In the UK a typical suggested donation might be £10 per month and the first three payments will go to the sales person's employer - which is typically a third party, not the charity. If you cancel after the first month they get paid but the charity gets nothing. It's sleazier than you think!
For most of those charity orgs, you're being more generous to the middle men than to those in need
I like the charity-starts-at-home approach. I don't know how people do this in first world countries, but in developing countries is relatively easy to find a cause.
In the UK a typical suggested donation might be £10 per month and the first three payments will go to the sales person's employer - which is typically a third party, not the charity. If you cancel after the first month they get paid but the charity gets nothing. It's sleazier than you think!
I'm a member of a club in the UK which raises money for charity - we've stopped giving money to corporate charities because their overheads are such a high percentage of their takings - at this point they're largely just self-perpetuating bureaucracy machines. We give cash to small volunteer-run charities where we know that 100% of the money raised goes to the cause in question.
What do you consider a high percentage?
Looking at Oxfam, it's 10% admin and 7% fundraising [1], which doesn't seem too bad given their global reach.
Admittedly their reputation has taken a bit of a tumble due to the scandals.
The other day I was stopped on the sidewalk by someone who told me they worked for a large environmental non profit that helps save endangered species. He asked if I would subscribe to help. I offered to make a donation and was told they I can't do a one time donation and they "really need subscribers". He even told me I could just cancel after the first payment. Taking advantage of someone being forgetful is sleazy.
In the UK a typical suggested donation might be £10 per month and the first three payments will go to the sales person's employer - which is typically a third party, not the charity. If you cancel after the first month they get paid but the charity gets nothing. It's sleazier than you think!
Depends on the TLD? For example, .app domains are always auto-renew I think
Registrars will generally auto-renew domains for their registrants regardless of any TLD-specific policies. And that makes sense; letting a domain name lapse absent explicit instruction is generally the wrong thing to do.
Well depending on the tld, there are grace periods after it lapses
If they won't refund you then they're being dicks. Chargeback your credit card if you're in the US. You'll almost certainly win and there's likely no penalty if you don't. Chargebacks also cost providers money on top of the refund, which disincentives their shitty refund policy. I run a SaaS company (with a great refund policy) and am part of many SaaS startup groups and it's standard practice to basically refund any…
Spent several hours chasing up 5 chargebacks for our service today. The accountant did not recognize our charges so simply claimed they were fraudulent. What a pain in the ass for us.
I'm a member of a club in the UK which raises money for charity - we've stopped giving money to corporate charities because their overheads are such a high percentage of their takings - at this point they're largely just self-perpetuating bureaucracy machines. We give cash to small volunteer-run charities where we know that 100% of the money raised goes to the cause in question.
What do you consider a high percentage? Looking at Oxfam, it's 10% admin and 7% fundraising [1], which doesn't seem too bad given their global reach. Admittedly their reputation has taken a bit of a tumble due to the scandals. [1] https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/how-we-spend-your-money
I think there's a fairly open question about how those percentages are calculated. Oxfam is an outlier, with a very low stated percentage being used for overheads, but it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of how the remaining cash was used. For example - are staff costs in a target country (say, Haiti) considered admin, or is the UK base only counted?
Exactly same thing happened to me in India for some UN Child related initiative (they claimed). Ultimately they wanted a credit card for subscribing and I didn't have they. I was wondering why the fuss about Credit card but now I got it that it's for forgetful auto renewals. `Meetup.com` did that to me once too. Seems companies are fine with this just to renew subscription because who bothers to get it cancelled.
how did the meetup.com experience look like? unlike all the other examples, you normally never want to pay for meetup.com if it is not a longterm subscription. it makes no sense otherwise, unless you have some weird corner case of needing to manage a large group for a short time, but then dissolve it afterwards.
Because My meetup page moved to a Pro network. I contacted Meetup support and told them this and then they issued a credit note. It was hassle-less but the auto-renewal thing frightened me.
Perform a chargeback and leave a negative review on any app store you may have bought it from. Companies will just keep screwing people over if they never get punished for it.
"In one of my frequent bouts of negligence, I bought something that I didn't intend to buy and now I want to return it for a full refund for which you shall bear the cost. If you don't give it to me I will issue a fraudulent chargeback and leave negative reviews." Who is screwing over who here?
That's extremely misleading and you know it. Nobody starts a fucking _trial_ with the expectation that if they forget about it, they get charged a ton of money periodically until they notice. That's not just "buying something in a frequent bout of negligence".