Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The madness of SaaS chargebacks

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–117 of 117 posts

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#111

Post by ta1243 »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #95
ta1243 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send an email saying "you're about to be charged, click here to cancel your membership"

Exactly. This is what I want all my subscriptions to do. In UPI (I know I know...) there is an autopay system. Your single UPI app has a single page with all your subscriptions. You can cancel or do whatever there and it's all handled in one place. My openai, streaming services, youtube premium, amazon prime, everything is on there. It gives me notifications before a charge is about to occur. No dark patterns. This i…

I don't want to be messing around with "forget my password", or having to remember what email I set up for it.

> some infobox on the app's most attention-requiring screen, and an email telling me I'm gonna be charged

Nope, I no longer log in (because your app was crap, or because I accomplished my goal). Fine I lost $10

If I log in every day or two chances are I want to keep it going. It has to be an out-of-band communication with the ability to cancel in a frictionless way, which means no account hijinks

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#112

Post by ghoul2 »

amelius wrote: post #25
ilamont wrote: post #16

> What I don’t understand is why some people can’t just reach out and request it — instead of going straight to a chargeback. Customers don't want to "reach out" if it means hunting deep in their account settings to find the cancel button, or calling a number which may or may not lead them through an endless phone tree to waste 5 minutes talking with someone on the retention team reading from a script. People don't r…

What I don't understand is why my banking app does not show a "cancel subscription" button with the payment. When I click that button, the recurring payment is automatically canceled, and the SaaS company can check that and know that I unsubscribed. Or something along these lines. There is already a power-asymmetry between consumers and companies. This should not extend to unsubscribing. Here, the consumer should hav…

Thats how it works in India. All authorized repeating charges ("mandates") are listed on a portal maintained by the card issuer. you can go in anytime and simply cancel the mandate from there. This is mandatory under banking regulations.

Credit cards are also required to be "tokenized" when stored at a merchant or payment aggregator - the user authorizes the bank to allow the merchant or the aggregator to "store" the card details for use later, and the bank then issues a card token, tied to the specific merchant/aggregator. They are not allowed to store the original card info at all - just this token. This makes the token not worth stealing, as it can be only used by that merchant, and is trivial to de-auth if needed, with or without merchant cooperation.

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#113

Post by danillonunes »

llm_nerd wrote: post #48
re-thc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Customers don't want to {blah blah blah} If this is the way it works and the result are chargebacks it just means things cost more in general (cost of business will be factored in). It's not a good thing.

Yet the majority of businesses use dark patterns to avoid cancellations because it's hugely profitable to do so. Chargebacks are expensive, but the truth is that the majority of customers never leverage it, and often just endure years of paying for products they don't use. Maybe they tried to cancel to find that while they could sign up in seconds online, cancelling invariably requires a call (to a number that, would…

> Imagine if companies automatically paused billing if you stopped using their product? Panacea.

Beeminder does exactly that!

https://blog.beeminder.com/autocancel

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#114

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #106
singleshot_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am acutely aware that it constrains liquidated damages to a reasonable figure. Conveyance to a collector is, of course, customary in the trade. The problem is that a “punitive” amount of liquidated damages is neither reasonable, nor would it typically be found to have been the product of an actual estimate of the damages. See, 356 cmt. a. If you didn’t say “punitive” in the LD provision, you’d have the “reasonable…

> a “punitive” amount of liquidated damages is neither reasonable, nor would it typically be found to have been the product of an actual estimate of the damages Would note that the Restatement isn’t law, but an influential guideline. As long as the punitive terms are clearly agreed to, they ought to be able to fly. (Particularly if made in exchange for money, e.g. pay a premium to opt out of punitive cancellation.)

[deleted]

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#115

Post by qhwudbebd »

greyb wrote: post #81
demarq wrote: post #80

Controversial take here. Sue your customer. No really. Banks operate on risk, make chargebacks risky. Some of these chargebacks sound like straight up fraud. Three months of usage and using their bank to reverse a payment. Make Fraud Spicy Again

Suing for $43 would absolutely be frivolous and would be thrown out by all but the most bored small claims courts. The best you could do is send your client to collections, though if you try and mess with their credit report, that incurs liability on your part. Funny enough, German companies do send SaaS/IaaS clients with small bills owing to collections, even for amounts as small as 15-20 EUR.

UK perspective here: I've not claimed for $43, but I've used the small claims process to recover £65. They replied to the paperwork sent out by the court indicating they intended to defend it, so I paid the hearing fee to take it to court, where the judge was polite, helpful, very switched-on, and didn't seem remotely annoyed by the size of the claim.

The total costs of making the claim were more than the amount I'd claimed, but I'd been careful to provide all the proper notice and offer to settle for the amount of the claim, so they were awarded against the defaulting client.

It was great fun and I think it would have been fun and educational even if I'd lost. Would definitely do it again.

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#116

Post by bwb »

typpilol wrote: post #110
bwb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love love love this comment. Banks are barely running on a modern stack, let alone doing anything userful within banking, and you want them to build an api to cancel an outside service? :)? Love this so much, most HN comment ever :)

your bank really doesn't offer stop payments?

nope, and that isn't cancelling

Re: The madness of SaaS chargebacks

#117

Post by bwb »

dehugger wrote: post #102
bwb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love love love this comment. Banks are barely running on a modern stack, let alone doing anything userful within banking, and you want them to build an api to cancel an outside service? :)? Love this so much, most HN comment ever :)

PayPal does this. It's one of the greatest features they provide. Hardly an impossible feat.

they just stop payment, that isn't cancelling
Post reply on HN