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How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

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Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#11

Post by mtmail »

That matched what I see on their public Twitter timeline. I'll be transparent that I'm competing with one of APILayer's APIs. Ever since APIlayer was acquired by Idera the support went downhill. The support team doesn't seem to be connected to their social media or engineer team. The specific API we're competing with (not MarketStack) was down 12 full days once, and twice a week down this year. No explanation given, promised post-mortem was never delivered, they still claim 99.9% uptime on their website. They ignore all Github issues including "Are you guys still in business?".

*) https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1700845882051039550 , https://twitter.com/lionelkubwimana/status/16946363607772897... , https://twitter.com/nathansfeed/status/1698315294765199857

> Does anyone have any contacts there?

If you get no response maybe escalate to the parent company Idera (https://www.ideracorp.com/).

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#13

Post by mtmail »

stavros wrote: post #10
CodesInChaos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that work in the US? In Germany stopping to pay does not cancel your subscription, and the provider can apply the usual debt collection measures.

I wouldn't know, but they're welcome to send their debt collectors to Greece.

They'd just contract a Greece debt collector. I'd would cost you extra fees.

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#14

Post by a13n »

mtmail wrote: post #11

That matched what I see on their public Twitter timeline. I'll be transparent that I'm competing with one of APILayer's APIs. Ever since APIlayer was acquired by Idera the support went downhill. The support team doesn't seem to be connected to their social media or engineer team. The specific API we're competing with (not MarketStack) was down 12 full days once, and twice a week down this year. No explanation given,…

What is the name/website of your company?

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#15

Post by capableweb »

mtmail wrote: post #12
stavros wrote: post #5

In general, I use privacy.com everywhere I can. I don't even bother unsubscribing, I just pause the card.

Speaking as a SaaS business owner that is real bad customer behavior. Is spending a couple of minute clicking "unsubscribe" too much work?

Wouldn't it be the same if the card was rejected for any other reason, including that the card is no longer active, don't have enough funds or anything else? What makes this particular behavior "real bad customer behavior", compared to the other reasons a payment could be rejected?

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#16

Post by Seklfreak »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #9
stavros wrote: post #5

In general, I use privacy.com everywhere I can. I don't even bother unsubscribing, I just pause the card.

Does that work in the US? In Germany stopping to pay does not cancel your subscription, and the provider can apply the usual debt collection measures.

It does work in the U.S., legal agreement or not, I think debt collection is far less successful in the U.S. so most companies will just cancel the subscription for you.

On the other hand in the EU it's much easier to cancel subscriptions thanks to legal requirements on cancelation methods…

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#17

Post by tentacleuno »

mtmail wrote: post #11

That matched what I see on their public Twitter timeline. I'll be transparent that I'm competing with one of APILayer's APIs. Ever since APIlayer was acquired by Idera the support went downhill. The support team doesn't seem to be connected to their social media or engineer team. The specific API we're competing with (not MarketStack) was down 12 full days once, and twice a week down this year. No explanation given,…

Yikes, that Trustpilot is absolutely dreadful. According to one, they completely ignored him, while he was asking for the service to be cancelled for 3 months... then they say they don't offer refunds.

Over here, that would be something for the Ombudsman to investigate. Straight up malpractice.

The kicker is that they don't appear to even reply to the reviews.

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#18

Post by bonton89 »

mtmail wrote: post #12
stavros wrote: post #5

In general, I use privacy.com everywhere I can. I don't even bother unsubscribing, I just pause the card.

Speaking as a SaaS business owner that is real bad customer behavior. Is spending a couple of minute clicking "unsubscribe" too much work?

> Is spending a couple of minute clicking "unsubscribe" too much work?

I can't speak to your business obviously but the couple minutes to unsubscribe is often actually finding a hidden support number (because they don't even have a way to unsubscribe otherwise) and getting stuck in some dead end phone tree game like the OP describes. Many companies make it easy to give them money but really hard to stop doing so.

This is one of the reasons I try to avoid recurrent billing products altogether. I actually don't think I'd purchase them without a middle layer like privacy.com to mitigate these potential situations.

Re: How do you get APILayer to stop billing you?

#19

Post by mtmail »

a13n wrote: post #14
mtmail wrote: post #11

That matched what I see on their public Twitter timeline. I'll be transparent that I'm competing with one of APILayer's APIs. Ever since APIlayer was acquired by Idera the support went downhill. The support team doesn't seem to be connected to their social media or engineer team. The specific API we're competing with (not MarketStack) was down 12 full days once, and twice a week down this year. No explanation given,…

What is the name/website of your company?

https://opencagedata.com/ In 8 years only one credit card dispute but we believe that was a stolen credit card.
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