Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #188: "A fool and his money are the best customer". Kudos to Netflix for doing this, but I can entirely understand that they are the exception rather than the rule here. After all, if people don't care about a sum of money they pay monthly without getting anything for it, the only reasonable explanation is that they earn more than enough, so they can probably afford to continue paying it...
Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
181–190 of 519 posts
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#182I subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now that I'm working remote.
I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can they?
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…
It's so frustrating because my credit card declines the most random things. But when a service charges me twice in one week after I've been subscribed and charged the same amount once a month for years, the charge goes through and I have to go through hoops to get that money back. And credit cards do this other obnoxious thing where they update merchants when you get a new credit card. It would be great if they didn'…
Why don't you just read your fucking statement?
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…
https://privacy.com/join/5FPVD Give every merchant an individual card and kill the card when they won't stop charging you. P. S. There's also a browser extension that will let you generate a card at the time of checkout and autofill the information.
While I love Privacy, the reality is a lot of merchants block these kind of virtual cards.
Also, really, a throwaway account to post a referral link?
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#185Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#186I subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now that I'm working remote. I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can they?
Just cancel it on PayPal, if there is no easy way out.
Cancelling the payment is the same as cancelling the subscription.
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#187Years ago, I heard of a dating site doing the opposite of this. They normally sent periodic digests and newsletters to their users to try to increase engagement, but if a user went a certain number of months without logging into their account, but still allowed monthly fees to be charged, they were labeled as a “sleeping giant” in the database. Once in this state, they would not be contacted by the site for any reaso…
I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…
> The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us.
That's not quite true. The card network can refuse a merchant for any reason, constantly making bogus charges would probably be a good reason for the network to refuse them and that's likely to be the result. Of course you don't see if your bogus charge was reflective of 0.01% of the charges from this merchant or 99.9%
However as I've explained on HN a few times there's an important distinction between two separate payment card processes: Authorization and Settlement.
Authorization is the one with PINs and online referral and even getting a call from your bank about "possible fraud". Authorization protects the bank from fraud by customers (you're a necessary evil to them) and merchants by automatically collecting evidence that both authorized this to happen. Once upon a time that meant taking an "impression" and a few merchants still do that, today it may mean redirecting customers to a half-arsed HTTPS site or an EMV PIN terminal.
Settlement moves money. The merchant tells the network that they want $85.26 from card #1234567890 and usually that will just result in them receiving $85.26
These two systems aren't tied together. If there are two authorizations against your card this week for $20.00 and $35.26 but also three settlements for $19.86, $209.42 and $20.00 respectively, it's likely no alarm bells go off, this is fine, you pay $249.28
One reason it is this way is that while Settlement is essential to the idea in the first place (if the merchants don't get money what's the point?), Authorization is dozens of extra things tacked on over time and so each has to be optional or the system would fail.
This means important safeguards in Authorization don't actually safeguard you, only your issuer (in your case Amex)
For example: Modern Authorization schemes are replay resistant. When you pay with an EMV card the merchant gets a one-time "cryptogram" that isn't reusable. Buying a $5 product, walking out of the store, then realising you needed two, so you go back and buy another $5 product results in two entirely different cryptograms for the two Authorizations. The store can't present a third Authorization because it would need a new cryptogram.
BUT Settlement isn't replay resistant. When (not if, this really happens) an IT mistake results in running all the Settlement for a merchant twice, customers just all get charged twice, again no flags are raised automatically, it will take until either somebody confesses their error or more likely angry customers start calling their issuers to complain.
For individuals the only advice is: Check your statements, demand that line items you can't explain be reversed, and try to pick an issuer who is on your side.
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#188I subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now that I'm working remote. I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can they?
My understanding was that the correct way to cancel subscriptions payed with PayPal is via the PayPal website.
I recall one service pointed me to PayPal to cancel a subscription, and that’s how I’ve managed them since.
Edit: spelling
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#189It's so funny to see this at the top of HN when right below it I saw this thread:
"Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837
White Pattern? vs. Dark Pattern
Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few scummy companies put huuuge termination fees in the case of a customer's death. In one case it was equivalent to 100 years service for a phone setup my grandfather had! In most cases I bet they get paid - usually whoever is overseeing a loved ones estate really doesn't want to be going to court etc.
So if his setup was $10/mo, the termination fee was $12,000?
It was a $3 per month business VoIP phone number redirecting service, and the termination fee was $3000 if you didn't use the correct termination procedure, which involved knowing a password in a web form only my grandfather knew, or passing a 'my password is my voice' phone login. They also allowed termination by a letter to their HQ, with a $3k fee. I think the fee was more of a "we can only offer low prices if everything is automated, so we charge a stupidly high fee for anything we can't automate".
I don't want to name the company, because the dispute is still ongoing.