Best to never subscribe. These are messing up SaaS.
Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
51–60 of 82 posts
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is overthinking anything. Carta's behavior is poor, self-serving, and definitely using a dark pattern. If they cannot promptly schedule a meeting, they should wave the meeting requirement. Here are some other thoughts: 1) Canceling a subscription should be easy and take less than 3 minutes. There is nothing special about enterprise software subscriptions. 2) Requiring a meeting to cancel and then scheduling th…
It seems you've misunderstood my comment, as I mostly agree with your points. I'm just saying that the idea that startups need to get a lawyer involved to cancel your subscription is unnecessary. This seems like a pretty clear case of a fuck up on Carta's side, and usually when fuck ups are this obvious if you just point them out the company goes "Oh shit, sorry, we fucked up", which is essentially what happened here…
Did it? The response from Carta, as quoted in the article, was basically 'You still need the meeting, but the scheduling is was a one-off and we should be good now, otherwise you can always chat with us online'. I definitely don't see any 'Oh shit, sorry, we fucked up', it's definitely still 'That was just a glitch, all is well, continue to trust us'.
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#53Here’s my Carta horror story, since we’re sharing.
I left my last company and had 90 days to buy my options. The day after I left the company (January) I exercised. The total I had to pay was about $20k. I didn’t think a lot about it after that.
6 full months later I get an email from Carta. It says my bank account transfer was unsuccessful. They had tried to pull the $20k from my account 6 months after I authorized it with absolutely no warning, and it had overdrafted my checking account by $1k (I don’t keep a ton of cash around).
Ok no big deal, I’ll move the money around and try again. Nope, Carta decided that after a single failed attempt at payment my options were PERMANENTLY canceled. Like, I no longer have the right to exercise them ever. No equity in the company for me, sorry.
After going back and forth with Carta they insisted they “had” to do this even though that’s BS. There’s no reason they couldn’t have attempted a second time to draw payment, they’d already waited 6 months.
To get the equity I had worked multiple years for I had to go to the CEO of my former company and beg personally. He got the board to back-date an equity offer for me of the same amount so I could exercise again. If I had left under left friendly terms I’d have been screwed.
So yeah, don’t use Carta.
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBF, the nature of the services Carta provides (equity management) are rather different from a web analytics company. Offboarding isn't necessarily as simple as shutting off the company's account.
What makes Carta different? Why is offboarding more complex?
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Carta can manage assets such as employee stock options. A company can't simply close their Carta account and declare that their corporate equity is now managed elsewhere; there's regulations that govern how everything has to be handed off.
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#55Here’s my Carta horror story, since we’re sharing. I left my last company and had 90 days to buy my options. The day after I left the company (January) I exercised. The total I had to pay was about $20k. I didn’t think a lot about it after that. 6 full months later I get an email from Carta. It says my bank account transfer was unsuccessful. They had tried to pull the $20k from my account 6 months after I authorized…
This is concerning. Isn't this regulated? How is this allowed?
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#56Execs blaming the timing issue on a staffing change, but those same execs approved the workflow that requires the meeting before cancellation and didn’t have a redundant position in case the primary “customer success manager” was unavailable. This is the same any-consumer behavior that makes people hate companies. Gotta love that Carta’s competitors are selling that they don’t have the same cumbersome cancellation po…
Or a workflow that pauses charging a customer when a cancellation meeting has been scheduled. And lets the customer know it won’t be charged.
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#57This is the sort of thing that a decent corporate lawyer ought to be able to handle. Obviously not giving legal advice to anyone's specific situation here (and I don't have a current bar card, though I am a law professor), but generally there's an implied contract law duty of good faith.[1] Dirty tricks like writing a contract that says something like "you can cancel at the end of a term, but you have to have a meeti…
Decent corporate lawyers are exactly the lawyers who are effectively bundling Carta into their services when you onboard with them. You get some VC investment, you meet with a lawyer from Cooley, and they set everything up for you. Part of that is Carta and it’s pitched as “everyone does it, it’s what investors expect.” I don’t know if they get kickbacks for this, but they really push hard for it. And then when you’re closing down your company, the Cooley lawyers are nowhere to be found unless you’ve set aside $30k for closing costs. So I wouldn’t expect them to come to your rescue when your bank account is nearly empty and you’re trying to cancel your Carta subscription. Oh and don’t forget you signed the rights of “transfer agent” over to Carta when you onboarded with them, so they control your shares.
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really, really think folks are overthinking this. This isn't a Comcast subscription. This is an enterprise software deal that costs many multiple thousands of dollars. Anyone that thinks that Carta was ever going to go "Oh, sucks to be you, you couldn't schedule your cancellation meeting before the renewal date, well, tough cookies, you have to pay us $18k for your next contract year" simply doesn't know how enterp…
As a purchaser of a lot of enterprise software, I typically start thinking about renewal/cancellation 3-4 months ahead of the contract expiration. Sometimes earlier if we know we want to cancel. But honestly, I always redline the auto renewal clause anyway so they want to speak with me.
This is it. I’m not sure what manner of business you work in/at/for but I do feel that there is a set and forget expectation with enterprise software in startup land. Once you’ve been around the block a few times on finance/operations, you just expect that things might not work efficiently/automatically and build in safeguards. That isn’t to say that Carta can’t do better…
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#59Here’s my Carta horror story, since we’re sharing. I left my last company and had 90 days to buy my options. The day after I left the company (January) I exercised. The total I had to pay was about $20k. I didn’t think a lot about it after that. 6 full months later I get an email from Carta. It says my bank account transfer was unsuccessful. They had tried to pull the $20k from my account 6 months after I authorized…
hats off to the CEO of your last company
Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say
#60> The issue first surfaced on X after founder Sudarshan Sridharan of Pipeline posted about his struggles trying to cancel, writing, “I’m speechless at how anti-founder @cartainc is. They make it impossible to cancel your subscription or speak to a human support agent.”
Oh come on. What rock did that guy crawl out from under? That's industry best practice, especially the speak to a human part.