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Comment by macd | Hacker News Reader

It's so short-sighted too.

I signed up for America's Test Kitchen one time, because they had a nice program for learning the basics. Probably used it for a couple months, and then I was done with that content and wanted to cancel. Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled.

I actually loved the content, and would probably have resubscribed for a month here and there. (Cook's Illustrated is part of the same group and their content is also great.) But I will never do it again because of this experience.

How many people decided to get the new Playstation next time because of a frustrating experience cancelling their xbox subscription? You won't see those numbers in a spreadsheet.

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I have a similar story for internet. I tried to cancel my Xfinity (Comcast) internet service through the online chat. After being transferred several times, the person said they will do it but then disconnected right after they said that. I had to restart the process and in the end they told me I had to call. So I called and finally was able to cancel after they wasted hours of my time.

I will never use Xfinity/Comcast again in my life if I have a choice and will try to make sure everyone knows how shitty they are. Unfortunately they have monopolies in many areas and can be as shitty as they want, but if you have a choice I recommend never using them.

I can't believe that in 2021 these tactics are still legal. It's also stupidly shortsighted because in the long term I'm pretty sure they lose money by making everyone hate them. If it was easy to cancel, I would happily sign up again in the future without giving it much thought and would think positively of the company.

Edit: I also want to add that I was paying extra to not have a contract so I could easily cancel.

When I canceled my Comcast internet service, I got much less resistance from them, but this was in the days where they still had physical offices that you can go to. I took my modem and dropped it off, telling them to cancel my subscription. When they tried to give me the retention speech, I told them I had already switched providers. End of conversation.

The best way to do this in my experience is to tell them you're moving in with a partner who is already subscribed. Works equally well whether true or not.

My foolproof flowchart:

"Why are you cancelling?"

"I'm moving overseas."

"Where to?"

"I'd prefer not to say."

"Where to?"

"North Korea"

Seriously. The reason we're annoyed at them asking us is because it's none of their business.

Ask me a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

Didn't get my wife out of paying an early termination fee with Comcast.

I've heard the Comcast "retention agents" have a quota or retentions vs cancellations they must maintain, hence ask the disconnected cancellation calls.

For a time, I resorted to having an attorney cancel my Comcast service to ensure it actually happened.

But once, months after the attorney forwarded my Comcast cancellation confirmation, I received a notice from a collections agency for the exact Comcast account I had cancelled. The attorney took care of that too.

My new (and best) method for dealing with Comcast is to use a fake name and social. I've been using the cats' names for the past few years, and it works great!

I recently wanted to quit Comcast service at one of my properties, so I went online to chat. No agents available, so I just removed my credit card from the account and stopped paying. They'll figure it out eventually. And good luck of they're going to try to collect from Westley the Cat. He's unemployed.

>use a fake name and social

They let you use a fake social security #?

I recall when I signed up for 24 Hour Fitness many many years ago. They wanted my social security number, which I refused to give, so the employee just put some random number down. Turns out they needed it because my membership was a "loan" for the whole cost over X number of years, which I pay back every month with the membership fees. I have no idea how that fake number managed to get through their system.

If you want it done quickly tell them you're going to prison.

This had me cracking up, it's genius though. When I had to cancel I told them I'm leaving the country but I'm gonna use the prison line next time.

You say that, but my wife had to pay a cancellation fee to them despite the fact she was moving in with another Comcast customer.

I will never willingly use Comcast (and they don't care, because monopoly).

Or just say you're moving.

"I'm going to prison:"

Like shibboleet, but for cancellations.

They're still pulling this kind of stuff? Back in 2014 a journalist recorded an agonizing conversation with a Comcast agent who refused, over and over again, to disconnect his service without arguing. One of the most infuriating things I've ever heard: https://www.cnet.com/news/could-this-comcast-rep-be-the-wors.... Listening to it on a bad day is not advisable

What I fear is that hostile behavior like this is actually not short-sighted. I suspect in many cases these companies are pretty savvy about how their business models work, and I suspect that they are correctly estimating that they will end up ahead both in the short term and the long term by making recurring payments easy to forget and difficult to cancel. I really don't see this sort of customer ill will being that effective at scale. I will probably never pay America's Test Kitchen one penny after hearing your review, but my impression is that they still have an excellent reputation. And do you really have great alternatives? Does Playstation not use the exact sort of hostile patterns as Xbox?

This is my perspective exactly. It's hard to be mad at someone for optimizing for their own desired outcome.

I'm mad that it works.

I suspect it is shorted sighted in a sense, and not in another. The choice to prevent cancelation likely hurts the long term revenue of Microsoft and at the same time maximizes the short term revenue of that executive. He will be working somewhere else by the time that chicken comes home to roost, so it maximises his value long term.

There’s long vs short term, but I’d also add ease of calculating a decision’s value. Ironically I think a lot of the business and tech world is hamstrung by “data-driven” decision making which assumes

1. You have all the necessary data and

2. You are interpreting it correctly and completely

This is almost never true, so instead “data driven” is mostly “data covering-your-ass.” Maybe the future will yield leaders more capable of wielding data less like a cudgel, but I’m not optimistic.

What I’m saying is that it will potentially also help revenue in the long term, and that “customer ill will” won’t actually spread and turn away customers at any noticeable scale.

how do you measure that?

I'm also afraid of that, good point.

I'm a fan of Serious Eats for cooking content. Again, ATK was great except for the subscription thing. Looking at their Support page, it looks like nothing has changed with their cancellation policy[1] (the fact that you can cancel your physical magazine subscription online, but not the website subscription is hilarious). I would LOVE to know if they have support for online cancellation for California customers, that they just disable for non-California customers. I've heard of companies doing things like that.

Not sure if Playstation did the same, but Xbox doesn't make this difficult this anymore anyways. In fact, recently I started a Game Pass Xbox subscription on my xbox account and used it for a couple days. Then I realized I should do it on my main microsoft account instead (so I don't have multiple accounts anymore), so I cancelled. They gave me a full refund automatically without me needing to ask or do anything. So companies do change, although I imagine it's just easier to implement it this way anyways. Phone-based customer service is really expensive.

[1] https://www.americastestkitchen.com/support#change-membershi...

I was actually going to buy a subscription but luckily I learned about that policy and never did.

Now I use a privacy card for all subscriptions to avoid the hassle

It is the best decision for the executives that are in the position that they are in right now and for their foreseeable future. Now for the decades to come? Probably not.

I was able to switch to a new company with transparent simple billing and I will never go back to Comcast even if they offer me a better deal on a better product.

Their customer service policies were horrible and anti consumer. They also routinely throttle certain types of traffic. BitTorrent and Xbox were both verifiably throttled for me during different periods of being a customer of theirs. They increase billing every few months until you complain.

I had to constantly fight to prove that my modem was owned by me. And they just kept adding it back as their equipment and charging me a monthly fee for it. They wanted me to prove I bought it. Wanted to know where I bought it. Etc. I had to call and prove that I indeed bought and paid for it myself numerous times.

Point being. I will never go back. I suspect many others will not go back either once given another option. And options are coming through community fiber projects, 5G and Starlink to some of the areas where Comcast has been the only option.

I once got a marketing email from British Airways with no "unsubscribe" link, I emailed back telling them to take me off their list as I never asked for marketing emails when I booked my ticket.

The crazy thing is they replied, but refused to take me off the list unless I sent them an actual physical letter in the post. A few emails in they claimed it was due to a "technical" issue. That BS annoyed me so much, I am now into the 3rd decade of my own personal British Airways boycott

Edit: I realise that's insane but it makes me giggle everytime I deliberately don't book BA, and I wonder to myself how much money I would be willing to loose by going for the next most expensive ticket, just to keep my boycott going

I engage in petty boycotts like this.

Even if it’s PEANUTS to them. I feel better, because at least I’m not participating in perpetuating a shitty system.

I feel especially good about it when those companies are ubiquitous and hard to avoid, because I feel rather righteous against an all encompassing behemoth that likely would have got my money otherwise.

> The crazy thing is they replied, but refused to take me off the list unless I sent them an actual physical letter in the post. A few emails in they claimed it was due to a "technical" issue. That BS annoyed me so much, I am now into the 3rd decade of my own personal British Airways boycott

I'm surprised BA even had email in 1991 or earlier. Since britishairways.com doesn't even make an appearance in the Wayback Machine until late 1998, perhaps we can forgive them their anachronistic practices of the day.

Sorry if this makes everyone feel older... but the 2000s, 2010s, and now 2020s... makes three distinct decades.

Thanks for the perspective.

If someone says they are "into the 3rd decade of" something (for example, programming experience), I would generally assume that means 30 years or more.

But what you're saying is that it could mean as little as 11 years, e.g., from 2010 to 2021 (yes, 2010 is still part of the '00 decade¹ and 2021 marks the beginning of the '20s, strange as that was to me).

¹ https://www.farmersalmanac.com/new-decade-2020-or-2021-10090...

To me, the natural interpretation (at least in contexts where calendar-decades don't have special importance) would be 20+ years. The first decade is the first ten, the second decade is the second ten, and the third decade begins after that.

"into the n-th decade of X" sounds like "n-th decade of X has started but not fully completed yet" meaning "n-1 full decades + something" for me (non-native speaker)

Yes that's a great point, I was trying to remember when it happened and I think I was about 23 which would make it 21 years ago.

It's much more fun for me to think of that as "in to the 3rd decade", rather than just over 20 years ago.

I just mark as spam, every time. Hopefully it tanks their deliverability a bit.

I'm glad I'm not crazy, or at least not alone in my craziness !

I end up engaging in the same type of behaviour with companies that also do not make unsubscribing obvious, or, worst of all, have slightly annoying GDPR-mandated tracking-denying UIs. Trying to get me to go through two sub-menus and not having a "Deny all" toggle ? Good, good, good. See how petty I can get, $COMPANY !

>I once got a marketing email from British Airways with no "unsubscribe" link

I just use Gmail's "Report as Spam" feature in these cases. If enough people do it when they can't unsubscribe easily, it's gonna start eating into their deliverability.

I know the majority opinion in the US is "less rules is good", but as a counter point: European consumer protection laws prohibit this, if you can sign up online it's mandatory to offer online cancellation without extra hurdles. Sometimes having some rules is a good thing...

I want to hit that sweet spot where my bad behavior is unconstrained by the rules but everyone else's bad behavior is.

Europe also goes through the pain of developing rules and laws that are incredibly detailed and specific. US just doesn't have that culture. The law will be vague and it'll require at least a few lawsuits before it gets settled as to what they actually mean. This and the general misuse of lawsuits (I mean "Do not iron while wearing the shirt") here is why people are against laws.

That's the different between Civil and Common Law. Common law also has its good points. It's more flexible and grows organically. Whereas Civil Law is more rigorous and programmatic.

That's interesting if true, because my gym in France (Neoness) just made me turn up in person to cancel my rolling monthly subscription, despite the fact that I signed up on line. (Obviously I will never, ever be giving them my money again regardless)

As far as I'm aware the letter of the law is you can cancel with a formal letter (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception), and that's the most bothersome it should ever get. They shouldn't have the right to ask that of you, and it's likely they're just taking advantage of people.

Do you have a reference for that? Struggling to find one, and very interested.

Here is an English version of something the Dutch regulator wrote: https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-consumers-should-be-a...

And the English version of the government website about it: https://business.gov.nl/regulation/automatic-renewal-subscri...

Which says: "Consumers must be able to cancel their agreement in exactly the same way as they signed up for them."

As well as disallowing an automatic fixed term renewal. After an initial contract the customer must be allowed to cancel at any point not just yearly. This one had a big impact on the telecom industry a couple of years ago.

This is one reason I won't purchase a subscription any longer unless they accept Paypal, which makes it ridiculously easy to terminate recurring payments to them (easier than calling my credit card company to dispute a charge). Having such a kill switch was how I was able to cancel my NYTimes subscription (another org notorious for making it impossible to cancel) without going through the same kind of hassle of dealing with a sales rep trying to keep my account.

Not just short-sighted, these sort of things is why I don't try anything that involves a subscription. That is also why I make them pay the Apple Tax and subscibe through Apple instead.

>It's so short-sighted too.

No it's not. The VP is maximizing their bonus and career growth within the company. That is likely tied to relatively short term metrics and especially to not having drops in metrics.

Just to be clear, you confirmed that it was a short-sighted decision.

No, there is no negative long term consequence for the VP so it is likely the optimal decision from both a short and long term perspective.

I guess you're right ....or anyway, it's only short-sighted if you're not a complete piece of shit

Engineers often practice resume driven development. This is basically the VP version of that. Maximizing personal goals over the goals of a bunch of stock owners that would fire you in a heart beat if it increased their share price.

Maximizing personal goals over the goals of a bunch of selfish jerks who just want to use you is one thing. Maximizing personal goals at the actual certain major direct expense of your users is being a piece of shit

Similar story. I contributed to This American Life monthly for awhile. I had set it up online. I wanted to switch credit cards and could find no way to do it (they had redesigned their website). I couldn't even find a number to call. Sent some random emails with no response. I think I ended up changing my old credit card number and I'm now very, very skeptical about reoccurring payments.

On the other hand, it's quite well-known how easy it is to stop/start a Netflix subscription.

> Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled.

I haven't been in this situation, but I always imagined that there is a simple way out: send them a certified letter instructing them to cancel your subscription. If they continue charging after that, it's chargeback time.

Any opinions on whether or not this would work?

The answer would be in the user agreement. If it does not enumerate permissible ways of cancelling, then yes. Otherwise idk but probably not. Contract language which limits methods of cancelling is likely enforceable unless there’s a statute prohibiting it.

You can also just chargeback the charge on your credit card. You’ll probably win if they make it hard to cancel and they’ll get the message fast

That has worked for me before. A company which explicitly said they do not process cancellations via support form or email. I sent an email saying I wish to cancel and I consider the email reasonable notification and I will chargeback any further charges. They cancelled the account.

Chargebacks are inadvisable in case there is digital content associated with the account. In every terms of service I've ever read there is a clause saying the consumer cannot perform chargebacks. They're likely to nuke your account for "fraud" if the bank reverses the transaction, potentially causing thousands of dollars in losses.

So DRM is once again shown to be evil.

And digital "purchases" aren't really purchases.

>there is a clause saying the consumer cannot perform chargebacks.

I'm pretty sure a business that accepts credit cards cannot decide to 'opt-out' of chargebacks!

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

Says all purchases are final. You may only request a refund and they reserve the right to deny it. Forcing it via chargebacks basically locks your account.

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psn-terms-of-service...

Reserves the right to suspend and terminate accounts associated with chargebacks.

> It's so short-sighted too.

> How many people decided to get the new Playstation next time because of a frustrating experience cancelling their xbox subscription

If you make it hard to unsubscribe when people are short on time/money/interest, they will probably be less likely to resubscribe when they have the time/money/interest.

Long-term customers on something like Xbox Live have a larger incentive to resubscribe to recover access to their game library.

On the other hand, random web site X is probably just looking to churn through subscribers.

It's something of a tragedy of the commons; the incredible difficulty of unsubscribing from (everything that's a monthly bill) makes people wary of subscribing to anything.

It is not short-sighted and I think it's a disservice to spread that theory because then people can just shrug and say: "a more profitable & moral company will outcompete them". If you instead believe that locking people in is profitable, the next step would be to make laws against it (if you signed up one way you need to be able to cancel via the same method; phone, internet, fax).

While I suspect in most cases (at least for smaller brands) making it hard to cancel pays off I 100% agree there is a measurement problem.

If you are optimizing for money made in the next month - or even next two years - then by definition making it hard to cancel will bring in more money. But it does hurt the brand long term (which is harder to measure)

In 2008 or so I had a bad experience canceling Sirius Radio before they were Sirius/XM and before it was offered by Car Manufacturers, now I refuse to subscribe on any car I own simply because of that experience.

It is only true if you measure it. ;)

Companies rely too much on analytics.

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