381–390 of 845 posts
I had a 20 minute conversation with what obviously was a bot (taking a painfully long amount of time for answers) to cancel an online subscription
Usually, hitting # like crazy will do that trick.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions Glad more people are realizing this. It's harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left since the biased coverage feeds into their worldview...in my opinion it's artificially solidified their confidence on how "correct" they feel they are about political topics. The next step in this realization is nothing to do with one-sided reporting, it's the massive scale…
The right don't have agenda-pushing affect their world view? Huh? There was recently an attempted insurrection based on fake news, you know. I must say though that Fox News has gotten downright rational (on all things) since then. Politically biased, sure, but they're actually news lately.
If anything that’s all the more reason to be very mindful of the same effect occurring in other media publications.
Here’s a kicker: once canceled, your card stays on file. But there’s no way to access that credit card management page anymore because you’ve canceled the subscription. How can you get back to the credit card management page? By signing up for the subscription again. Can you remove the credit card from file at this point? Nope!! That’s right. They have your credit card forever if you put it in once.
Otherwise, be European :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I loved Simple Bank so much. No such fees; too bad they are shutting down.
Perhaps that's why they are shutting down?
I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of prin…
Which other paid news publications do you prefer over the NYT?
Not surprising, and honestly I didn’t think it was that bad comparatively speaking. Try canceling you home cable or your mobile service and see how that goes :) That’s no excuse though, ideally we would be able to cancel any service we want through an online form, but in reality that is a pipe dream. Most companies will take this as a opportunity to make a pass on you with a sales person. And honestly, it is their pr…
I always tell them I'm moving out of their service area. Sometimes it's the truth, but if not, they're not going to expect to convince me to move somewhere else, and I'm not going to be able to convince them to start service somewhere they don't cover; although sometimes they do ask for the address. If you're not actually moving, it may help to have a known non-covered area in mind; although I like the upthread suggestion of incarceration.
Imagine having a business model so fragile that your only line of defense is to obscure the cancellation process through these tactics. Do they really think that they can curve their churn this way? I mean best you’re doing is getting maybe another month or so of revenue from a customer who is just pushing the pain of cancelling because they are busy or lazy. And at the end instead of getting what could be a dormant…
Imagine having a business model so fragile that your only line of defense is to obscure the cancellation process through these tactics. Do they really think that they can curve their churn this way? I mean best you’re doing is getting maybe another month or so of revenue from a customer who is just pushing the pain of cancelling because they are busy or lazy. And at the end instead of getting what could be a dormant…
I wonder if this isn't a profitable practice though. However much annoying these processes are (I had to suffer an identical Financial Times cancellation process last week) They know how much it costs to take cancelling users through an account specialist and presumably they get enough people to continue subscription to make it worth while. A continuing paying customer now is worth far more than someone who may subsc…
Thousands of Americans Waste $348 a Year on Subscriptions They’re Not Using [0]
It makes perfect sense to have a 'shield' that will minimize the 'quitters'. And this article focuses on streaming services only.
People who want to leave a service are probably NOT coming back. So an effort to keep vs lose forever has little downside.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/budgeting/americ...
Edit/addition: regarding your ".. I wonder if this isn't a profitable practice though." Well they keep doing it, so.. at some point they ran the numbers and they saw it is better for them. Perhaps in 10y this may change, we will notice by the change of corporate practices. Profit will determine this.