Hacker News Reader

Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

Speaking to this myself - I was blown away by Masterclass letting me do this, after I forgot it would renew. I responded to their "hey you've been charged" email with something like "I forgot about this and didn't mean to renew". In perhaps ten minutes I had a cancelation notice and refund.

Way more likely to get their stuff again. Bonus points for not sending the bill from some faceless "no reply" address.

View on HN

For what it’s worth: I’ve been considering trying out Masterclass because their content seem great, but worried that something will come up and I’ll be locked into a yearly contract or something, so I never tried.

Your comment made me confident that I should.

I think it really depends on what you want to get out of it. There's content that is just a treat and fun to watch, but the idea of it being a "class" is rather disingenuous. Like, are you really going to become a composer after watching 6 hours of content? Or a rock climber?

But the stuff that is set up where you can have a chance at succeeding by practicing what you are seeing really does work. I was gifted a subscription and because of it watched the Thomas Keller series of cooking. I had never cooked before, but I have tried just about every recipe of the series a few times over, and no joke I've been able to produce truly REALLY fine dining experiences at home. Those lessons, for instance, are super didactic, build cooking up from first principles, show you all the steps, etc. It is fascinating content.

And then, for instance, watching some of the other stuff, like rock climbing, for example, can also just be fun. So, all in all, I think depending on what your profile is and what your expectations of it are it can actually be worth it.

If Masterclass were scummy with their cancellation policy, OP would not be able to see for themselves. A frictionless policy allows people to experiment with services. My wife and I subscribe to one streaming service at a time because of that.

I had a great experience with Audible. I switched from Audible UK to Audible US but forgot to cancel the former. After six months I noticed I had 6 credits I didn't want. I sent one short e-mail explaining what happened and within 15-30 minutes I got a response that said they'll refund everything.

I’m glad you had a good experience, but IMO the way Audible works is a mess of dark patterns to begin with. If you stop paying for one month you loose all your credits, so when I’m not reading as much I end up in a bind where I can’t cancel, but if I don’t cancel I get deeper in a hole.

You can pause a subscription, but only once every couple years and only for 90 days, and the option is hidden.

I will say that maybe they’ve updated things, because I went to cancel and it said “you have x amount of credits, would you like to pause for y time in order to keep them”. In no way was it hidden. I hate the credit system and the fact that they go away, but pausing was encouraged

Right, it doesn't show the option until they basically think you're about to cancel anyway.

Once I unsubscribed from Audible I started receiving email every 1-2 weeks with 60-70% discounts for couple of months. So I’ve been subscribing/unsubscribing to keep getting nice discount

A “you’re about to be charged” email would be friendlier and give the customer a feeling of more control. That’s what we do. (We of course will also refund the charge if you email us after it happens.)

I love that idea. Can you imagine we had a standard around this? For example: Monthly payments - notification could go out >24 hours before the transaction will occur.

They sent those too FWIW, I had just ignored them.

Email is a two-way medium. No reply addresses are a terrible dark pattern

Reply on news.ycombinator.com