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WSJ is notorious for "you have to call us to cancel". However I bypassed this by subscribing with amazon where i can cancel subscription online.
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.
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At some point, when it happens day in, day out, day or night, doesn't it become the new normal call volume?
I just assume that they put this in regardless to get some amount of people to think "Oh well I better send an email instead...". Emails are cheaper to deal with. And in emails they put in "We're experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests and we encourage you to look at the FAQ instead". Every. Damn. Time.
To be fair, you wouldn't believe the number of people that will send a request to support before looking at the FAQ when the item (and resolution) is in the FAQ.
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This isn't just lying though, it sounds closer to fraud to me (lying go receive services you otherwise wouldn't). It also sounds a bit like parking in the disabled section. And I don't know if there are legal ramifications for using services that are for the disabled but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
So I didn't downarrow you, but I think I can explain why you have been. You are conflating morality with law. Law can be amoral, and illegal actions can be moral.
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Relatedly, I've been flying a lot more than usual in the last couple of months. Every single flight, the boarding announcements start with something along the lines of "this plane is going to be more full than usual, so we're going to need to check some of your carry-ons". Well guess what, United? Maybe if you didn't cram passengers into the fuselage like sardines in a goddamn tin can, you'd have enough room for ever…
I've learned that storage is rarely the issue - they do this to reduce boarding time to stay on schedule. I often board later in the line and there is still plenty of space. Really they should just ban carry-on rollers for non-elderly, able people, they're the ones people spend ages trying to jam in.
I would agree, but they charge for checked bags.
Another consumer first law I would like to see is that if a service detects you haven’t used it in the previous period, they refund your subscription fee. There is so much wasted money on zombie subscriptions that people forget about.
And on a more personal level, I don't understand why people can't just manage their subscriptions better. Dark patterns that make canceling subscriptions difficult are one thing, but if a service makes it easy for you to cancel, and you just haven't done it, that's on you.
That said, if a service wants to refund subscribers for unused service periods, that would be a great feature. Or, as a middle ground, send an email saying, "You haven't logged in in X months; do you want to cancel your subscription?" X could even be configurable, and cancellation could be automatic, e.g. cancel the subscription if the user hasn't logged in for 3 months.
Simply telling the merchant I will do a chargeback has worked every time for me (provided it's a credit card charge).
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I just assume that they put this in regardless to get some amount of people to think "Oh well I better send an email instead...". Emails are cheaper to deal with. And in emails they put in "We're experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests and we encourage you to look at the FAQ instead". Every. Damn. Time.
> And in emails they put in "We're experiencing a higher-than-usual volume of support requests and we encourage you to look at the FAQ instead". To be fair, you wouldn't believe the number of people that will send a request to support before looking at the FAQ when the item (and resolution) is in the FAQ.
I honestly believe almost nobody reads FAQs, and the presence of an item in an FAQ is a symptom of a UX failure somewhere down the line.
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?
If you saw that a soda machine always dispensed a Coke when you pressed the Dr. Pepper button would you feel bad pressing that button to get the Coke you wanted?
Another consumer first law I would like to see is that if a service detects you haven’t used it in the previous period, they refund your subscription fee. There is so much wasted money on zombie subscriptions that people forget about.
Maybe next time he'll listen when I tell him to only buy 1 month at a time, especially on something he's not sure he'll enjoy.