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Comment by tgtweak | Hacker News Reader

I have one that is even better. Bell Canada. They require you to speak to the "loyalty" team before you can have a service cancelled. That team is only available by phone. That team has a 1 hour wait time during the hours that they are open. That team likes to hang up on you. That team calls you back from numbers that cannot accept calls. That team is not available by chat or email and every other department has no access in the tools to effectively cancel a service.

I escalated to the crtc and opened a case. I got a call back from someone who was very good at apologising for this policy but was at the same time very clear that this was within their legal rights as a service provider.

Super convenient that I can sign up to any service with one click though.

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Why don't just send them a letter and block their debits on your account?

This is a French perspective where such a reaction would be normal. I did it twice, one company called to say I am in the wrong, I asked them to please repeat so that I can record that for the lawsuit.

They hung up and never called back.

>Why don't just send them a letter and block their debits on your account?

Bell Canada and other big Canadian corporations have direct access to credit report records. If not paid, they will spoil your credit report. A credit report is essential in Canada for things such as credit cards, mortgage, car loan, and sometimes even for renting an apartment or home. With a poor credit report score all this would become more expensive or even unavailable.

Customer service provided by large corporations in Canada is sometimes absurdly poor, but you can't do much about it because there are simply no reasonable alternatives.

Yes indeed, we do not have this concept of credit score. And a company has the access to your account you allow them to have (via Direct Debit). An access you can shut down anytime, that bank must do it (this is usually via the web site) and then it becomes a problem between you and the company.

Same goes for a credit card, you can ask you ban for a reverse charge and disallow any further charges from that company.

This credit report thing is a real pain in the US/Canada, from what I see in various posts and comments.

I've had a very similar experience with Fido Solutions a few years ago.

When I eventually gave up and called, the representative tried to convince me not to cancel by describing the various scenarios in which emergencies could happen (including my family getting hurt) and I wouldn't be reachable without the phone plan.

Jesus, that's some Oracle level of customer intimidation.

I had a gym that you could not cancel over the phone but required letter (preferably certified) to their main office to cancel.

It seems like at least half of the gym chain business model is to get people to pay without actually using the gym, so that seems entirely consistent.

There are lots of businesses with this model. The correct way to deal with them is to exclusively use real credit cards, and to either threaten or immediately reverse charges from the financial institution's side as soon as anywhere near this level of shit is pulled.

This wreaks fear into most merchants, not only because fraud policies at banks greatly favor the buyer, but also because too many reversals within a certain period can cause a payment processor to charge higher rates on all transactions indefinitely, sometimes even if the merchant always cooperates.

Edit: Also usually works with most check cards, but I've come close to losing with them a couple times, whereas real credit cards are practically bulletproof in my experience unless you're just attempting some kind of egregious fraud.

Yep, and too high of a reversal score with MasterCard and Visa will get your processing shut down completely.

I’ve had a gym that required you to show up in person to fill in a form to cancel - really enjoyed finding this out after I moved abroad.

For most online services i use disposable cards that i can block any time.

If they use invoice based billing then i make sure it's easy to cancel.

Don't support businesses with shady practices.

Agreed - see my other comment for this advice

How does one get disposable cards? Bank of America had this temporary credit card number feature, but they got rid of it (last year I think).

The other thing I learned - if your card is lost and you get a new credit card, I thought I had to update the number for the subscriptions. Nope, some services like Comcast knew my new number automatically, while others didn't. I don't know how this works.

Privacy.com will generate temporary debit card numbers with easily controlled access rules. It's a lot like BofA's old service.

Anyone know of a UK equivalent? This looks really useful.

Revolut is a UK based firm (also here in Australia now) that can set up virtual cards for you under your debit account.

Oh I just hate Bell Canada so much.

Isn't it one thing when a faceless corporation does this, and another thing when a startup is doing this to learn about why customers are churning so they can improve their product?

Yes, the difference is the scale of abuse.

And also the intention?

Big companies like Comcast are just doing this to extract every penny.

A startup trying to survive and make their product better for customers--or fix something that went wrong--is completely different situation IMO.

I’ve dealt with companies where the “cancel” option really just meant contacting support.

If I need to do anything more than sending the message (on my own schedule - this part is important, I manage my personal life on nights and weekends) saying “hi, I’d like to cancel please” in order to actually have service cancelled and billing stopped, I’m likely to be frustrated and not give any feedback.

I’ve had very positive experiences with reps replying to confirm my service was cancelled, and then initiating a quick conversation about why I asked for that. I’m usually happy to offer at least some quick feedback, because I didn’t feel like I was being held hostage.

I’d still prefer virtually any other no-contact mechanism for ending an agreement for consumer services, though. Offer me winbacks if you want, add an optional exit interview to the process. But really, please don’t gate my ability to end an agreement I’m theoretically able to cancel at any time behind a manual process that’s any more difficult than my signup was. The intent is different but the end result is the same for the customer.

It's important to be reasonable about this, though. Email isn't secure, and anyone could send an email pretending to be you. If there are irreversible consequences to cancelling, such as deleting personal data held on the service, not only would it be irresponsible to accept an unverified email message as a cancellation request, it could actually be illegal in various places (under the GDPR, for example).

Not providing a straightforward cancellation option via a website where the customer's identity has already been confirmed using their normal credentials is a different matter entirely.

For sure - that message should be via whatever the secure channel for support happens to be, if someone is going this route. I appreciate someone doing something a bit more robust than “tweet at us and promise you are you who say you are”

Email isn't secure, but neither are phone calls.

If a customer emails to cancel, just email back a cancellation link that requires signing in. I think that's a good middle ground.

Sure, but you can exchange credentials over the phone with acceptable safety in most situations, after which it's reasonable to accept that the other person is who they claim to be.

Obviously if someone does email asking to cancel, a suitable method of cancellation should be explained to them.

I don't see how being a startup justifies making cancellation incredibly difficult. Whether it's a giant "extracting every penny", or a startup "trying to survive", it's just editorialization. They made it difficult, so less customers would cancel. Less customers cancel, more money retained.

I'm okay with an optional questionnaire, and I often fill them out when I cancel a service. But if it wants me to call to cancel, and especially if it deliberately makes the call longer and unbearable, I have all the reasons to be angry about it. I don't care if it's a struggling startup. A startup is an organization, not an actual life; I'm not going to pity it.

Obviously, an optional questionnaire is not as effective as forcing a call onto the customer. But it's the right thing to do.

> I don't see how being a startup justifies making cancellation incredibly difficult.

True. I'm questioning where is the trade-off and balance between making it more difficult to cancel vs. trying to fix what's wrong.

For me, the line is an optional survey.

Why should someone who wants to be an ex-customer care that you want to improve things for your customers? You’re not entitled to my time anymore than a big company.

Customers owe a service provider nothing, be them a massive corporation or a garage startup. ALL customers have the right to walk away without a word of feedback.

Yeah I agree. So are you saying the problem is with "call to cancel" itself or with the response the OP got from customer service rep when he emailed them?

The problem is the "We do not acknowledge any cancellation requests without a phone call"

It doesn't make much difference. It's still reprehensible to make it hard to cancel.

Let people cancel, confirm they've cancelled, and then ask for feedback. Put a feedback box on the confirmation page, imvite them to reply to the confirmation email. If you really must know, send a letter, and make one phone call (leave a message when they don't answer).

Anything else is abuse, and they're leaving you because you're abusive.

I thought we are doing this free market thing here ;) So just send them an offer of a large discount in return for feedback. Simple, not expensive, not intrusive - win win.

Baremetrics is not just a startup anymore. Last month, they were sold to Xenon Partners, a private equity firm that applies the same aggressive sales strategy to all of the companies in its portfolio. That excuse no longer holds.

https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics

https://xenon.io

Startups are faceless corporations.

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