Of course. It’s a Murdoch newspaper they’re the shittiest of shit tier capitalists.
It’s on purpose I think. I’ve been trying to cancel my alarm system for a house I no longer live in, and every time I call I wait on hold 1-2 hours minimum.
If I get through, I get transferred for some reason, five times once.
Twice now they just hang up on me.
I can’t issue a chargeback to the bank because they said they’ll just send me to collections.
They claim there is no way to cancel via mail or email, even though I know there is, the thing is you have to navigate the shitty tree and escalate it in a way where they will allow you to cancel that way.
Fuck companies that do this.
Stop paying
Did you read my comment? I tried and they threatened to send me to collections.
But that same person couldn’t cancel my account, but they could transfer me! Rinse, wash, repeat.
Send them a certified letter, wait a week and then call. Record the call, tell them it’s recorded and mention the letter. Tell them that your account is cancelled and you’re no longer paying. Then don’t pay, and or charge back. If they threaten to send you to collections, let them. If they actually do, just tell the collection agency the debt is invalid and send them proof.
Just don’t pay. I have had to do this a handful times in my life, and it has never hurt my credit score or went anywhere, never even needed the evidence I collected. Collections will just give up after a while, and if it somehow ever does become an issue you have all the proof you need to show its not valid debt. But, it likely won’t actually go anywhere.
I did have one really annoying collection agency one time that really didn’t seem to want to let it go. So I started generating invoices for my “research time” and send it to them. When they would call I would start the call by saying “by continuing this conversation, you agree to pay for research fees”. Not sure if that did anything or they just coincidentally gave up… I was kind of hoping their AP department would just blindly pay the invoices for my time haha.
That sounds like the kind of conversation worth recording and taking to a lawyer. I can’t imagine a call that goes “Hi, I’d like to cancel my service. What do you mean you can’t do that? No one at the company can help? I’ve been on the phone with 4 different reps. Fine, I’ll just call my card to stop paying. What do you mean you’re going to send me to collections?!” wouldn’t get done kind of positive movement.
Absolutely. I’m actually working with a lawyer now and am involved in correspondence with the company. Hence why I haven’t named and shamed them (yet). It’s progressing slowly, but positively in my favor. It’s just annoying that it had to come to this.
Could you please name the company, so we all can avoid them in the future?
Once things are settled with my current legal crap, I’ll gladly share it. But I’d rather not right now, just in case.
If you’re in the US: https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2022/11/tried-cancel-service-couldnt-learn-steps-take
If not, maybe your government has similar steps?
Did that article have steps when you read it? For me it just says Vonage sucks and got sued and check out cancelation policies before you sign up.
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Just try getting your card removed from Adobe
I just cancelled the automatic payment from paypal. Should do the job. If I stop paying, then they can’t shove their service down my throat and claim I should pay. That’s the plan…
I had to get a new credit card replacement. That sums it all. Yes, I called support, and they did not help either.
They want it to be difficult to cancel. Shit like this should be illegal.
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In a lot of places, it is. They have laws requiring the ability to unsubscribe using the same method/medium as you subscribe.
It was made illegal in the EU years ago.
The rule is pretty simple: you have to be able to cancel a subscription the same way you signed up for it. If you used the Internet to sign up there better be a fucking button that allows you to cancel.
Just so you know, you posted this 3 times.
Here in Paraná there’s a rather old law against that too, from 2007. Back then the concern was phone companies and credit card companies doing it, but the law was worded in a surprisingly sensible way, so it protects customers against online roach motels too. I’ll coarsely translate it from Portuguese, (sourced from p203):
Law #15627, 18/Sep/2007
*Enforces that providers of continued services are required to ensure to customers the ability to request the cancellation of the service through the same means which the acquisition was requested, as specified.
- Article #1 - Providers of continued services are required to offer to customers the ability to request the cancellation of services through the same means which the acquisition [of said services] was requested.
- Article #2 - Furthermore they should provide cancellation means through phone, internet, or mail.
- Article #3 - For the effects of this law, as “continued services”, without implying exclusion of similar [services]:
- I - subscription of newspapers, magazines, and other periodic publications;
- II - paid television, internet providers, landed or mobile telephone lines, data transmission and aggregated services;
- III - gym academies and open courses;
- IV - capitalisation titles and insurance bonds;
- V - credit cards and “discount cards”.
It seems that the governor back then was already expecting companies to rule-lawyer and say “ackshyually we aren’t offering [service], we’re offering [same service under different name], so it doesn’t apply to us”, so the way that article #3 was worded basically lists examples, not an exhaustive list. As much as I hate that specific governor I can’t help but think that he did a good job with this law.
And California, which is like the EU of the US when it comes to consumer protection and privacy laws
Heads up - this identical comment seems to have posted three times.
Thanks. Looks like Boost still has some kinks, I got timeout messages for the first two attempts and they weren’t shown to me either.
Just a heads up you posted this 3 times
Damn, thanks for the info. I used Boost, it told me it failed/timed out the first two times and only displayed the third, successful, attempt.
I cancelled my mobile contract in Germany last month, and I had to submit in their web portal that I wished to cancel, and then call them to confirm the cancellation.
It was with Klarmobil.
Yes, Drillisch is one of the companies currently simply ignoring the law. They will probably continue to do so until they get successfully sued and/or fined into compliance.
Heads up, you posted this 3 times!
Just a heads up you posted this 3 times
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Maybe this is a little European, but just cancel the Direct Debit or block the recurring payment with your bank?
That would make you default on the payment and they’ll pass it to debt collection. Only do this if you reasonably tried everything else (and documented your attempts) before using that option.
Maybe rules are again different, but a simple subscription here wouldn’t cause a default as there was no credit agreement. Interesting to see how things differ.
wouldn’t cause a default as there was no credit agreement
It probably depends on if the bill is post-paid or pre-paid. If it’s post paid (for example, you pay at the end of the month for services provided during that month), then you do have a credit agreement.
Australia is moving to a pay management system like this soon but as of right now this shit is still valid.
Yup, this is why you should always sign up using a credit card, never your debit card or bank. You can issue a chargeback online pretty easily with most credit card companies these days, it won’t affect your credit, and the money never leaves your bank account.
It’s not that it’s too difficult, but having it this way is more inconvenient to the customer leaving them less inclined to make the call. Scummy behaviour all around.
I can increase my cellphone plan with the click of a button.
If I want to decrease it that same button redirects to a live chat where I have to talk to one of their agents.
Their agents will genuinely give you a better deal, but for some reason can’t change your plan to a lesser one without breaking your contract, causing hundreds of dollars in extra fees.
The brick and mortar agents can do it in 2 minutes with no hassle. You walk in and say I want this plan, show your id, sign the change request and you’re done.
I don’t even think they are doing it on purpose. Why would they have a button that connects me to someone they are paying to convince me to give them less money per month? They cut my wife’s bill in half because she is month to month.
It’s just Hanlons Razor. Supreme incompetence.
But it’s not Hanlon’s Razor, it is absolutely malicious. They want to make the process complicated and frustrating so you give up.
Besides, the limit of bandwidth is almost entirely artificial. Yeah, it costs some amount of money to send, say, 500 SMS messages, serve 1 GB of data, or process a 5 minute phone call. But not nearly as much as you’re paying and it’s not like they pay per SMS/GB/minute, once the infrastructure is there they pay a fairly flat amount to keep each service area running (until it’s time to upgrade but depending on where you are, that might even be publicly subsidized). So, whether you’re allowed 10 GB or 20 GB per month makes barely a dent on their cost, but getting you to pay $15 for 20 instead of $10 for 10 when $20 for 20 already isn’t an option is really good for their bottom line.
it reall ought to be illegal to not be able to cancel a service on the same interface and ease at which its joined.
I believe it is, in European countries at least.
Yup. Cancelling a subscription has to be just as easy as singing up for it.
Source: am eu citizen
so apparently it only applies to companies located in the EU? not operating in the EU, since I’m in the EU and no button
California in the US has a law that says if you signed up online you have to be able to cancel online. The rest of us need that law.
It doesn’t work on every website, but sometimes you can change your address to be in California and then magically a cancel button will appear.
This is still the case with the New York Times. Change your billing address to a Californian one and it’ll let you cancel online.
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Some gymns make you cancel by certified mail, and still deny they got it even after delivery.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
For some reason the preview for the image on this post is a bunch of colorful squares.
try zooming out more. I find that when zoomed in too far, all of it looks like colourful squares! ;)
Nah I can read it by clicking the preview to show the image but it’s humorous that black text can become yellow blue and green squares when compressed.
You’re viewing reality objectively again.
I made an account on a news site once just to test Firefox relay and my custom domain. Can’t for the life of me figure out how to delete the account. Had to set relay to just block all the emails. To the tube of like 400… In less than a month
I had a local paper do this to me a few years ago. Turns out I can ask my credit card provider to block payments to them at 2am on a Saturday and I still get access to the paper for another two months.
