Comment by mattbee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattbee | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

People see cancellation and asking for refunds as an awkward conversation. Calling a bank is easier, and Amex / other providers have buttons online to say "stop charges" or "dispute charges" - easier still, and they know where to find it.

(I just had one service I'd trialled & forgotten about ask me to arrange a ... VIDEO CHAT to cancel runs screaming)

But also - if that's what customers are doing, your cancellation button probably isn't as obvious or findable as you'd think (or people lose their passwords). And if you're a small SaaS shop, you probably don't have the time or energy to workshop the whole cancellation experience :)

idk, there's no right answer but "baffling" customer behaviour is always an opportunity to improve what you're offering.

Ugh, It's like Planet Fitness' retention strategies. They make you go into the gym that you signed up at, get a form, fill it out, then MAIL it to corporate.

When I tried to do that, they told me "Oh, we don't have any of the forms on hand, try again next week"

Fuuuuuuck that a whole bunch. They also make you do direct debit from your bank to sign up rather then put it on a ccard, to make it more difficult to just stop paying them. I only stopped giving them money when my bank (simple) changed their upstream bank and everyone got a new account number.

Yeah. When they make it hard to cancel I have no problem at all with people going through the credit card instead.

I'm thinking of one errant charge that showed on my credit card that I didn't make. I called the provided number, got a recording saying to contact them by e-mail. My bank was happy with that as having tried to resolve it with them first--the bank didn't consider contact by e-mail an acceptable alternative to the mandated 800 number.

That's a really good point. Some companies have pretty aggressive customer retention tactics. I've learned that when they ask why I'm canceling I just say "it's personal" and most of the time they let me go. But other times, they don't and it's very annoying.

Just tell them something insane, like unfortunately you're dead, or you've gone deaf, blind, and mute in spite of the fact you're talking to them in the phone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com