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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

wsj.com

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Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#281

Post by sailfast »

Modified3019 wrote: post #190
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

That's a lovely and idealistic view of humans. Unfortunately bad actors have realized that what we actually are is just meat computers with unpatchable security vulnerabilities, so demanding that people just stop having problems and fit your nebulous definition of competence with unlimited and unwavering performance, has predictably not panned out. What is the more moral solution then? Recognizing and placing systema…

Just wanted to say that I found this phrasing to be fantastic.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#282

Post by rectang »

jjav wrote: post #259
rectang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her…

> My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. Why? That's much worse. If anything is going to do a recurring charge to me, I want it to go through a credit card which offers a layer of indirection. I never aut…

> Why? That's much worse.

Congratulations, HNer — you're more tech savvy than my mom.

Perhaps you're volunteering to help vulnerable seniors like her navigate the Hobbesian nightmare of subscriptions?

I applaud your initiative, but if you're new to this, let me caution you: they don't always understand or follow the advice you give them precisely. Even if they are trying their best.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#283

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

For anyone trying to avoid this, sign up to Personal Capital (bought out by empower or something), link up ALL your bank accounts, credit cards, etc. Then once a month go in and check every single line item charge and ensure the charge was properly labeled.

Now if a companies autocharge is extra sketchy, such as not informing you about auto pay, enabling it automatically, etc, just threaten a chargeback when contacting their support and most the time they'll immediately refund you.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#284

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

JohnFen wrote: post #81
ipince wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopay is evil. I have nothing on autopay. Instead, I have a monthly reminder to pay my bills every month, with a list of all the bills/sites that need to be paid. There's 11 things in the list, but not all of them have a balance every month. I do this towards the end of the month (instead of at the beginning of the month), so that I can include rent in it too, and pay _everything_. It lets me see whether my spendin…

Autopay did more to improve my credit score than anything else. If left to my own devices, I'll forget to pay bills. Autopay prevents that. It may be evil for you, but for me, it's an absolute lifesaver.

Yeah, even when I was living paycheck-to-paycheck, I used auto-pay.

I'd just had a post-it note stuck to my monitor of the dates and usual amounts for the auto-pays, so I was never caught off guard or surprised amount money moving.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#285

Post by sailfast »

jimt1234 wrote: post #167
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was…

Worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for awhile. We encountered a lot of these cases and there are a ton of dark patterns as well as just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written. For the most part you come to understand that people are actually trying really hard to get it right most of the time.

The lack of knowledge is quite startling (but understandable, given how complex some of these things often are and how much time it takes to figure them out that people just don't have) and the pace at which it is exploited is very disappointing but inevitable.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#286

Post by ok123456 »

nlawalker wrote: post #26
blueridge wrote: post #5

I don't understand, do people not log in online to look at their credit card statements? It takes 5 minutes to skim your transactions, look for suspicious charges, get a quick read on where money is going. There are lots of challenges to actually canceling subscriptions, but not knowing that you're being charged for something every month? Seems absent-minded to me.

I got a great tip here on HN: if your credit card supports email notifications for transactions, set it to alert you on every transaction. On my Citi card the notification is called “Transaction amount exceeds” and is configurable with a dollar amount, which I set to zero. Now I get an email within a minute or two of every charge that includes the amount and payee in the email. It’s a great way to put recurring charg…

I've been doing this for several years. Once, I caught someone trying to make a fraudulent ACH withdrawal from my account and was able to stop it basically instantly.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#287

Post by dataangel »

tomcar288 wrote: post #280
darth_avocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > Yo…

my solution to this is to not have any subscriptions except for property taxes, garbage, utilities, insurance and phone plan. and I absolutely avoid 30 day free trials (if they ask for credit card info) like the plague. the moment I see a credit card number entry field, I close the browser tab immediately. but, I'd like to know, which companies have onerous cancellation policies?

> which companies have onerous cancellation policies?

gyms

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#288

Post by teg4n_ »

jjav wrote: post #267
teg4n_ wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also who would you even send it to? How do you guarantee they receive it? If you do certified mail that is a cost and another thing to take up your time.

True, although I'd rather pay the few dollars for that and the 10 minutes in the post office, than spend endless hours on hold just to be hung up on and start again.

That’s assuming the letter even works in having the subscription cancelled. Regardless of whether or not it should work, I am certainly not confident such a thing would be handled properly. If it isn’t then you are back to customer service or i guess hiring a lawyer.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#289

Post by well_actulily »

moshun wrote: post #264
paxys wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So willingly going to netflix.com, picking a plan, entering your credit card info, hitting subscribe and watching TV for the next month is the same as getting pickpocketed?

It is when systems are intentionally designed to be extremely low friction to initiate and extremely high friction to cancel. In a lot of cases that’s exactly what happens. To be fair, there should probably be a national consumer protection law that ties complexity of cancellation to complexity of sign up.

Some states in the US have laws on the books so that if you can sign up to a service online, you need to be able to cancel online—at least.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#290

Post by jjav »

nunez wrote: post #197
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

I agree. It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that. However, it's not entirely the people's fault. Credit card providers make it really easy to sign up for their cards but make it really difficult to do things like "add an alert that texts me whenever a purchase above $0.01 is made" or "alert me when my 0% APR pr…

> It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that.

If you want to maximize your credit score (and you should since it'll give you better rates, saving you money) you want to have lots of credit cards with high limits.

One of the factors that goes into your credit score your available credit. You want your available credit to be very high but your utilization to be very low (but not zero).

I keep lots of credit cards, at least one or two from every major bank and some from smaller ones. Thus my available credit is very high and so is my credit score.

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