Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard • Hacker News Board

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#241

Post by emiliobumachar » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #71

saghm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account That strikes me as really extreme. If I had an Udacity account and someone tried to delete it, I would be annoyed, but I wouldn't seek to press criminal charges against them.

Is that even plausible? Not being government, I can't just declare "Anyone who lies to me is committing perjury, nyah nyah!"

Yeah, they might as well require you to write "under penalty of murder" while they're at it.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#242

Post by ianai » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

zenexer wrote: post #229

tomschlick wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a good way to get 100 calls from a collection agency.

I’ve had that happen to me once in all the years I’ve been doing this sort of thing. A BBB complaint sorted that out pretty quickly.

Any advice on the BBB complaint? I’ve never considered it before now.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#243

Post by wj » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

rgrove wrote: post #107

A little over a year ago I spent days and days trying and failing to sign up for a Dropbox Business account. The "Start free trial" button on the website literally did nothing. If I clicked it enough times, I eventually got a poorly worded error asking me to try again in 24 hours. This happened in multiple browsers. I tried many times over the course of several days with no success. I had coworkers try in case it was…

Calendly also works this way. I guess I can understand it making development a bit easier (not having to tie each charge to an individual user) but they should have a warning that when you delete a user that you should also remove a license if that is your intention.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#244

Post by shereadsthenews » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:48 AM UTC

mrspeaker wrote: post #8

If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it. I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the…

I recently canceled NYT by email in one round.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#245

Post by daniel_iversen » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

I don’t mind Dropbox’ effort for trying to make users change the mind (I’m biased as an ex Dropboxer) and maybe the pattern is a little Grey but it only takes you 45 seconds to unsubscribe.. in contrast I has a much much worse experience with “I Done This” (idonethis.com) where I subscribed for me and one of my colleagues but somehow other people in my company that I didn’t know or work with (without me really knowing clearly - not sure what happened) were somehow able to become part of my “team” license and I got a big fat bill from them.. we didn’t even use the product and there was no negotiations whatsoever - not even an invoice section/download option in the product so no way I even had any kind of “receipt” for expense claims - the customer experience and cancellation process was the worst I’ve seen in a long time!! I’m pretty sure I had to email them to cancel in the end as well. Biggest issue was bill shock by new accounts being added to my subscription though. At least with Dropbox if you’ve subscribed in error or have very good reasons they’re usually not too strict on refunds - they try and go the extra mile unlike idonethis.com

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#246

Post by wahjiwah » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

The NYT at least lets you use PayPal. When I wanted to cancel I couldn't even get through to a rep, so I just switched my payment method to PayPal and then deauthorized the recurring payment from PayPal.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#247

Post by j1vms » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

Just thought I'd point out that a lot of the reason companies make it so hard to cancel subscriptions is that it literally is a more "brutal" change for them when it comes to accounting, and what they have to report back to investors.

Recurring income is more highly valued than one-off / extraordinary income. Most traditional companies (telecom, banks, even gyms) have been this way, backing off only when forced to by regulation. It's sad, but not surprising to see the newer breed of companies also adopt these practices.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#248

Post by macintux » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

runjake wrote: post #132

This is why I prefer to handle my app subscriptions through Apple's App Store: easy, transparent (un)subscriptions. Plan B is to use virtual credit card numbers, such as https://privacy.com preferably with a bogus name. Too many tech companies are shady.

I have long wished someone, ideally Apple, would successfully implement micropayments for news.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#249

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:57 AM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #82

svv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've cancelled by NYTimes subscription just a few months ago. Didn't have to do any phone calls-- just answered a few questions in the chat, right there on their website.

> just answered a few questions in the chat there is no "just" about that...

They wouldn't let me cancel until I answered the question "how are you doing today?" I said "I want to cancel" but they just repeated the question until I finally said "fine" and then the conversation could proceed. Fun times.

Re: Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

#250

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:59 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #210

icelancer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on the phone This should be an option, not the only way to cancel.

Why? I’m surprised at the downvotes I got on my original comment. The Dropbox online cancellation, like many others, is a deceptive, tricky option designed to make you think that you cancelled when you did not to rip you off. Dropbox isn’t unusual. Why is a phone call so evil? It’s bizarre to me that a arguably marginal inconvenience is more noxious than active trickery.

I want to cancel my subscription. I don't want to explain why to a pleading sales rep telling me about all the great things I'm going to miss while they "pull up my account".