Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

niemanlab.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 554 posts

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

#271

Post by nostrademons »

craftyguy wrote: post #248
cm2187 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone tried "none of your business" as an answer to why your are leaving?

Seriously. And if that doesn't work, try "I hate you"

My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, with some success.

Though nowadays, in the era of pervasive financing and Wall Street investors that care more about revenue than cash flow, I wonder if that would even work. Maybe "I'm being investigated by the Feds and all of my financial relationships are considered suspect, and so would prefer to have as few of them as possible"?

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

#272

Post by mehrdadn »

elm-tree- wrote: post #253
mehrdadn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, because I thought everything I said was about the legality aspect, at least until other people suddenly started bringing ethics and morality into the discussion. Am I wrong about this?

Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding.

> Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding.

Huh... that's actually very much the opposite of how I would interpret that sentence, but okay.

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

#273

Post by burkaman »

dgudkov wrote: post #267
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.

How about just sending a notification of cancellation by snail mail?

Finding a stamp and a post office box is significantly more annoying than two emails.

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

#274

Post by cj0011001 »

There's this company that offers internet service on flights also claims to offer secure hotspots, (it's a gimmick) around cities all over the US they're based in Los Angeles: Boingo Wireless. The only way to cancel the service is to call in, that's their whole scheme. When you call in they treat that as if you were doing something extremely complicated and that takes time. One of the customer service representative told me that he would have to contact the engineering department to cancel my account...Like that would be necessary. I was getting impatient, on the phone for about 40 minutes. This new law will be the end of them.

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

#275

Post by JackCh »

rrauenza wrote: post #254
JackCh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what we teach small children, lying is not immoral. Lying is amoral . The circumstance and motivation of a lie determine whether that particular lie is moral or immoral. There are times when it's moral to lie, other times when it's immoral to lie, and still other times when morality hardly has anything to do with it at all (such as the above scenario.) We tell small children that it's immoral to lie because w…

Reminds me of Kant’s Axe ... Is it ever morally acceptable to tell a lie? Kant thought not. His example of the would-be murderer explains his reasoning. Read by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton. https://youtu.be/x_uUEaeqFog

Thankfully most people have more sense than Kant. In truth, I doubt Kant himself would be so hardline if he were actually put to the test in such a scenario. Talk is cheap, would he actually be so depraved in practice? I can't rule it out, but I doubt it.

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

#276

Post by qaq »

slededit wrote: post #232
khc wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so the solution to having to call a merchant to cancel a subscription is to call your card issuer to cancel a subscription?

If your vindictive this is a great way to increase their card processing costs.

You seriously believe this will increase processing costs to say Verizon or Comcast?

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

#277

Post by carapace »

slezakattack wrote: post #63
kelukelugames wrote: post #26

I wish this applied to banks too. I tried to pay off my mortgage this week and I had to go to a physical bank and handle them a check for seven hundred dollars. So stupid.

I had one of those 80-10-10 mortgages and was trying to pay off the 2nd mortgage. Had to go in person, give them a check, and then had to HANDWRITE A LETTER to be sent to corporate (I think?) saying that "yes, I really would like to close out the account that held this mortgage". No template and a "sign here" or anything. They just gave me printer paper and a "just write something" attitude. It was a very odd experie…

Reminds me of this arcane tidbit: you can write your own checks...

> you can write a “negotiable instrument,” bank talk for a valid check, on just about anything. According to the Uniform Commercial Code, the body of law that governs these things, all you have to include are the name of the payee, the dollar amount, the name of your bank, your signature, the date, and some suitable words of conveyance, such as “pay to the order of.” You don’t need the account number or the bank ID number you find on preprinted checks.

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/562/can-you-write-...

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

#278

Post by toomanybeersies »

nostrademons wrote: post #271
craftyguy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. And if that doesn't work, try "I hate you"

My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, with some success. Though nowadays, in the era of pervasive financing and Wall Street investors that care more about revenue than cash flow, I wonder if that would even work. Maybe "I'm being investigated by the Feds and all of my financial relationships are considered suspect, and so would prefer to have as few of them as possible"?

> I'm unemployed and have no money

I've had people still try to sign me up when I've said this. I had just moved country, had no job, and was literally living off my credit card. I ended up getting stopped by some people on the street trying to sign me up for some charity, because I'm too nice to tell them to fuck off.

Even after I explained that I literally arrived in the country a week ago, and that I literally have no money, they were still trying to get me to sign up for a recurring donation. Sure, I understand that they get commission, so they want to make a sale. But not only is it extremely unethical to try and get unemployed people to sign up, it's also trying to extract blood from a stone.

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

#279

Post by aphextron »

Honestly, the best way to handle these things is to forget even bothering with the company and file a charge-back with your bank or Visa/Mastercard. You have every right to call up your bank and deny a charge for a service you're not using, and didn't ask to renew.

Plus it's guaranteed to get the charge removed immediately, and you'll be hurting the company by adding to their charge-back tally, increasing payment processing costs for them and potentially completely cutting them off.

Post reply on HN