California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online • Hacker News Board

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#111

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

Frontier is like the easiest company to cancel with. I called and asked to cancel and they didn't even bother with retentions.

Meanwhile stamps.com and SiriusXM were by far the two most difficult with Terminix and ADT coming in a close third.

I usually just tell them I'll issue a chargeback if they bill again and that USUALLY works. It's why now if I can I'll use paypal so I can just easily cancel the payment plan. For stamps I had to have chase stop all payments to them which seemed to eventually work.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#112

Post by scrollaway » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

julianj wrote: post #103

mistermann wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are experiencing higher than normal call volume. Every. Single. Day. I would like to give executives the option to stop this or go to prison for this never ending nonsense. I think most would choose to stop.

Executives should go to prison for not staffing call centers properly?

I think what the parent poster meant is that there is a criminal element to wasting your customers' time on purpose in order to discourage them from, for example, cancelling a service.

There are laws around this in other areas, it's not unprecedented.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#113

Post by btrettel » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

There have been a few times where I didn't sign up for a service because I anticipated cancelling would be a pain. The fact that trials often autorenew makes me reluctant to even do a trial. I wonder how much business is lost this way vs. how much is gained from making cancelling hard.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#114

Post by dave84 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #89

rdiddly wrote: post #18

OK now here's an excellent use for Google Duplex. Using a robot to fool a person: annoying. Using a robot to fool someone annoying: fine!

Google has since changed this. Google Duplex will not "fool" humans any more. They announce that they're the "Google Assistant" calling on behalf of a customer. I think unfortunately what will happen is that people will just hang up on the google assistant because it's not a real human. It'll be kind of like what happened to the "glassholes". Maybe not as mean though.

Refusing customers and irritating Google probably isn’t in their best interest.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#115

Post by ddoolin » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #67

My trick to avoid the long retentions go around is to tell them I'm leaving their service area. Why are you looking to cancel your phone plan? Leaving the country. They know they can't win me over and so they don't even try.

I started doing this after I came back from living in Korea a couple of times. The only one who ever tried was, I think, Sprint or another carrier, who offered to put a hold on my account but they could only do that for some short number of months, so of course my next reply was "I'm not planning on coming back."

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#116

Post by buckminster » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

julianj wrote: post #103

mistermann wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are experiencing higher than normal call volume. Every. Single. Day. I would like to give executives the option to stop this or go to prison for this never ending nonsense. I think most would choose to stop.

Executives should go to prison for not staffing call centers properly?

No. For lying to their customers.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#117

Post by NullPrefix » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #106

NullPrefix wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more people do this, the scammers may stop supporting this workflow and force deaf users to get their friends to call.

Wouldn't that actually be illegal? Deafness is a medical condition and I doubt "get a friend to do it" would be a suitable accomodation.

>Our workplace is illiterate, thus we cannot process your emails.

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#118

Post by gordon_freeman » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #12

For places that require a phone call I came up with a trick to cancel via email. If they reply back via email and say I have to call them, I tell them I'm deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

but would not that make you feel a little guilty as you are lying to the person just to cancel a subscription?

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#119

Post by inetknght » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

gordon_freeman wrote: post #118

harryh wrote: post #12

For places that require a phone call I came up with a trick to cancel via email. If they reply back via email and say I have to call them, I tell them I'm deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

but would not that make you feel a little guilty as you are lying to the person just to cancel a subscription?

Why should we feel guilty when companies like this do their best to hide important things from the people they're billing?

Re: California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

#120

Post by manfredo » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

gordon_freeman wrote: post #118

harryh wrote: post #12

For places that require a phone call I came up with a trick to cancel via email. If they reply back via email and say I have to call them, I tell them I'm deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

but would not that make you feel a little guilty as you are lying to the person just to cancel a subscription?

I don't. The only reason why this deception is necessary is because of the company's scummy cancellation policies. Heck, one could argue that it actually reduces labor costs because emails are usually less time consuming than phone calls.