261–270 of 519 posts
Also, maybe the title should be "Netflix will delete the accounts of customers who never watch", because that describes what Netflix will be doing more accurately.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us. That's not quite true. The card network can refuse a merchant for any reason, constantly making bogus charges would probably be a good reason for the network to refuse them and that's likely to be the result. Of course you don't see if your bogus charge was reflective of 0.01% of the charges from this merchant or 99.9% However as I've expla…
You obviously understand payment systems more deeply but to me this is like someone explaining why I need to deal with mainframes with tap drives in 2020. Many of us don't even need credit cards, we just need a way to transfer existing money from our bank account on agreed upon transactions safely . There are far more modern ways to electronically "agree" on a transaction then to use exact same 19 digit number for ev…
You're telling me how you think the universe ought to be but my advice was about how the universe is.
Well done to Netflix on this I really cannot see an upside apart from the awesome brand loyalty they increased by doing this!
I always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes. Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it’s better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts. On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.
At some point the cost-benefit calculus has to flip. Users on the extreme right-tail of the months-paid-but-unused distribution are a negligible amount of revenue but very likely to complain when they noticed they’ve paid for years of unused service. If the company refunds these users as a matter of policy, it creates uncertainty in the accounting and negates the value of them being allowed to keep paying. If no such…
Years ago, I heard of a dating site doing the opposite of this. They normally sent periodic digests and newsletters to their users to try to increase engagement, but if a user went a certain number of months without logging into their account, but still allowed monthly fees to be charged, they were labeled as a “sleeping giant” in the database. Once in this state, they would not be contacted by the site for any reaso…
I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…
You can "log into" a London TFL "account" that is effectively just your credit/debit card. That means that, at least in theory, Stripe could let you log in to a "shadow" account as a card holder.
I think the problem is that Stripe (and others) don't want to upset merchants by making it possible for people to cancel "fixed term" subscriptions, where the merchant claims the customer has entered a contract to pay for X months.
Agreed entirely though - I would really like to see privacy.com style "limited authentication value/merchant card numbers" take off more and become a "default". This has added privacy benefits too, as it means for anyone other than the CC issuer, it will become very difficult to link digital transactions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Economist did this to me. $5/mo and then auto renewed at something like $250/yr. All my credit cards are just auto pay full balance every month, and I don't check them as often as I should. Noticed the charge last month, found out they had been charging me for years for their digital subscription.
Check if your local library offers ebooks and emagazines it might include The Economist. I am member of the Westminster Library here in London and they have The Economist for reading via RBDigital: https://www.westminster.gov.uk/ebooks-emagazines-and-audiobo... Have to admit RBDigital ain't the best reading experience but good enough to read The week and The Economist for free :) I even have PressReader access so man…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…
Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.
I believe Visa has started working on requiring platforms "Provide customers with a digital or SMS cancellation method", though due to Covid it's been pushed back a year [1]. 1. https://support.stripe.com/questions/2020-visa-trial-subscri...
I always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes. Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it’s better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts. On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.
Amazon did this for me back in 2005 when they introduced Prime. I used the free trial for an order (to get it in two days), but then didn't order anything else and forgot to cancel. They sent me an email that they weren't going to charge me because I hadn't used it, but I was free to sign up in the future if I decided I wanted it. It was so refreshing, it made me a lifelong customer.
You can't do anything on the Amazon store without being goaded into signing up for Prime and having to triple check what you are clicking on during checkout to make sure you don't sign up by mistake.
My wife already has a Netflix subscription despite Amazon's attempts to hook her on Prime (I'll take credit for stopping that). After this this news it seems it was definitely the correct choice.
I always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes. Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it’s better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts. On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.
Their action both removes a problem on their side and is good for customers. Win-win. So probably not entirely altruistic (nothing is), but at least partly.