So why can't we simply refuse to pay? We should be able to just cancel the payment and that should be the end of it. They'll cancel the service for us when they see we didn't pay for it. No user interaction necessary.
Gotta be careful with online service accounts though. Doing charge backs actually violates their terms of service and will probably get people's accounts banned/deleted. Not a good idea to do a charge back on something like a Steam account with over $2000 spent on it. The woes of DRM...
Their refund policy is generous. If you haven't played the game for less than 2 hours, you can get a refund, no questions asked. Normal customers generally don't need to apply chargebacks because of this policy.
Credit card thieves however, make purchases that are charged back eventually. Steam goes thermonuclear on such accounts, reducing the incentive for credit card fraud on their store.
Maybe in cases where the fraud is proven. After the consumer buys tons of stuff on an online store, the company shouldn't be able to just delete their accounts unilaterally just because of one chargeback. There's a huge power imbalance here and consumers need protection.
> Their refund policy is generous.
What they offer is the bare minimum really. And they had to be condemned by a court of law in order to implement that policy. They also suffered zero consequences for years of consumer exploitation with their sales plus lack of refunds strategy in order to trap impulsive buyers. It's not a coincidence that Steam sales became a lot less generous after the refunds policy was implemented.
For example, your Chase card pays Piracy.com. Some vendor makes an unauthorized charge on your Privacy card. Now you have to deal with Privacy's policy instead of your bank's policies to dispute
They can still send your account to collections or ding your credit record, but you can still refuse to pay; ultimately the only way they legally force you to pay is by going through the courts system but I expect that if you have documentation of your (unsuccessful) efforts to cancel the case should be in your favor (which is why this will never reach the courts in the first place).
Because legal consumer protections in the US are not very strong, and if you are wronged, you are instead supposed to go to arbitration, or file a lawsuit.
I shouldn't have to "cancel my gym membership". I just stop giving them money and my keycard stops letting me in. I shouldn't have to remain eternally vigilant with my credit card statements lest someone keeps pulling money from it, that simply shouldn't even be something that is possible.
So bizarre. This kind of one-way certainty is what I like about cash and thus Bitcoin. For example, it's kind of win-win that more shady websites (file lockers, mega.nz, porn, etc.) tend to use Bitcoin because it's also a weight off your shoulders.
I mean, I know it's a dreamland. It could come about if contracts between businesses and consumers are basically regulated into standardisation as they should be.