And when you do try to cancel, you have to chat or call somebody. I'm looking at you SiriusXM.
Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
11–20 of 677 posts
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#12"They recognized that getting a new card is one of the rare times you must actively renew your automatically renewing subscriptions, since you have to update the payment information on file with those companies."
This isn't true: I've had subscriptions roll over to the new credit card number - and not just for a month or two. Apparently the bank will continue to process them (I'd rather they didn't.)
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#13I 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.
Absolutely not.
It was easy to look at statements when they arrived by mail.
But with paperless billing, you've got to conscientiously log into your credit card site each month. If you have four cards, that's four logins. Who's going to do that? Not many.
The only reason I review my transactions it's because it's easy through an aggregator like Monarch (was using Mint before it shut down). And the only reason I do that is for budgeting -- reviewing transactions is just a side effect.
It still annoys me to no end that I don't have a single bank or credit card that will attach my statement as a PDF to a monthly email. As long as there's a secure email transmission connection, I don't understand why they won't do that.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#14Forget to? Or involve so many dark patterns it's nearly impossible to?
I think it's both.
To counter the dark patterns, I now use privacy.com. It's far easier to just cancel a virtual credit card.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#15It's disappointing but not surprising that no credit card company that I know of provides simple built-in summaries of past 12 month spend by merchant and merchant category.
Edit: It looks like my bank has some basic view accessible through a submenu.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#16I 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.
Absolutely not. It was easy to look at statements when they arrived by mail. But with paperless billing, you've got to conscientiously log into your credit card site each month. If you have four cards, that's four logins. Who's going to do that? Not many. The only reason I review my transactions it's because it's easy through an aggregator like Monarch (was using Mint before it shut down). And the only reason I do th…
My strategy here is disable all auto pays and make it a manual ritual to pay my bills at the start of each calendar month.
Doing it once a month is easy enough to remember (or put a calendar invite, if you're not able to) and forces me to do a quick validation. In my 20 years of working and being independent, I've never accidentally paid for a subscription longer than one month.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#17It’s almost like we need legislation to reign in subscriptions.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#18It's disappointing but not surprising that no credit card company that I know of provides simple built-in summaries of past 12 month spend by merchant and merchant category. Edit: It looks like my bank has some basic view accessible through a submenu.
I can see past 12 months by category in Bank of America.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/mobile-and-onli...
I do not know if BoA offers a breakdown by merchant though.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#19It's disappointing but not surprising that no credit card company that I know of provides simple built-in summaries of past 12 month spend by merchant and merchant category. Edit: It looks like my bank has some basic view accessible through a submenu.
Similarly, it sucks that banks don't allow you to unilaterally stop recurring payments on your credit card. Some companies make cancelling a subscription like getting out of a Saw trap.
Sure, there are proxies like Privacy.com and PayPal that let you do this, but this should be a standard feature everywhere.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#20Use virtual credit cards and privacy.com. It really helps with peace of mind that you can really have a free trial and not worry about it.
I was about to post this. The usual HNers with nothing better to do will warn about how you're still liable, they can come after you, yada yada yada.
Ignore them. Just give a virtual credit card to any subscription service, and set a credit limit on it. Problem solved. If they try to keep charging your card: too bad, the charges are declined.