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Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

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Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#331

Post by eafkuor »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #80
shortj wrote: post #34

I actually went through exactly this with Dropbox a couple weeks ago. It took me two tries, the first time I mis-read / fell into one of the dark patterns. I'd made up my mind long before I ever went to the website to cancel and all this did was make me grumpy and justify my decision even more. Clearly it adds to their retention numbers somewhere or it would be dropped, however I will not use dropbox again in the fac…

What are you looking to use next? I've thought about a raid NAS but have not brought myself to going through with it.

I'm not a power user, but sync.com works quite well for me and is relatively cheap

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#332

Post by ianai »

ascar wrote: post #268
ianai wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not debt if you’ve just been automatically renewed. Agreeing to pay X in Y payments is not the same as paying Z for 1 term of use.

Why do you think that? You entered a legally binding contract with an obligation to pay. You refuse to pay without canceling the contract. Why should the fact that it's a recurring payment change anything here?

Modern subscriptions are little more than saved payment information. Merely having someone’s payment information does not give consent.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#335

Post by ixacto »

Eww so they have a landing page when you want to cancel. Pretty slimy. If it’s too annoying just give them a chargeback, heck do it the next month if they don’t stop. That will fit the attention of at least their payment processor.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#336

Post by science4sail »

macintux wrote: post #248
runjake wrote: post #132

This is why I prefer to handle my app subscriptions through Apple's App Store: easy, transparent (un)subscriptions. Plan B is to use virtual credit card numbers, such as https://privacy.com preferably with a bogus name. Too many tech companies are shady.

I have long wished someone, ideally Apple, would successfully implement micropayments for news.

Google Contributor [1] was an attempt, but it never really seemed to have taken off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#337

Post by lowercased »

sambucini wrote: post #22

Retain with pain.. The other day I tried to delete my udacity account. No button in settings, I mailed support, they asked my to mail legal (apparently they don't fwd mail..). From legal I received the following response: Hello, We are in receipt of your request to delete your account. We are sorry you want to leave the Udacity family; you will be missed. Before we can proceed with fully processing your request, we n…

> As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion.

Didn't windows 95 popularize the idea of the trashcan - temporary deletion - 20+ years ago? Don't many db tools support the idea of "soft deletes"?

"Hey - once we do this, you can't get anything back, ever, immediately, it's all gone. For good. But we're going to keep stuff forever that you can never see, and we won't tell you what it is. But you can't have your stuff back, ever. It's gone."

Even my "offline" university had the idea of "not paid", "suspended", "active", etc. Keep me on file, and I'll pay again in 12 months when I take more classes, etc.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#338

Post by scarcely »

rootusrootus wrote: post #178
mrspeaker wrote: post #8

If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it. I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the…

Happened to me too. Guy actually laughed at me when I refused a six-months-for-free-if-you-stay option. In that instant I committed to never giving the NYT another dime of my money. Another one is the ACLU. Easy to start, damn near impossible to stop without just canceling your card. All I wanted to do is change to a different card, but they ignore me. Great way to ruin your reputation.

Lmao my NYT guy actually switched into a stereotypical Chinese accent when I didn't catch sth he said and asked him could he repeat (my surname is Chinese)

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#339

Post by millisecond »

neya wrote: post #301
mrspeaker wrote: post #8

If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it. I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the…

This is a dark pattern usually dying companies like to follow. Why? Because, if you are confident of the value you provide to your customer, you don't need to be so aggressive about not letting them go. Yes, retention is an important KPI, but trust and transparency are even more important than anything else, so companies that offer little value and can't keep up with competition usually do this because they know they…

The insidious thing about this from their side is that retained revenue from dark patterns shows up in a report someone can use to justify a promotion but your friend’s situation will forever remain anecdotal (in their reporting). Growth teams run amok.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#340

Post by artursapek »

michaelt wrote: post #123
artursapek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pita for the service provider who is implementing the subscription logic, but as the customer it's pretty sweet.

Isn't the logic the same as a gift subscription? Just at the payment stage you send them to BitPay instead of Paypal?

The main difference is customers will send the BTC a few minutes too late, and then it turns into this situation where it has to be refunded. This used to be an extra step when using Stripe for BTC payments (they have since stopped supporting BTC payments completely)
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