guess what ...
| I'm f*ing working during business hours. Literally months went by
| before my wife, bless her soul, finally got it done (and was on
| hold for an hour and then had to haggle with them for another
| hour). Never again.
| asah wrote:
| thank god we're back to having regulators doing their jobs.
|
| I'm not sure whether to thank biden or anyone-but-trump or
| something else - but whoever is responsible, *THANK YOU*.
| [deleted]
| sylware wrote:
| yeah, and don't forget those "timeshares" abominations (cf latest
| last week tonigh).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| In Canada (and probably elsewhere) it's very common for a cell
| phone web portal to give you a TON of power to make changes, add
| features, make upgrades. All automatically. But any sort of
| downgrade or cancellation magically requires you to call a
| retentions department where, surprise, the employees are
| incentivized to hang up on you or screw things up to meet their
| quotas so they can feed their families.
| oidar wrote:
| > so they can feed their families.
|
| You are free. But you are only free to sell your labor.
| brutusurp wrote:
| How about those sneaky add-on subscriptions in Amazon Prime (via
| Prime Video and Music)? Lots of people complaining that there was
| auto-enroll happening.
| readme wrote:
| Once when I was without money, I had to cancel a gym
| subscription. Inside the gym, the manager informed me of how I
| couldn't cancel because of my contract. This was a mom&pop level
| gym, too. It's also worth mentioning that he parked his Porsche
| cayenne on the sidewalk.
|
| He did let me cancel, on the condition that I acknowledged it was
| because a he is a good christian man.
|
| I'm not making this up.
| Fnoord wrote:
| It should be rather simple to deal with: if the cancel method is
| more difficult than the method to subscribe, then the customer
| does not have to pay any service due if they do not want to. Or
| with the addendum: its up to the company who deliver the service
| to prove that the customer has used their service; otherwise, the
| other party would need to prove.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Can they add T-mobile to the list too? You can't unsubscribe via
| their website, have to call and argue with a customer retention
| assho... er rep.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| I get the sentiment, but we should blame the system. The reps
| are just trying to make a living for a low pay and don't have
| much power to change things.
| expertentipp wrote:
| I know it's about US but this screams to me "Germany". They are
| the top subscription predators on our continent. Two years
| duration by default, automatic renewal, cancellation 3 months in
| advance by post or fax. Stay away from subscriptions when dealing
| with entity incorporated in Germany.
| kunwon1 wrote:
| Tangentially related - I signed up for DSL through Deutsch
| Telekom while living on a US military base in Germany, in 2002.
| I signed up in person at a DT location, and due to the language
| barrier, I did not get the 'unlimited' plan that I asked for.
| Instead, I got a 10 hour per month plan, with hourly overage
| charges once I passed 10 hours. I did not discover this mistake
| until I returned from a deployment several months later, during
| which I left my DSL connected. The bill from DT was over 10,000
| euros. I never paid, and I had to use creative methods to get
| online from then onwards. It was annoying.
| skrause wrote:
| It seems like you haven't followed Germany's laws for a while.
| It's now mandatory that you can cancel the say way you signed
| up, so if you allow people to sign up online you _have_ to
| allow them to cancel online. All contracts can also be canceled
| monthly now after the agreed minimum duration.
|
| Source: https://www-baden--wuerttemberg-
| de.translate.goog/de/service...
| cloverich wrote:
| Can they loop in New York Times subscription? You have to _call_
| them during business hours to cancel. When I was subscribed, I
| prompted myself to cancel when we had to change CC numbers
| (random fraud), so I finally called NYT to cancel. "You have to
| pay out first" -- no problem, I'll pay last bill right now and
| cancel. "Once you pay out, you have to wait two days before you
| can cancel it". WTF? Outright shady.
| kemitche wrote:
| I've cancelled my NYT sub online, a year or two back. I keep
| seeing anecdotes like yours pop-up, though. I don't know if
| they have different policies based on billing address or
| something.
|
| I remember distinctly because when I _first_ signed up, it
| wasn't an option. A year or two later they emailed something
| about "Look how cool we are, you can cancel with just a few
| clicks now!" as if it was something to be proud of, rather than
| just them finally using consumer-friendly practices.
| astura wrote:
| IIRC If your billing address is in California you have the
| option of cancelling online.
| com2kid wrote:
| I'm in WA state, just checked, there is a big "cancel
| online" button, quite noticable.
| Spoom wrote:
| Are you in California? They are forced by law to make it
| easier to cancel in California, but they don't extend that
| anywhere else AFAIK.
| noelsusman wrote:
| I'm in NC and I'm seeing an option to cancel online.
| yankeetango wrote:
| it's not because of CPRA
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Supposedly it is doable if you sign up in California/EU and a
| few other states that have regulations on this.
| louison11 wrote:
| I feel ya, but there is worse: in France to cancel most
| services (mobile plan, bank accounts...) you need to send a
| registered mail. Suffice it to say, living abroad, there is a
| bunch of services I literally cannot cancel because of that. To
| close a mobile account, I recently had to cancel the credit
| card, then ignore emails from the debt collection agency they
| hired, for them to finally close my account.
| justeleblanc wrote:
| > Suffice it to say, living abroad, there is a bunch of
| services I literally cannot cancel because of that.
|
| Nonsense. Send your registered mail online with la poste. It
| has the same legal value. I'm not saying that requiring
| registered mail isn't shitty, but letting this go to debt
| collection is making things difficult for yourself with no
| good reason.
|
| And by the way, a law has been enacted that will force
| business to offer online cancellation starting June 1st:
| https://www.tomsguide.fr/fin-des-lettres-recommandees-
| pour-r...
| louison11 wrote:
| I'm glad they passed the law! Thank you, had no idea you
| could use La Poste to send registered mails online. As a
| busy parent, schemes like this definitely prey on people's
| lack of time to never cancel.
| nijave wrote:
| Then you get hit with 30+- minute hold times and random
| "accidental" hangups/disconnects
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Sometimes changing your billing address to somewhere in
| California can solve this. CA has a law saying that if you can
| sign up for a service online, you need to be able to cancel it
| online immediately, and be able to do so through either a
| "prominently located direct link or button" on the website or a
| preformatted email that the consumer can send to terminate the
| subscription without taking any further steps.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Tangential to this - no small part of the reason why I like
| subscriptions in the iPhone App Store is because Apple doesn't
| let billers fuck around like this. There's one place to see
| everything, and you can cancel anything in a couple clicks. It's
| part of why I'd probably never use an alternative app store.
| ljf wrote:
| True, but they still have the '8 day free trial then PS59.99 a
| year billing' for some apps. My wife installed a design app she
| wanted to try out, forgot to cancel and was stung last week.
| For such a high purchase price that feels to me like there
| should be addition verification step before charging.
|
| Especially since the app was terrible and the reviews were full
| of people who were similarly charged and unhappy.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Apple allow you to press cancel immediately after sign up and
| the account will remain valid until the 8th day.
| latexr wrote:
| Anecdotally, I had both an Apple Arcade and an Apple TV
| trial a few years back. I tried cancelling prematurely to
| avoid surprise charges and the interface told me in no
| uncertain terms that if I cancelled before the trial
| expired, I'd lose access immediately.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think there's also a 14 day grace period after the charge
| to cancel and refund the subscription.
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084
| nickthegreek wrote:
| What is bonkers about that? Apple let 2 consenting parties
| enter into an agreement and provides a single interface to
| cancel that agreement whenever you want from their pocket
| without talking to anyone. I struggle to think of a better
| setup.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > What is bonkers about that?
|
| That people forget. That's part of the market of trial and
| subs in general. Its why gyms flourish. People subscribe
| but don't go.
|
| They (iOS) have the data that you use or not use the app.
| They could notify you with a warning that your renewal is
| due. Or allow you the option to set the reminder in your
| calendar or bank app.
| Mavvie wrote:
| I think the Google Play store also sends you a reminder
| before a free trial converts to a paid plan, which is
| better.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| That is a great idea, but I could not find any
| information/screenshots about Google Play doing this.
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and
| villainy than "free trial" subscription-based apps on the
| App Store. It is, overwhelmingly, a tool used for scams.
|
| The pattern-
|
| -hide promised functionality behind subscription.
|
| -offer "free trial", often with very short trial periods.
|
| -convert that into a big dollar subscriptions.
|
| They know that most of the people who they ensnare are
| probably going through a multitude of tools trying to find
| a solution for some problem (and the fact the tool in
| question often fails to do what it promised is a feature
| because it encourages the user to move on quicker), and
| some subset will fail to cancel the "trial" before it
| becomes a pay service.
|
| Consenting adults, sure, and personally I have never fallen
| prey to this, looking at the in-app purchases and just
| refusing to be baited, but it's enough of a problem that it
| should embarrass Apple a bit.
| burnished wrote:
| One in which no one is surprised when a free trial rolls
| over to a paid subscription - perhaps that shouldnt even be
| allowable, given that its mostly done to make money off of
| people not paying attention.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| If they are surprised, then the user was not paying
| attention multiple times.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/11/app-store-
| subscription-...
| burnished wrote:
| Let me spell it out more clearly - surprised that the
| transaction occurred because they forgot to cancel it.
|
| Do you not see this as plainly duplicitous behavior? I
| think the intention to deceive is far more cogent than
| any warnings.
| johnfn wrote:
| Completely true. One way this has saved me in the past: Audible
| has an incredibly shady practice where the only way to get
| books is that their subscription service gives you tokens (1 a
| month) to redeem books with. However, if you cancel your
| subscription, your tokens are lost. But, if you subscribe to
| Audible through Apple, then because of Apple the tokens are
| retained, even if you cancel.
| galkk wrote:
| Wow, this is good to know, thanks.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I tend to agree, with a caveat. If you have a family Apple
| account and one of your family members has a subscription, you
| do not have visibility even though it is your credit card
| getting billed. So for a complete picture you have to log into
| each of your kids' devices to see if they have an active
| subscription.
|
| It seems to be done for privacy reasons, but I don't agree with
| how they handle it. I should be able to see all charges going
| to my Apple account credit card no matter which sub-account
| originated them.
| Riseed wrote:
| In my online credit card account, I can expand each purchase
| and "show digital receipt" to get information about what
| app/subscription it was for. For all App Store purchases,
| Apple will also email the account that made the purchase
| (even if it's me) to let them know the purchase details were
| requested. That seems reasonable to me--the payer knows what
| the payment was for, and the purchaser knows the info was
| accessed.
| chewmieser wrote:
| You can actually see this information on
| reportaproblem.apple.com now. Has recent charges by each
| family member and tells you if a subscription will renew.
| cloverich wrote:
| Also they force subscriptions to make the actual price you pay
| the most prominent. Common dark pattern is to put "8.99" a
| month, then under it in tiny text "Billed immediately as
| 107.88, renews annually". To pass Apple's approval, they would
| have to write "107.88" in large text, as that is what you are
| actually going to be charged.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| 1Password got me with this. I was getting it for free because
| my work used it, but when I left, write/autofill was
| suspended. I had planned to move to a different service as I
| dislike 1P8, but I was in a hurry to just get things working
| again, and $2.99 a month is cheap enough to get me by for a
| few months. I enter my CC details. Get charged $39.47 (10%
| for GST). I go back and look at the site and realise the
| monthly price is billed annually. I don't recall being quoted
| this price when I entered my CC details, perhaps it was
| displayed in a way that was easy to miss for people in a
| hurry. In any case there's a dark pattern in their checkout
| flow. It's disingenuous to to advertise $2.99 and bill
| $39.47. Imagine a cafe that advertises the price of their
| coffee as 40c then in smallprint "times 12 made in a single
| payment". The advertised price should match the billed price
| for all products and services.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > advertises the price of their coffee as 40c then in
| smallprint "times 12 made in a single payment".
|
| lol, exactly like the mail-order CD club I signed up for
| back in high school.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| Cancelling subscriptions on apple devices is a dream, I love it
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| True, but it makes auditing your bank account slightly more
| difficult.
|
| Charges come through as "Apple" (or some variation) without
| indicating what the purchase was for. They also roll charges
| together so they're not hitting your bank account multiple
| times in a short period.
|
| It's not a lot of work to go into your apple account and
| compare the invoices to your bank account to see what the
| charge was _actually_ for, but it was a pain in the rear when
| our credit card was stolen and used by the thief to Nickle
| and Dime us for 5-10 dollars here and there over the course
| of 6 months.
| post-it wrote:
| They also send out the receipt emails a few days later than
| the actual charge, so when they charge you you can't
| immediately go check what the charge was for. I've found
| that spreadsheeting everything at the end of the month is
| the easiest way to do it.
| teeray wrote:
| I model it as another account in my books. Each
| subscription has a recurring debit and it gets credited
| when money actually moves from my bank. It's a bit annoying
| if I buy a one-off thing since I have to enter it by hand,
| but it's infrequent enough that it's not horrible.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| One of my friend maintains a fitness app that uses in-app
| subscription when subscribing through the app or subscription
| through the website with a credit card.
|
| The apple subscription generate a lot more support requests
| because a lot of customers are confused on how to stop the in
| app subscription. Unfortunately, the company can't stop the
| subscription, it can only be done by the customer through the
| app store, so instead of just being able to cancel it for
| confused customers who request it, they have to guide them to
| cancel it on their side which is a lot of work.
| jkestner wrote:
| Your friend should look into deep-linking to the
| subscriptions screen in the App Store from within their
| app. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15530794/link-to-
| app-man...
| roflyear wrote:
| It's just as easy on Android
| mrbombastic wrote:
| I agree but interestingly had a conversation with my family and
| they all had the opposite impression. They were complaining
| about mysterious recurring apple charges on their bank cards
| that they had no idea what they were or how to find out. I
| pointed out that you could see all your subscriptions under
| your Apple ID on your phone and they were all amazed. Long
| winded way of saying, if anyone from apple is reading this,
| maybe make this more discoverable and if possible disambiguate
| the charges on the bill (maybe put the originating app name for
| the subscription in the charge?).
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I wish Apple would just combine all my subscriptions into a
| single payment.
| robg wrote:
| 1000% - just wish they'd drop their fees so that more companies
| would see the benefits versus rolling their own.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _"Click to subscribe, call to cancel" is illegal, FTC says_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250063 - Nov 2021 (860
| comments)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I want this for _all_ subscriptions, not just gym & cable. I had
| to waste 15 minutes of my life a few weeks ago convincing The
| Economist to actually cancel my subscription. They were deceitful
| and tried various ways of phrasing their counter offers hoping
| I'd slip up and say something other than "No, just cancel."
|
| If I can sign up on the web site, I should be able to cancel with
| just as many clicks.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| > If I can sign up on the web site, I should be able to cancel
| with just as many clicks.
|
| Fun fact! Websites actually have to support this for their
| California subscribers. If a website is refusing to let you do
| so, it's not that they haven't implemented it, it's just that
| they want to screw you. As a corollary, a lot of websites get a
| lot easier to cancel if you change your billing address to
| somewhere in CA.
| loaph wrote:
| You should read the article! You would get this in the case
| you'd described as well
| nashashmi wrote:
| > Khan said it likely wouldn't apply to non-commercial services
| like recurring political donations, which have also left some
| donors feeling scammed and tricked.
|
| Khan knows how to stay clear of politically intense scenarios.
| She also has not gone against Amazon which was the entire thesis
| of her paper. Assigning Khan into this position forced Amazon to
| cozy up to politicians, and keep funding them in some shape or
| form. This was a net gain for both parties. This was a net gain
| for politics.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| hit NY Times too please.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Similar to privacy.com, which you can use to give predators a
| credit card that you can cancel:
|
| You can open another checking account at your bank easily,
| online. I use that for my book expenses and (cough) royalties.
| Close the account after notifying the gym in writing that you're
| canceling, and _voila_ they can 't charge you anymore.
|
| (that's if the gym draws from your bank account and not by
| charging a credit card. You could also tell the bank to reject
| charges from the gym, if that works.)
| weezin wrote:
| I had a gym that I signed up online for, I tried to cancel one
| day in person and they said I had to fill out a questionnaire and
| mail it to cancel. Fuck that company.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Misguided priority IMO. Silicon Valley's actions are much more
| egregiously and obviously criminal than even the worst gym.
|
| As tough to cancel as some gym memberships are, they at least
| usually spell out their precise cancellation procedure as a part
| of a contract and have multiple ways to get in touch with some
| human to deal with a situation. And there's always some path to
| cancel the service (even if it's annoying by design and has you
| jumping through multiple hoops). And with these gyms, as a last
| resort you at least have a chargeback as a fairly realistic
| option with no consequences to your life.
|
| What I'd like to see investigated in this vein is Silicon Valley
| companies who provide no human customer service. Your only
| recourse in the event of a flawed transaction is either suck it
| up and take the loss, or do a chargeback and risk having your
| entire digital life destroyed as they retaliate against you by
| locking up your account. What these companies do to people daily
| is criminal on a level that the worst gym can't even fathom.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Why not both?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| On the flip side it's actual useful to have no human customer
| service in at least domain - mobile service. For example, it's
| much more difficult to sim swap a Google Voice number than a
| T-mobile number, in part b/c it removes social engineering of
| customer service as an attack vector.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The FTC can do more than one thing at a time.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| [flagged]
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > And there's always some path to cancel the service (even if
| it's annoying by design and has you jumping through multiple
| hoops).
|
| Why do they even get to dictate how you cancel? You should just
| be able to send them a letter, an email, go in and inform them,
| etc. What purpose does it serve for society for companies
| themselves to be able decide to ignore your cancellation
| requests unless they follow a specific procedure?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Is this the hill you really want to fight for in life? If a
| gym offers an email address, real life support, and/or a
| phone number to cancel, are you going to be intensely morally
| outraged that you can't send a physical letter to cancel as
| well?
|
| Doesn't it seem reasonable for businesses to (for the most
| part) pick and choose how they conduct business and deal with
| their customers, so long as they're not committing fraud or
| other crimes?
|
| Isn't the point of the law to protect people from crimes? Is
| the point of the law to dictate the tiny minute details of
| everyday life?
| janj wrote:
| This is great. Maybe one day we'll see action on timeshares. I
| got one a long time ago that was impossible to get rid of. Fully
| paid for, Westgate told me it had a lot of value so I told them
| to just take it back, but they would't of course. I ended up just
| stopping all payments, went through a few years of harassing
| calls, and then done, nothing more. Still haunts me though, I'm
| afraid it could come back up with outstanding balance owed.
| Volundr wrote:
| I think it can. More scary though, when you die unless they
| take active action to refuse it, your kids or whoever your
| inheritance goes to gets it by default. With all the financial
| obligations.
| havblue wrote:
| I guess if you inherit a timeshare you can just insist that
| it goes to a sibling. Or, even better, a step-sibling...
| loaph wrote:
| You can also tell probate court that you refuse the
| inheritance. You can't be forced to inherit something
| Volundr wrote:
| You can, but there is specific paperwork you have to file
| and you have something like 90 days to do it. And then
| the next person in line has to, and the next.
|
| Unless everyone is on the ball and actively refuses it,
| someone gets stuck with it.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| Why can't you create a corporation, have the corp buy it from
| you for $1, and then go bankrupt in a month or three?
| janj wrote:
| Could this work? It could potentially help a very large
| number of people get out of these scams. Seems so obvious
| now that you point it out I imagine someone must've thought
| of this before.
| avidiax wrote:
| I imagine the timeshare company has right of first
| refusal for transfers, or will be adding that to their
| contracts as soon as this is a thing.
|
| Now, is it legal? Maybe, maybe not. But they will pretend
| it is until you take them to court, and they'll quickly
| settle if you agree not to tell anyone else.
| janj wrote:
| Or maybe find people at end-of-life with no heirs that
| would buy it for a $1 in exchange for a donation to their
| charity of choice.
| toast0 wrote:
| You'd need to be careful about how you setup and run the
| corporation such that the veil can't be pierced. If a court
| got involved, I think they'd be nonplussed if the
| corporation was organized, acquired the property, and filed
| for bankruptcy within a couple of months.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yeah, John Oliver just did a Last Week Tonight on Timeshares.
| He goes over that in the video. Also there are scam companies
| that exist that promise to take your money to help you exit
| your timeshare agreement, then disappear. So you get double-
| scammed. And somehow this is technically legal?
|
| Link to the Last Week Tonight video:
| https://youtu.be/Bd2bbHoVQSM
| janj wrote:
| I was contacted by those people and others, both
| threatening and claiming to want to help. I had a suspicion
| they were all affiliated with the parent scam company
| Westgate and so never considered dealing with any of them.
| Maybe they weren't related to Westgate but good to keep in
| mind anyone in this space is not to be trusted.
| deckard1 wrote:
| My dad got a Westgate timeshare back in the '90s. I was there
| when he was conned. And even at the young age I _knew_ the
| salesman was the sleeziest guy on Earth. He drove us around in
| their limo to impress us, showing us their property. The way he
| talked just felt slimy.
|
| My mom recently told me they tried to book their week at the
| timeshare and were told they would have to pay $1,000 to do so.
| Because it's a premium week or whatever bullshit. It's
| absolutely insane this predatory company is allowed to
| continue. I'm going to be forced to deal with this fucking
| thing when he dies. That's the truly insane thing. It's treated
| as property, but it's not. It's a fucking _subscription_ that
| you can 't cancel. Ever. You own nothing.
| avidiax wrote:
| By the way, depending on your state, you may have to
| officially file to _not_ receive the timeshare and its
| obligations in your father 's estate. And whoever is next in
| line to inherit has to do the same, on down the line until
| the state, I suppose.
|
| Would love to see Westgate tell the state of Massachusetts
| that they are the legal owners of this timeshare, and owe for
| annual repairs.
| temporallobe wrote:
| I am extremely disappointed that US laws in almost all cases,
| seem to side with businesses, or at the very least turn a blind
| eye to very obvious consumer abuses. Actually, I'll take that
| further: it seems like our system is _designed_ to allow consumer
| abuse. I am shocked that our government is actually standing up
| for us, but I am being cautiously optimistic because lobbyists
| have a way of shutting that shit down real quick. Look at how
| ferociously corporate America has been fighting against proposed
| right-to-repair legislation. Yay for New York, but we need
| federal involvement on that one too, please and thank you.
| Clubber wrote:
| I subscribed to the NYT a few years ago and it took a phone call
| and a retention pitch to finally unsubscribe. I vowed to never
| subscribe again as long as this was in place.
| rainytuesday wrote:
| "Xperience Fitness" made me show up in person and sign a
| document. This needed to then be faxed to HQ. Of course, the
| gym didn't have a fax machine. So had to find a fax machine,
| send off a fax and wonder if anybody is going to look at it on
| the other end. This was in 2015 or so, not 1986.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I just interacted with the WSJ several days ago. It was
| extremely annoying -- and probably painful to the poor customer
| service rep who has to take these calls.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I don't read any of these regularly, but the Apple One
| subscription includes Apple News+ or whatever it's called and
| that lets you read NYT, WSJ, LA Times, and quite a few
| others...only works in the Apple News app though. That's the
| annoying part -- you don't technically have a subscription
| with them, so you can't comment (if that matters to you).
| It's more comparable to RSS feed access, albeit with no ads
| and full fidelity articles.
|
| Honestly, I prefer it to their own apps, and the price +
| cancellation policy is WAY better.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I subscribe to the economist, and they automatically renew at a
| rate of $199 per year, I called to cancel and they drop it to
| $80 per year. Would save everyone the time if they started with
| $80
| [deleted]
| glitcher wrote:
| My previous Internet provider Cox tried this tactic on me
| when I canceled. My reply to them was ok, so you're admitting
| to overcharging me all along. I'll agree to stay with you if
| you also provide a refund for all previous months I was
| overcharged. They finally agreed to close my account at that
| point :)
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| FWIW Comcast does this too. Just call them every 11 months
| and make them give you a better price. It's dumb as heck and
| I want to live long enough to see them burn to the ground,
| but it's one call I will make as it lets us give the only ISP
| option at our address in Silicon Valley that can actually
| give us gigabit download speeds (and capped 40mbit upload
| with a 1.2tb data cap) less money.
|
| If the rep you talk to won't do it, hang up and call again.
| kube-system wrote:
| My favorite thing to do with ISPs is to schedule
| cancellation at 1PM and then schedule installation as a new
| customer at 2PM.
|
| "Can I get the new customer rate"
|
| "No that is only for new customers"
|
| "Okay I'd like to cancel"
|
| "Great, anything else I can do for you today"
|
| "Sure, I'd like to sign up for new service"
| jdeibele wrote:
| My wife subscribed to The Economist but we weren't reading
| it. I tried changing my address to California, which has
| worked for some subscriptions because of California's
| consumer-friendly subscription cancellation law. That didn't
| work.
|
| I tried doing the chat to cancel. I said multiple times that
| we wanted to cancel and the person (presumably a person
| following a script, although they certainly seemed robotic)
| just kept ignoring that. Eventually I said I'm cancelling, if
| you charge us, I'll charge it back and took a screenshot of
| that.
|
| When they charged me, I charged it back. No need for the
| screenshot, which was mildly disappointing because this was
| one time where I felt I had proof that I tried to cancel.
|
| We'll never subscribe to The Economist again. If you make it
| this difficult to leave, better not to start.
| nanidin wrote:
| During the chat, they kept trying to make conversation, to
| ask questions, and to retain me. I just copy/pasted "I'm
| not here for chit-chat, please cancel the subscription and
| confirm once complete" each time they tried to engage me.
|
| Immediately after my subscription expired they started
| emailing me 1/2 off offers. The whole experience put a bad
| taste in my mouth and I won't be back.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| Apparently, if you live in California, you have an easy online
| unsubscribe process.
| yankeetango wrote:
| NYT problem was due in part that we had _so_ many legacy
| systems related to subscriptions; there was a _big_ push
| internally to solve this.
|
| When "online cancel" finally rolled out we were all so excited
| there was a party with a sheetcake that had the cancellation
| landing page printed on it. We'd rather have users trust us
| than use dark patterns to "trap" them into a subscription.
| sysadmindotfail wrote:
| I've read this many times on HN, Reddit, etc. Last week I just
| used a VPN. Took 30 seconds to click-click unsubscribe.
|
| PS - During the process I was offered like 60% off if I kept
| the subscription.
| brewdad wrote:
| NYTimes changed their policy sometime during the Covid years.
| I canceled back in 2017-18 and can confirm that it took me
| talking over the phone rep repeatedly saying nothing but
| "Cancel." for them to stop the retention spiel and finally
| close my account.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| That would be wonderful. I had the unpleasant experience of
| joining a gym then shortly moving several hours away. Cancelling
| the gym subscription was the last thing on my mind at the time.
|
| I legit had to drive back to this gym in New Jersey to sign a
| form to "cancel" my membership. They would not accept a phone
| call, email, not even a signed letter stating my intent to
| cancel, even after I explained to them I had moved hours away.
| Ridiculous.
| kumarski wrote:
| This is going to be amazing if you can time it.
| 52358 wrote:
| I still have a membership to Planet Fitness from 5 years ago that
| charges to my account every month
|
| while I had no problem signing up online, you can only cancel
| your membership in person at your "home" location, or by sending
| them a certified mail letter formally request cancellation (which
| I have tried and failed apparently because I never heard back)
|
| I now live on the other side of the country, so it feels
| ridiculous to spend money on a flight ticket just to cancel a gym
| membership
|
| worse, Planet Fitness requires you provide bank account/routing
| number for payment, so there is no way to cancel payment unless I
| switch bank accounts
| pjc50 wrote:
| > certified mail letter formally request cancellation (which I
| have tried and failed apparently because I never heard back)
|
| Try small claims court in _your_ jurisdiction. You can then
| present this in evidence.
| teeray wrote:
| It won't look good either if they charge you after they've
| been served about that legal action. That's probably the most
| formal written notification!
| kube-system wrote:
| The contract requires you to send the letter to cancel, but it
| doesn't prohibit you from calling to discuss the matter. You
| have already cancelled in compliance with the terms of the
| contract, you don't have to hop on a flight to do anything.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "unless I switch bank accounts"
|
| And if you do, they will keep your membership active (for
| years) before reporting debt to the credit agencies.
| dangwhy wrote:
| no because they don't require ssn to signup.
| shanebellone wrote:
| I've had it happen.
| astura wrote:
| It's a common misconception.
|
| I don't know why people think that something magically
| can't effect your credit report without knowledge of your
| SSN. Name+address+DOB is enough to identify you.
|
| Chase does not require a Social Security number when you
| add an authorized user so people are always absolutely
| shocked their "authorized user account" appears on their
| credit report.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Yup, I had a ton of delinquent accounts on my credit
| reports that were a similar (but not exact) name and
| similar (but not exact) SSN and similar (but not exact)
| birthdate as mine. Seems they'll just find the closest
| match and slap it on.
|
| I learned this as I was applying for student loans at the
| end of highschool and kept getting denied. It's the
| reason I ended up having to take a bunch of crazy high
| interest rates from Sallie Mae/now Navient to go to
| college as planned.
|
| Of course the credit agencies reporting all these false
| debts suffer 0 consequences for it, only the consumer
| does. I'm still pretty mad about it 15 years later if
| that isn't coming through :)
| noelsusman wrote:
| https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-stop-autom...
| SkipperCat wrote:
| Contact your bank and explain what's going on. They may have a
| way to block Planet Fitness' auto charge. Your bank should be
| sympathetic and they control outflows.
|
| After a while, PF will drop their auto-charge because they
| won't want to deal with the rejected payment requests.
|
| I hope I'm correct about this and I hope it helps!
| booi wrote:
| They absolutely have a way to block auto-charges.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| I forget which gym but I sent them an email cancellation ("in
| writing") and they told me I had to come in. So I cancelled the
| card. They had some bullshit agreement with my bank where the
| subscription followed to my new card. So I cancelled the _bank
| account_.
|
| Bank accounts don't need to be some terminal relationship. If
| they don't treat you right, leave.
|
| edit: It was Workout Anytime
| dangwhy wrote:
| Ballys? whatever happened to that shithole.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Workout Anytime
| baron816 wrote:
| Timeshares too I hope.
| ksec wrote:
| You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after
| they have tried everything else. - Winston Churchill
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I don't think America is the outlier here, I've had some
| maddening experiences with French companies when I lived there.
| You basically have to send them formal recorded letters
| threatening them with legal action just to cancel basic things,
| and even then they call your bluff and just ignore you 50% of
| the time.
| gpm wrote:
| I wonder if part of the solution here might be to put firm limits
| on the period over which subscriptions can auto-renew. That would
| limit the upside to these practices. Is there any real societal
| benefit to subscriptions lasting years without contact between
| the company and the user?
|
| It should be simple to make it the law that people must
| affirmatively re-subscribe every 12 months, contracts saying
| otherwise are invalid, and charging someone for an expired
| subscription entitles them to twice the money back + $1000 (to
| make it worthwhile to fight illegal charges).
| dakial1 wrote:
| In my third world country (Brazil) we actually have strict
| regulations on cancellations (among other consumer focused laws):
|
| - Companies need to choose at least one channel to work 24 hours
| a day seven days a week. - The consumer can only be transferred
| from an attendant once. - If the call drops, the attendant must
| return the call and complete the service, without the customer
| having to repeat everything again. - Phone calls with human
| service must be available for at least eight hours a day.
|
| I'm a particular fan of the "mirror" concept, where
| cancelations/returna should work in the same channels and be as
| easy as the purchases/subscriptions.
|
| Consumer laws here are surprisingly good in my opinion and I am
| also surprised on how little lobby power consumers have in
| developed countries, to be treated like they are, with all the
| black hat tactics companies throw at them.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Yeah we follow a mirror concept, which is cancelling should be
| at least as easy as signing up, and ideally easier. We don't
| have 1 click cancellations because we don't have 1 click sign
| ups. It requires an hour onboarding to use our service so they
| have to send us an email or a message in our chat bat to
| trigger a cancellation so we can sure they understand all the
| consequences.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| I've been in Brazil recently and I was positively surprised
| with the great consumer protection laws.
|
| One law I really liked was the "right to regret", meaning you
| can cancel a wide array of contracts within 7 days. For
| example, when booking a hotel online, no matter the hotel's
| cancellation policies, you can cancel a reservation within 7
| days of making it.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are many similar laws in the US, but many of them are
| fragmented either in different state jurisdictions or for
| different types of transactions.
|
| They're called things like: "cooling-off law", "buyers
| remorse law", or "right to cancel"
|
| Some examples: https://cal.lawsoup.org/legal-
| guides/consumer/contract-cance...
| monksy wrote:
| The funny thing about this, when there is a public conversation
| about their practices or legislative process to stop it,
| companies (i.e apple, uhg, john deer, Facebook, etc) will cry
| floods of tears, claim they'll go out of business due, people
| will lose their job, to the extra cost of compliance. They'd
| rather keep disadvantaged customers rather than compete and
| deliver value.
|
| All of this while reporting record profits, trying to pr spin
| this, and throwing more money than lost with compliance at
| lobbyists who will lie and financially influence to the
| legislators.
| macawfish wrote:
| Please do, they're predatory for people with mental health
| struggles.
| jaynate wrote:
| It's even worse for some companies. Planet Fitness makes you go
| in to a physical location to cancel. Complete bullshit.
| kube-system wrote:
| Usually people sign up at gyms that are convenient for them to
| physically go to, since that's the entire point. But you can
| cancel PF via certified mail.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| As a gym, Planet Fitness is nonsense. As a moneymaking scheme
| it's top-notch.
| donatj wrote:
| I literally canceled my gym membership by cancelling my credit
| card. It was easier to update a handful of services on autopay
| than go through their daedric rituals of submitting cancellations
| by fax 90 days in advance.
|
| Years later my wife and I signed up for the same gym. She was
| later able to cancel by talking to someone in charge and crying
| about it.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| your credit (FICO) score might take a hit when you close a
| card, especially an old one
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I did not realize this until I cancelled a card that I'd had
| for 15-20 years, much longer than any others, because I'd
| switched to another card from the same company (AMEX) and
| wasn't using that old card anymore. My score went down quite
| a bit, and I was so upset at Amex for not telling me when I
| was trying to cancel that old card. I would have just kept it
| and not used it.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| kraquepype wrote:
| If you close a particularly young card, it can also bring
| your score up if the others are older. Last I looked it used
| an average for the age of all your credit lines.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Virtual cards FTW. Too bad they're not that common here in
| Canada.
| kazinator wrote:
| Nothing is tough to cancel; just nuke the credit card and tell
| them to pound sand.
|
| Never, ever, allow pre-authorized payments out of a bank account.
| At most, from a credit card. Use a throwaway credit card number
| if you have that available.
|
| Never share your banking information other than credit card
| numbers with any vendor.
|
| Whenever signing up to pre-authorized payments is optional, make
| sure it's easy to revoke before getting into it.
|
| I only do such a thing for my cell plan, which is a monthly pre-
| paid thing. I can go in there and revoke it at any time. If you
| have it set on automatic, you get some benefits, like more
| gigabytes.
|
| If post-dated cheques are an option, that's not a bad way to go.
| Young people should learn how to write checks. (I'm using both
| spellings cheque and check here on purpose.)
|
| I pay condo management fees via post-dated cheques. I write them
| around half a year in advance or so. They cannot cash a cheque
| before the date written on it. You can ask for unused cheques
| back: they are physical tokens, using copies of which would be
| fraud.
|
| Tip: if you're under forty, ask a baby boomer in your family for
| a run down on cheque writing and cashing.
| mikestew wrote:
| _They cannot cash a cheque before the date written on it._
|
| Man, I hate to be [citation needed] Guy, but I don't think
| that's true. A quick search only gives me this:
|
| https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/postdated-check
|
| I'd doubly-check that before relying on it.
| kazinator wrote:
| I'm in Canada. (You know, that country that didn't have a
| banking crisis in 2008.)
|
| Here, I'm reasonably confident that banks will not cash a
| cheque before the date on it, other than if it slips through
| by clerical error.
|
| My government recommends this:
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-
| agency/services/...
|
| They don't say it can never happen, but if a post-dated
| cheque is prematurely cashed, it's a problem, and you can
| complain about it to have the payment reversed. You should
| complain before the date on the cheque (after which it is
| more or less moot).
| toast0 wrote:
| You can't really rely on it, but if you ask your bank nicely,
| they might enforce it and wait to process a postdated check.
| My credit union says there's a $15 charge for a postdated
| order per check, so I'd rather save my money and provide the
| check later.
|
| It's kind of like stale dated checks; the bank doesn't have
| to pay a check that's more than six months old; but you can't
| rely on it, the bank can pay that check and if they do, it
| will come out of your account; the bank has no duty to you to
| not pay stale dated checks.
| babyshake wrote:
| I don't understand the notion that if you cancel a credit card, a
| company can continue to bill you afterwards, unless they are
| billing you for a service you have already incurred prior to
| being billed (which is pretty rare - most times you pay before
| the next month/year of service). Enterprise contracts may add
| some more complexity to this, but for standard consumer
| subscriptions I can't comprehend why a company is allowed to bill
| you for a service once you stop paying for it.
| SMAAART wrote:
| The principles should be that the same methodology used to signup
| should be used to cancel.
|
| Online signup -> online cancel.
| marcell wrote:
| I hate uncancellable subscruptions too, but under what authority
| can the FTC just ban these subscriptions? I had a similar issue
| with their ban on non-competes.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The authority granted to them by their charter granted them by
| Congress.
|
| "(2) The Commission is hereby empowered and directed to prevent
| persons, partnerships, or corporations, except banks, savings
| and loan institutions described in section 57a(f)(3) of this
| title, Federal credit unions described in section 57a(f)(4) of
| this title, common carriers subject to the Acts to regulate
| commerce, air carriers and foreign air carriers subject to part
| A of subtitle VII of title 49, and persons, partnerships, or
| corporations insofar as they are subject to the Packers and
| Stockyards Act, 1921, as amended [7 U.S.C. 181 et seq.], except
| as provided in section 406(b) of said Act [7 U.S.C. 227(b)],
| from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting
| commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or
| affecting commerce."
|
| Congress has the authority because the Constitution grants them
| the power to regulate interstate commerce.
|
| The Constitution is the root of all authority in the US.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Lol the EU has done this years ago. Silent renewals for a year
| are forbidden now and so are cancellations that must be hand-
| delivered on gold paper on the third Thursday of the month
| between 9:00 and 9:05 kinda deals. Cancellations must be
| available the in all the same manners a sign-up is.
|
| The US should really catch up to banning this consumer-hostility.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I really like the idea of having a hard limit of 'clicks' to get
| something done/undone. If it's 4 clicks to subscribe, it should
| be no more than 4 to unsubscribe.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I think a better approach is to just require business to accept
| certain standard ways of being informed of cancellation. I.e.
| they must accept an email, a phone call, a letter, etc. If they
| then want to have an even simpler cancellation flow, that is
| fine, but they must accept all of these basic methods. This is
| how it works in Sweden.
| voytec wrote:
| Binance next, please[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34682469
| dwighttk wrote:
| What about NYTimes and the only cancel via phone?
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Fortunately I gave them my PayPal because they randomly signed
| me back up for $4.50 a month after I cancelled. I opened a
| dispute with PP and they set it straight.
| five82 wrote:
| They're mentioned in the article. You can cancel by chat now
| though. I take advantage of that to renegotiate yearly.
| Zetice wrote:
| Fucking ChargePoint straight up _ignores_ account cancellation
| requests, and honestly at this point my next idea is to reach out
| through LinkedIn contacts to their legal team to see wtf I 'm not
| understanding here...
| __derek__ wrote:
| Not sure what state you live in, but file a complaint with your
| AG's consumer affairs office.
| ejb999 wrote:
| had a related - but not quite the same issue - with a vendor,
| and was getting _zero_ help from the company trying to get a
| refund for a few thousand $$ for a defective product - got
| nowhere for weeks - finally resorted to finding the officers of
| the company and repeatedly calling them and their spouses at
| home, on the weekends in order to get satisfaction - very early
| in the morning and very late at night.
|
| Hated to resort to that, but have no regrets about pissing off
| the CEO, CFO and any one else I called at home - and this was
| not a small company.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Who could blame you? If the situation was reversed, and you
| got a working product, then refused to pay for it, they'd
| have no problem sending a debt collector to annoy you as
| often and inconveniently as legally possible.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > Hated to resort to that, but have no regrets about pissing
| off the CEO, CFO and any one else I called at home
|
| Personally, the only people they should be pissed off at is
| their employees and themselves. Had they not tried screwing
| you out of thousands of dollars, you wouldn't have been
| forced to escalate; I would get a pretty perverse pleasure
| from knowing I made their day worse in a situation like this.
| ztetranz wrote:
| This is why I pay most bills with a push rather than a pull.
| jabbany wrote:
| > The proposed 'click to cancel' rule would require companies to
| let you cancel a membership in as many steps as it takes to sign
| up.
|
| This is actually a very smart and simple rule and I love the
| reciprocity of it---if it takes a click to sign up it must take
| no more than a click to cancel; if you want to require months of
| advanced notice to cancel, then you also have to wait just as
| many months before charging when someone signs up. Tit-for-tat.
|
| Seems like fair game.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Yep. I've never understood why this wasn't the default, and
| making it so after self-regulation failed feels like the right
| level of regulatory involvement to me.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I would support making fixed term contracts for gyms in
| particular (plus possibly cable) just plain illegal. There is
| absolutely no reason why such places can't charge month-to-month.
| None. Even "initiation fees" should be illegal. At least cable
| requires a box.
|
| I read a story recently about Planet Fitness (IIRC). They
| realized that certain equipment was popular (eg free weights,
| racks) so they could remove that equipment and people stopped
| showing up but a good portion of them kept their membership. So
| the number of members per location is extraordinarily high. This
| is incredibly profitable.
|
| I, for one, just hate all this adversarial bullshit you have to
| deal with on a daily basis. I don't want to fight to cancel
| something. It's one reason I don't pay for some publications that
| do good reporting because canceling those is notoriously
| difficult. So instead they get nothing for me but of course
| they've done the math and the people who don't cancel make them
| more money than people who don't join because of this.
|
| Another thing: automatic price rises. Cable is the worst for
| this. You can go through a dance of cancelling to get a lower
| rate. If you don't your $60 FIOS bill will turn into $150 in a
| few years without intervention.
|
| I'm so tired of the constantly nickle and diming.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This situation was actually a lot _worse_ back in the late-90s,
| when the consumer internet first got rolling. I recall
| conversations with my local ISP and my credit card company that
| were just bonkers.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is so wild to read stories about gym subscriptions from here
| (Czechia), where gyms mostly work on "prepay principle" (buy 10
| entries or 3 months in advance etc.), or you use a "Multisport
| Card" that will let you enter one sports facility a day almost
| anywhere in the country.
|
| I have been frequenting gyms since 1998 and I don't think I have
| ever heard of anyone actually signing a contract with a gym and
| letting them charge his card. That is just not a part of the
| local gym culture, most gyms probably don't even have the
| necessary logistical structure in place to handle such contracts
| with repeated charges.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| One of the most nefarious instances of this I have seen is a
| "online mental health counseling" startup that was charging a
| non-trivial monthly recurring fee, even though it did not have
| any available appointments with a professional in the coming
| month. I had to call and haggle for half an hour on behalf of
| someone who signed up for the app, and only after putting in
| their credit card information was shown that there are no
| appointments.
|
| Shame on the "startup", and absolutely disgusting that we as a
| civilized country allow scams targeted towards a vulnerable
| population to happen quite legally.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Wouldn't happen to be Cerebral, would it?
|
| I was in a similar situation and extremely irate at first when
| they said refunds were not an option, but fortunately it
| appeared to be an issue with their automated scheduling system.
| Once talking to an agent they were able to link me to a
| provider that same day.
|
| On the whole, it's actually been a pretty good experience over
| the last year. Trying to get similar counseling/medication
| locally was an absolute nightmare at the time... with Cerebral,
| everything happened super fast and the counseling I got seemed
| on point (ADHD/insomnia). They quickly pause/resume for when
| I'm out of the country traveling, no unapproved charges so far.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I hope you aren't taking stimulants during the day and then
| benzos at night to sleep -- that can be a disaster long term.
| nijave wrote:
| Had a similar problem with Thrive Market. Non refundable
| subscription unless you chose yearly instead of monthly then
| the very specific item I wanted was out of stock (among tons of
| other things).
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Why don't you name them?
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| If I remembered their name I would 100% name and shame them
| publicly. Unfortunately it was a while ago during the peak of
| the pandemic, and I don't have any email records since I
| myself didn't sign up for them.
| [deleted]
| rodgerd wrote:
| Chance are your mental health startup is also flogging your
| data for bucks as well.
| knodi123 wrote:
| uh, HIPAA???
| omginternets wrote:
| >Shame on the "startup", and absolutely disgusting that we as a
| civilized country allow scams targeted towards a vulnerable
| population to happen quite legally.
|
| The truly dreadful part is that this is precisely the kind of
| thing that people with depression, ADHD, and a host of other
| psychological conditions are unable to deal with.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's the whole point of those kinds of mental health
| startups. Get the credit card information of people who don't
| have the energy or organisation skills to ensure that they
| cancel it, and charge them according to the contract. It's
| basically like the gym thing, except instead of hoping you
| are rich enough or lazy enough not to cancel, they hope you
| are ill enough not to cancel.
| dboreham wrote:
| Something wrong here: government agency taking action on behalf
| of citizens, against corporate overlords??
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| So- I'll pose the question from the other side because I've been
| in the position before- do you have any moral obligation when you
| know for a fact that a paying customer is not using the service
| you're providing?
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I've often thought this with digital streaming services - a law
| that said if you charge for the Month of January and it shows
| at the end of the January that not a single stream even
| started, then you can't charge for the next month. Not holding
| my breath.
| young_hopper wrote:
| My gut would say it's not really your responsibility to prompt
| the cancellation as long as you're not actively trying to make
| it hard to do. That is, in this situation you'd be accountable
| but not responsible.
|
| On the flip side, as a consumer, doing something like
| automatically pausing a subscription if it's not actively being
| used would make me think highly of your company
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I think very highly of fubo precisely because they warn me to
| cancel my sports add-on packages once the season for the
| things I regularly watch has passed.
| lax4ever wrote:
| To preface, nothing against the poster since I know they were
| just copying the article title.
|
| This article headline is a bit misleading, as the FTC is not
| looking to ban the subscriptions themselves. Rather, they would
| like to implement a rule that requires servicers that provide
| subscriptions to make it as easy to cancel as it is to enroll,
| rather than the current jumbling mess that is trying to cancel
| something like a gym, Amazon, news, cable, or other subscription
| where servicers try to maintain retention by putting in a
| ridiculous number of hoops to jump through to cancel.
| halJordan wrote:
| It's not a misleading title, it would be verboten to offer
| certain subscriptions. Which subscriptions? The tough to cancel
| ones. There are subscriptions offered today which would not be
| allowed to be offered.
| lax4ever wrote:
| Servicers could change the cancellation process without ever
| changing the subscription itself. The issue at hand is not
| the subscription, but the process with which one would cancel
| it.
| f272529 wrote:
| "Tough to cancel subscriptions" and "not tough to cancel
| subscriptions" are both subsets of "all subscriptions".
|
| If the FTC has their way and the rules are effective,
| "tough to cancel subscriptions" no longer exist, and any
| subscriptions that previously belonged to that set now
| exist in the "not tough to cancel subscriptions" set.
|
| Effectively banning them.
|
| That's how I interpret the title.
| lax4ever wrote:
| Which I believe actually helps to illustrate my point.
| The issue the FTC appears to have (and this comes from
| more than just this article) is with the cancellation
| process and not the subscription itself. The subscription
| is far more than just the cancellation process, just as a
| hard to find book is more than just its ease of
| acquisition. The enrollment (and if the FTC has their
| way, cancellation) processes of subscriptions are such a
| minor attribute to the subscriptions themselves that
| defining them by that attribute alone in an article
| headline seems like poor authorship.
|
| Is there some measure of semantics involved here? Quite
| probably, but then I say that in the world of
| professional writing and journalism I would expect a
| higher level of aptitude and proficiency. Being able to
| write headlines or article titles that remove as much of
| the semantic fuel as possible is, I believe, not an
| unreasonable request (or even requirement) for such
| professions, unless that is what the author is trying to
| achieve.
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| Go gettem.
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