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Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

bbc.com

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Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#191

Post by Grollicus »

jaxonrice wrote: post #175
mywacaday wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

I had exactly the same issue and worked around it by switching my payment method to Paypal and then cancelling the subscription agreement in Paypal.

That might be dangerous. At least in Germany there's a difference between the service agreement and the payment. As long as you don't cancel the service, if you are not paying you just amass more and more money that you owe them.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#192

Post by nabla9 »

goodside wrote: post #55

Years 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…

Our company did data mining for a large bank and we discovered that customer marketing where the bank initiates person-to-person contact with a customer makes people to change bank.

Customer marketing and reach out programs were net negatives. They lost more money than they did bring in by a large margin.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#194

Post by misnome »

mywacaday wrote: post #168
sytelus wrote: post #143

Earlier 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…

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

Exactly same issue a few years ago with The Times in the UK, with the ringing and very odd restricted availability hours, except they also said it was “technically impossible” to cancel without charging three more “monthly” charges.

I cancelled my card and somehow they managed to rescind access.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#195

Post by elcomet »

adamtulinius wrote: post #174
mywacaday wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

Actually we have such a law in the EU. Not sure what it's called, but I'm sure it exists. I believe the wording to be something like it has to be possible to cancel in a similar way you signed up.

If it exists, it is not followed.

In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a paper mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription. Even if you subscribed on the website, for a 100% online subscription.

It's really shady.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#196

Post by dimitar »

mywacaday wrote: post #168
sytelus wrote: post #143

Earlier 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…

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

Also in Europe, I tried unsubscribing by SMS, and it seems to be pretty frustrating, I confirmed a few times I wanted to cancel and instead all I got was more questions and offers.

In the end I took the offer of 25 cents a week for a year, waiting to see how they'll charge my PayPal.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#197

Post by spurgu »

mav3rick wrote: post #158
gear54rus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons subscription model is cancer: they hope you'll forget it's on.

Virtual Cards with set expiry numbers will end this game

I've found that these are not accepted everywhere where normal (physical cards) are.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#198

Post by simonlbn »

sytelus wrote: post #143
goodside wrote: post #55

Years 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…

This is why I use Paypal for recurring services when possible. One list of all the items, and you can cancel the payment there easily.

Dodgy companies like the New York Times even do offline transactions to successfully charge canceled cards. I was able to cancel it by changing payment to Paypal.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#199

Post by INTPenis »

Misleading title. Here I thought I could be charged by the hour. That would actually make me get netflix, finally.

But I don't think it's worth 5 euro or 11 euro a month because I only enjoy a very small portion of media.

So far it's easier to pirate.

And I'm far too used to the situation where a friend wants to put something on from netflix and it's not available. What's the point of paying 11 euro a month when you're restricted to such a small library?

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#200

Post by djhworld »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #188
djhworld wrote: post #182

I 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

Ah, ok thanks.

Well, I've just cancelled it. No turning back now!

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