I've never been able to cancel any subscription with ease, so nowadays I always use Privacy to get temporary credit cards. When I want the subscription cancelled, I try the provider's website, if it doesn't work, I just cancel the card all together.
Yes we all have a credit score - it's mainly used to measure your ability to borrow and repay debt and will influence whether a company loans to you and the interest rate on said loan.
It's not (yet) as aggressive as the social scoring system in China if that is what you were alluding to...
Do you not have a similar system where you are from? How would the above be decided for you?
Here in Norway you're evaluated/scored based on some metrics like income, job security, job prospects, education, assets, debt, defaulted debt in the past, fixed expenses, etc. I think when Americans talk about "credit score" they talk about something completely different, namely their insane system where your score is (positively) affected by taking on and managing credit card debt. In that fucked up world, two debt-free people with the same income will be "scored" differently if one of them happens to use a CC to buy all his groceries and pays off the card each month, and the other buys the same groceries on debit. Surely you don't have that insanity in the UK, do you?
Banks giving out loans will look at the data behind the score along with a bunch of other factors. It's very possible that if Experian say person A is average and person B is good, a bank may decide to give Person A a better rate on a loan based on different data, or different weighting of the data.
LMAO talk about bias! If anything he's describing the the credit scoring system implemented in the U.S. ...
Debt collectors got in touch years later asking for £50.
I said, "fine, send me a copy of whatever bill I supposedly didn't pay."
They didn't have it. "We don't have any documentation, just pay us."
Escalated to a complaint and they dropped it.
I'd do the same again, but could totally understand why some people wouldn't. YMMV.
how can that leave you with bad credit score if you never gave them your social security ( or equivalent) ?
What part of Europe has credit scores?
Also you can’t just send an collections agency with huge fees, there’s laws against that. At least in the Netherlands
Typically if don't pay a bill you'll get a few months to rectify with fees tacked on, then internal collections will happen or it'll be sold to a collection service.
In both cases you'll get letters and eventually if the amount is high enough or the debt other otherwise motivated, a summons for pre trial mediation and then a civil suit.
Which part of Europe are you from?
No problem, right? I'll pay up on the account, re-activate, and work out. Nope, they wanted to charge me a reactivation fee. I said "no" and left. Never paid them another dime.
What a stupid business.
For what it's worth I've never had trouble canceling anything I've subscribed to.
The contract may stipulate that the merchant is free to cancel the subscription if you don't pay for whatever reason (the card expires, the card does not have money, you chose to pay in cash and didn't have a card, whatever). However, the contract can (and usually does) stipulate that the merchant is not required to cancel the subscription in case of non-payment, and in that case the contract is valid, they owe you service and you owe them the contractually agreed payment.
On the other hand, contract law generally would assume that the subscription is cancelled if you sent them an unambiguous request in writing even if their standard process flow (e.g. requiring a phone call with a sales rep convincing you not to quite) wasn't followed - if you've sent a letter than that and stopped paying, that should be appropriate in most circumstances.
If you signed a contract for X amount of months, then I get it, you have to pay, but I always do month to month at the gym, they still make it impossible to cancel.
You probably don't subscribe to things that are hard to cancel!
Cards stop working due to fraud or lost cards all the time. Businesses must accept this as a fact of life. Forcibly dunning is a malicious business practice.
You have made cancelling through English difficult so I am communicating cancellation to you financially.
It’s funny how they listen more to the latter. The only dark pattern they have is credit reporting which has real risks if they cross a line.