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California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

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

#281

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

aphextron wrote: post #279

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 pro…

Ultimately the solution is to let the customer manage their subscriptions via their payment service provider.

PayPal does this.

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

#283

Post by adrr »

jedberg wrote: post #194

One of the philosophies at Netflix was that it should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up, because you should respect your customers enough not to annoy them into keeping your service. Honestly, it always seemed to me that it was actually easier to cancel than the sign up.

Any company that generates value for a customer doesn't have retention issues. I used to run software engineering at two subscription commerce companies. One company allowed users to cancel and pause/skip online via webpage, chat, email and even social channels. The other forced customers to call up support to cancel. The first company sold for 10 figures, the other company just did a down round and layoffs. Screwing over customers is good for short-term gain, but eventually, you run out of new customers and you burned the bridge for re-aquiring former customers.

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

#284

Post by slededit »

qaq wrote: post #276
slededit wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are not the only ones using this dark pattern, and it does get escalated to more expensive employees even at Comcast.

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

#285

Post by Paul-ish »

brandonbloom wrote: post #188
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've done this several times with Comcast, but it failed with Time Warner when I moved out of NYC. They demand to know why you are canceling and have some sort of way to extract money out of you for every scenario, including moving out of their service area. In that case, they transfer you to another phone system that helps you find a provider at your new address and, presumably, nets them a referral fee of some kind…

"I'm planning on committing assisted suicide." (Not actually). You're move Time Warner.

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

#286

Post by LukeShu »

mltony wrote: post #246
wittjeff wrote: post #208

I've only used this a couple of times but I think it works: "I'd like to cancel my service. I'm going to say this really clearly for the recording, in case I have to subpoena this for evidence. I want to cancel my service, effective [date]. When I hang up this phone, I want there to be no financial relationship between myself and your company of any kind. None. I don't want any further communication from you other th…

But recording phone conversations is illegal in most states, so unless you live in a state where it's legal, they might know that you are bluffing.

It is my understanding that 38 of the states are one-party consent states. That is: in most states, it is perfectly legal to record your own phone calls. (It certainly is in my state; I'm taking Wikipedia's word for it for the other states) Though, to be fair, California (the state that TFA is about) is not one of those 38 states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...

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

#287

Post by [deleted] »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #281
aphextron wrote: post #279

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 pro…

Ultimately the solution is to let the customer manage their subscriptions via their payment service provider. PayPal does this.

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by lmkg »

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"?

Saying "I'm unemployed and have no money" will put you in the target market for certain products, like payday loans and diploma mills. Depending on the call center, you could find your contact info sold on to a new set of telemarketers. Win the battle, lose the war.

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

#289

Post by SerLava »

NullPrefix wrote: post #96
AznHisoka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"exceptions that are meant for the disabled " Since when was the ability to cancel something online meant for the disabled? Either you or a loved one is disabled, and that's why you're so sensitive (if so, I cut you some slack). Otherwise, I have no clue why you're throwing such a hiss about this. Many businesses (like cable companies) are being complete assholes by making it hard for you to cancel their service. Som…

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

I hope they do, and then they can get shut down.

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

#290

Post by xur17 »

Karunamon wrote: post #268
wittjeff wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some states only one party needs to know about the recording. In some state all parties need to know about it. If you tell them up front, they can refuse, but then it's just evidence that they're being difficult. Certain keywords like "lawsuit" can break the strictly regimented conversation tree too.

Be a bit careful with the "l" word - many companies instruct their reps to immediately stop dealing with people that threaten legal proceedings over the phone and tell them to contact the company attorneys. Remember that any company that doesn't empower the phone support people to help you probably didn't empower them enough to go off-script.

If I can contact the company attorneys via email, that would be preferred anyways.
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