Remove auto renew from my account | Hacker News Reader

Remove auto renew from my account

community.teamviewer.com

232 pointsnsoonhui113 comments

Teamviewer is a company that has absolutely thrown their reputation into the gutter after it came out their service was compromised and they continued to deny it. It's also beyond irritating that the $700 "owned lifetime" license I bought in 2014 no longer works because they shut down the servers specifically for older versions.

It's some trouble, but a quick filing in your local small claims court for the $700 would be an interesting way to get your money back and see how it plays out.

Wouldn't they just not show up, and pay the $700 charge?

Sounds like a win then.

How do you collect from a foreign company? If they don’t have a local presence, there’s no way to get the money.

TeamViewer appears to have a US presence (and likely, assets worth at least $700 plus small claims costs for seizure by the Pinellas County sheriff’s dept) in Clearwater, FL. Probably not local to OP, but more local than Germany (where TeamViewer is HQd).

Most likely. And in any case, most small claims courts don't allow the representation by counsel, and as such they're more lenient about complaints submitted. File, serve Team Viewer, show up on day of, collect default judgment or argue why lifetime means lifetime.

That's infuriating because even in this "success" case, the company won. The user lost in at least the following ways

* going down the wrong back and having to do a U-turn

* spending the physical time and labor to organize, and to go to court (just this might be over 700$ of time for some people)

Don't you get to go to court virtually nowadays ... probably using competing software :)

In a dream world: find a law firm that buys the class action from you. Given their market share and the amount in question, it should be a profitable affair.

Meta-idea: create a startup that functions as a marketplace for bringing together ideas for class action lawsuits and law firms.

The problem is that his likely payout on that lawsuit would be about 30 bucks.

You may be in interested in the domain of litigation finance then: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/17/this-young-litigation-fina...

Not quite the same thing as what you mentioned, but by creating financing that evaluates cases by their potential for a payoff, this should seed the kind of marketplace you mentioned.

Good luck getting a judgement, TeamViewer is a German startup company. You'll have to sue them here.

That's not correct, they have a US presence and sell in the US. You can't be judgment proof just by headquartering in another country, any US assets can be seized to cover judgment amount. Take the judgment to the sheriff and they will literally go seize assets for you to cover judgment.

Logmein raised the price every year until it was like $1,000 a year just to get into 10 computers. I looked at Teamviewer and noped out of there almost as fast.

Just use teamviwer 9 ? https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/Previous-versions-EN/Tea...

Teamviewer has a terrible reputation.

I dropped Teamviewer after they sent threatening emails claiming I violated their EULA. I got emails falsely claiming I was using it for commercial use, when I hadn't logged in for months. Ended up switching to Anydesk, which doesn't require an account to set up (meaning they can't spy on me or "analyse my use" as per the email below)

>WARNING: Possible Violation of EULA

>We’re contacting you as part of a license audit in accordance with paragraph 3.9 of the TeamViewer End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA regulates the use of TeamViewer software, and by downloading TeamViewer, you have accepted the terms of our EULA.

>Based on an analysis of your TeamViewer account usage, we have detected possible use in a commercial context. As our EULA states, a paid license is required for commercial use.

Also pretty cool that AnyDesk is created by the original developers of TeamViewer.

I curious - but how does a company legally prevents its employee from starting a competitor product given that the employee might have insider information?

using a non-compete agreement [1] in the employment contract or as a condition for a severance package, etc.

May or may not be enforceable depending on a million different factors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

Since TeamViewer is a German company I looked up the rules for a non-compete clause in Germany (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wettbewerbsverbot#Nach_Beendig...):

1. It can only be valid for up to two years after your employment ends.

2. Your former employer has to continue to pay you at least half of your last salary during the non-compete time.

Point 2 is interesting. From the employer's point of view, it must effectively act as a high tax on non-compete clauses, still stopping short of an outright ban.

It can't. At least not in Germany... Have you ever read the story of SAP?

What is the story? Any links?

They don't. If insider information is suspected, the company can sue, and then prove it in court. See Waymo.

This is infinitely better than automagically preventing employees from being employable after working for a specific company.

I'm pretty curious what activity they consider a commercial context. Many personal-only users probably use TeamViewer on a corporate-owned/domain-joined PC to access their personal computers from work. A decent number of personal users may even have their own domains for their home networks. And me helping a bunch of friends and family with their computers might not be significantly distinguishable from a tech support company connecting to customers.

I stopped using TeamViewer after getting hit with the COMMERCIAL USE DETECTED popup multiple times. I did exactly two things with it:

- For a few days, I maintained a connection between my personal Linux desktop and my personal Windows sidearm, because I was using both simultaneously and didn't want to shift back and forth on my desk every 2 minutes.

- Every now and then, connected to my mom's personal laptop, to reset her buggy Bluetooth headset.

That's it. Their heuristics decided I'm a commercial user. I'm guessing it's the first point that tripped them - keeping a connection mostly idle for half a day is probably not a typical thing.

Is there a term "Threatware"? Should I coin this term?

> Is there a term "Threatware"?

Yes: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Threatware%22

You may be interested to know that there exists a service called "let me google that for you":

  http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=Threatware

Same situation exactly. I tried emailing them to dispute it, or at least try to figure out what supposed "commercial use" they suspected, but nobody ever replied. Plus, I think I may have only ever used it for like 20 minutes a month to do stuff like move a recipe into Dropbox so I could share it with a coworker, or start a Steam game downloading. I guess those 20 minutes a month must have been judged to be critical business use, sufficient to earn a threatening email.

I don't miss them or their service.

Might be that you got flagged for using it from a "business IP".

I second to this. I had been a loyal customer to their service since Teamviewer 5, recommending friends and family to use the service due to the snappiness and ease to use interface. Then I got struck by the notorious COMMERCIAL DETECTED thingy and will disconnect my session every minute or 5 or straight up won't work at all.

At first, an appeal fixed that rather quickly, but after 5 similar incidents in just 2 years around Teamviewer 14, they straight up deemed my personal account as commercial even though I bought the commercial version on my work computer and strictly use my personal computer as, well, personal. After a few emails back and forth, I was very frustrated about how I'm wrongly accused for something I didn't do. So my wise choice was to ditch it and head to the Zerotier + VNCServer ever since.

Recently I stumbled upon this gaming streaming called Rainway, and are quite fascinated by their approach. The stream is smooth and I might use then more.

(I'm not affliated to any companies mentioned above, this is a personal opinion and not a sales pitch.)

Edit: spacings

Same for me. I used Teamviewer 100% to be able to support my dad's PC remotely. I used it for nothing else.

One day - bam - COMMERCIAL USAGE - unable to use it any longer.

I'm so tired of these dark patterns. Like NYT not letting you unsubscribe without contacting customer support. Same with many of the food subscription services. For me this is a instant red flag. I refuse to use any services that rely on such tactics to make it as hard as possible for users to leave. It should be downright illegal.

This is why I actually like using PayPal for my payments. I hold ALL the power then, I can instantly cancel the auto renewal whenever I feel like it.

Amen to this. It's a pain as a seller, but it works out for them because I use PayPal whenever possible on a subscription requirement solely because of this.

Why is this so hard?

That is until PayPal withholds funds paid to you and cancels your account for arbitrary reasons.

This is only a problem as a seller, if you only use it to buy things then

- You are the customer (paypal makes money from transaction fees, and customers almost always have the option to not use paypal)

- Typically you don't store money in your account, so you would at most lose the ability to pay with paypal

Do this with Teamviewer, without formally terminating the account, and they'll chase you for it, including passing your case on to a legal firm ( at least, here in Australia they did ) I sent a fairly polite letter back explaining id long since stopped using the product, and all they were doing now was destroying any residual good will they had. I never heard anything back.

Wow. The last of a dying breed then! If I ever see them come up as an option I'll do well to remember this. Thanks!

The only problem is that some companies don't offer Paypal as a payment option.

True. Then there's usually someone else that does.

Hah, this is exactly how I ended up "unsubscribing" from the NYT. I first migrated my subscription from my credit card to my paypal, then used Paypal to block the payment. They then spent the next week sending me half a dozen emails begging me to re-enable payment, which I marked all as spam in Gmail.

I’ve been thinking that a dark pattern index would be really neat. Basically name and shame with deep dives. Each product is given a 1-10 value for assholery.

Would anyone else find that useful?

Dark Patterns Org [0] has a dedicated Hall of Shame. I'm all for having several places to call these patterns out though.

[0] https://darkpatterns.org/

I saw that site, but that’s the best effort so far, correct?

I feel like this might be a Patreon-friendly thing.. funding the work to have it updated at least monthly with a new deep dive and rating.

Having it updated regularly seems like an important component to me.

Like it or not, this is one of the reasons Apple's payment restrictions on the App Store are a good thing for consumers - they force all subscriptions to go through one easily accessible and cancellable portal.

I don't like it at all. They take a forced 30% cut to "protect" me from the bad guys?

30% is cheaper than my time and inconvenience.

It's also 10x the cut from a credit card processor... But sure, give away a significant part of your profit...

Because it's not just the cut from a credit card processor. It's also fraud handling, forex, invoicing, marketing, distribution, and fees for apple to operate the marketplace, plus their cut. I'm not going to defend 30% as the number, nor the _enforced_ 30% cut, but the 10x cut is not an apples to apples comparison. It's the equivalent of saying "just use OVH instead of AWS"

Now try canceling your idevice for a competitor and Apple will change your messages to white text on green so none of your friends can read them easily (due to the distribution of retinal cone cells).

> Apple will change your messages to white text on green so none of your friends can read them easily

Messages always shows the received message as black text on a grey background.

Sent messages can have blue or green backgrounds. Your Apple using friends continue to read your messages just fine. Re-reading messages they’ve sent you is a different matter.

More surprising is that someone would complain about the SMS experience in 2020 in the context of smartphones, given the breadth of rich cross-platform alternatives that do not charge by the message / picture / audioclip.

From my perspective as a user, that 30% cut is the cost of getting my business. I already trust Apple for software update and other cloud storage and I’d prefer not to have to vet another entity for handling my payments.

I see nothing inherently wrong with providing the service, but Apple shouldn't be prohibiting alternatives, or apps clearly denoting that going through Apple costs more.

People like the above might choose the Apple method, even if it costs more, for the added security layer, whereas someone might choose the lower price especially with an established and trusted party.

My government takes more than that and just pretend to protect me from the bad guys.

Oh please. As if the App Store and app ecosystem aren't riddled with dark patterns? I can't even begin to count how many times the In-App Purchases preview section of a store listing has shown misleading, incomplete, or incorrect information, and it still has no enforced differentiation between IAP subscriptions and one-time IAPs, among many other issues. And I don't see Apple lifting a finger to improve it.

I had to call them up.

Also, try to cancel the 50gb storage upgrade for 99 cents they automagically enable for no discernible reason (and it's not running out of storage space). Apparently there's some different process for that.

Apple is funneling you into services, kicking and screaming.

I know tim cook is a nice guy, but I suspect post-jobs apple has fewer appropriate checks and balances.

> I know tim cook is a nice guy

I'm very curious to hear how you learnt that.

Didn't he offer Steve Jobs his liver?

My understanding is that many countries, like some in Europe, have a law saying you must be able to cancel using the same medium you used to subscribe. So if you signed up online, you can cancel online. Same with phone, etc.

I think I've heard of similar proposals in the US Congress...but nothing that looks close to passing.

Last I heard, California was working on a law similar to that

Yes, and TeamViewer do in fact allow you to cancel online via a portal if you live in a jurisdiction that requires it. For everyone else, they use this dark pattern.

Makes it very clear that they're just trying to scam anyone they can legally get away with.

WSJ does it, too. And the NYT boasts rising subscription numbers, hah. I wonder what % of those are people who tried and failed to cancel.

And this directly bites the NYT because, if anyone there is reading, I saw your excellent AU$1/week offer just yesterday, almost signed up, then thought, nah, I’ve heard that this is a pain in the ass to cancel.

Yeah yeah they probably make more $$ from the people who forget to cancel. Screw ‘em.

Yep, I used to be a subscriber and unsubscribed. I like their work but I do not stand for dark patterns.

You can't port your cellphone number without a few things - name, address and account number.

Guess what -- cellphone account numbers are very hard to find nowadays. They don't give it out without contacting someone directly and getting transferred to someone who asks "Just curious, can I ask why you want your account number?"

Is it not on your monthly statement? ATT has it on there.

Also, given the security implications of losing your phone number, and how SMS 2FA is basically considered a legal authorization, I feel like even more friction is warranted for phone number transfers.

A friend was trying to switch from virgin mobile and they hide the account number from day 1 and you have to talk to a representative to get it.

I regularly use privacy.com when I have such concerns. Great service.

(I am not affiliated with them in any way. Just a happy customer.)

Agreed, I was going to recommend them as well. Close the card and let TeamViewer figure it out.

Sadly they are US-only.

Like NYT not letting you unsubscribe without contacting customer support

Use PayPal as the intermediary and cancel the payment in there.

I actually did exactly that :) Switched payment to paypal and then canceled. They then spent the next week sending me over 6 emails begging me to fix my payment.

I don't know if this is a recent trend, or if I've only experienced negative things in the past year or two, (perhaps in the lead up to their IPO?), but I ended up switching away from them.

They closed my account because they suspected commercial use. If I wanted to re-open it, I would need to send in a picture of my ID, and sign some legal documents attesting to my continued non-commercial use or something.

They might not care about personal users because we don't pay, but I did end up switching to different software for the commercial projects I use remote access software on.

You have any recommendations? I'm thinking of switching as well.

AnyDesk is really good.

What's got two thumbs, speaks French and loves SimpleHelp as a replacement for that turd that is TeamViewer? C'est Moi!

OTP for a license, host the server on my Infra ($5/mo) and works for 100% of my needs (training, remote support).

And once, ages ago, I asked for help to tune up their SSL settings, it wasn't in the docs. Like two days later they closed my ticket - because they had updated their docs and also sent me a direct email, asking if it was good (it was).

Another reason to use disposable debit cards. Why should TeamViewer have the ability to take money from my account without my consent?

Where do you get your disposable credit cards? All the major US credit cards cancelled their virtual account number programs ages ago. Chase had grandfathered it into ancient accounts, but unceremoniously cancelled it last month.

Also: depending on the bank, they might not respect the VAN limits that you set up, and just let the charge go through anyway. Just something to watch for.

(FWIW I helped build a VAN backend for Wells almost 20 years ago).

Whilst not a credit card per se, I’ve been satisfied with privacy.com for temp numbers that I’ve used for all sorts of subscriptions that have user hostile cancellation policies.

Check out privacy.com

I can vouch for this service as it has saved my butt often. You can link your bank account and generate your virtual cards, set limits on them, close it off automatically after a single transaction, etc.

Most Citi credit cards have this, and they just updated from a flash client so it will probably be supported for a few more years (otherwise Flash ELOing would be a great time to end the program)

privacy.com gang checking in. Use it, love it, wonder how you got by without it.

I create a new card for literally every online transaction at a different website. So I would mak a teamviewer card with $10/mo monthly limit (or whatever threshold you want).

It’s also handy for signing up to new services that let you try for 7 days then bill you. Can’t bill me! The card has no money on it, ha ha!

(You can specify $5 total limit for example.)

Capital One has "Eno"(https://www.capitalone.com/applications/eno/) which provides virtual cards and still works. I'm not a huge fan of Capital One, but afaik they are the only credit card company that offers this.

I should note that Privacy.com provides this service as well and I really do like their mission, but they have the limitation of only being able to be used with a debit card backing the account and I've also ran into some issues with their cards not working with some online vendors.

Capital One also has a browser extensions for this, including Firefox. Every time I come to a payment form on a website, it pops up and asks if I want to search for existing card numbers that match this site. If it finds one it will automatically populate the fields or ask to generate a new card, and then automatically populate the fields. I use it for everything.

In Europe some or all of the new online banks have the option to create new credit cards on the fly. One time use or keep a special card for one or two suppliers. See Revolut, Bunq, N26.

As a European I get mine from Revolut, but I guess there must be US fintechs who offer the same.

Revolut recently launched in the US

AnyDesk is similar to TeamViewer, and I believe set up by engineers that previously worked at TeamViewer. The free version is not using advertisements, just limited in features. I like it a lot.

Plus it's only one or two MB total, versus the unholy agglomeration of insanity that is TeamViewer.

Thanks for sharing. I will not be using them in the future.

I dropped TeamViewer after their security and pricing shenanigans, and switched over to AnyDesk. Same thing, but free for personal use (cheaper for commercial), easier to use interface, and what seems to be higher quality software.

Why would you trust 3rd party solutions when windows already has solutions such as QuickAssist/RDP?

QuickAssist is design to fit the exact niche teamviewer was providing by helpign with support.

RDP may be a bit more of a faffle to setup, but I have global permanent access for about 60 quid. Mainly by setting up a VPN via wireguard.

I'm surprised the company chose this route, and not Adobe's (e.g. Illustrator): to let you cancel auto-renewal any time, but to charge you a cancellation fee that is more than 2x your per month membership fee... unless you wait to cancel EXACTLY at the last month of your 12 month membership, when there is no penalty but by which point you'll probably forget and will automatically be enrolled in another year, facing the same perverse financial incentive as before.

> ... charge you a cancellation fee that is more than 2x your per month membership fee.

Isn't the cancellation fee "just" (!) the balance of your 12 month membership fees (in one lump sum)?

Yes. You sign up for 12 mo contract and pay it off in one lump sum for cancel.

Just tell them there's a bug and the software isn't working. They'll cancel in the middle of your subscription period.

I would deal with this sort of problem like so:

1. Send an email to TV support stating my intention to disable the auto renew.

2. Tell my CC issuer to block any auto payments to TeamViewer.

3. If 2 is not possible, dispute any TeamViewer charge, report it as unauthorized (which it is).

If more people do this CC companies will pressurize TV to mend their ways or block them from receiving CC payments.

Yup. Chargeback and disputes _hurt_ a lot. Even small amount of disputes might be enough for the payment processor to raise the handling rates which might translate in thousands of dollars of loss monthly.

If you sent them an e-mail notifying that if they charge you once again you'll dispute the charge, they'll (my guess begrudgingly) comply.

Worked with Adobe few years back.

There should be a federal law against auto-renew by default.

Whenever possible, I try to avoid doing business with companies that do this (which are many). The worst dark pattern, IMHO.

I manage a subscription product without auto renew. The number of customers who don't care about all the notification regarding upcoming expiry is staggering. I keep assisting them to renew during the grace period, while they put the end-users at risk of software failure. They expect us to work for them (unpaid customers) and manage all the problems that come with late rewenal (speedy releases, no testing, urgent support requests, etc). IMO we should enable auto renewal just to help them avoid this unbearable situation.

I'm not saying there should be no auto-renew, only that it should be opt-in. Auto-renew as an available option makes all kinds of sense.

While we are ex-users too, I must say that after the card was charged, I told them it was a mistake and I wanted to cancel, and they rolled back the transaction.

Ah, better than Leadpages for us. No renewal reminder email, no invoice email when charging it, just found out when doing quarterly reconciliation. Too late, too bad.

Growth teams all over the SaaS landscape, work on the gray area, to push more $s, by usually anti-customer.

either cancel the card you used, call the bank and have them disallow the charge to the card or issue a charge back. don't ever feel that a company leaves you no choice in paying them.

Easy way to implement this: https://privacy.com/

I have a horrific experience with TeamViewer as well and will never ever use them again! I just ordered it for a year and then they extended the contract without asking me or anything and just charged my credit card. SCAM COMPANY!!!

I read that thread. That's terrible. Nasty.

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