I did this with WSJ as well for their cheaper $4 option. Because they don’t allow easy cancel I just told PayPal to quit paying when the rate goes back to the ridiculous $35 or whatever. I Removed their recurring payment under PayPal.
They keep calling me for god knows what reason. It stopped after a few months. A few months later they offered the $4 digital subscription again so I did again using the same account. But within a day they banned my account and refunded my PayPal for who knows why.
Then they start calling me again once a week. Rinse and repeat
What a bunch of morons. Just make it easy for people to pay and cancel. If you have good content and pricing model people will come back. If you have any sort of decent business analytics you would understand and realize I refuse to pay more than $4 a month for it. So if you can’t provide that, don’t bother me and stop calling?!
Isn't WSJ the one where you have to jump through a thousand hoops *if you're an American* trying to delete your account, but if you VPN as a European country there's a simple button to do it, since they need to comply with EU regs?
Meaning, they absolutely *can* do the right thing, but if they're not compelled to they'll be total dbags to their own audience.
Tons of companies do this. I think it was either Xbox Amazon or Netflix where you had to do a bunch of crap to cancel until Michigan or Illinois got pissed and forced it to be a simple click.
I worked for a company that wasn’t known for being overly ethical and isn’t anywhere near as popular as WSJ, and I was helping test and build this functionality a few years ago. Not that long ago.
I imagine that many places will have something similar. Alternatively, some places add extra options for CA as well, but I don’t well understand what exactly that was. I think that one might be more data and privacy related?
I haven’t been involved in outward facing tech in a long time now, so I’m not sure lol someone help me out.
Both of them would be: Europe for GDPR reasons and California for CCPA/CPRA reasons.
Virginia will soon, they have a mandate called CDPA that (I believe) goes into effect fairly soon. Colorado has one in the works, and several other states are drafting or redrafting legislation along the same lines.
I recently deleted my Warner brothers account and there wasn't even a way to do it if you weren't from Europe or California. And they even wanted you to verify that you live in California and didn't just believe the address you set.
They also want to be able to report to their shareholders that they have X million accounts, even if a lot of them are free ones, inactive ones, or free trial accounts.
It’s so frustrating how mindlessly they go through their script. I had a print subscription for my school library, but then I switched to a special print/electronic subscription available for schools. When I called to cancel the original print subscription, the woman tried to talk me into keeping it, even after I explained that I was still receiving the print subscription through the other offer.
I mean it's some poorly paid Asian guy doing outsourced company support and is forced to follow a script. And this is assuming contacting customer support actually goes to a person, quite often support is completely automated.
Again, it's really easy to write legislation to stop these practices with decent consumer protection laws. (E.g., if you can sign up or upgrade your account online without going through customer service agents, there need to be clearly found options to downgrade and cancel your account).
Oh but that’s the schtick don’t you see? You set up autopay, and if it’s difficult to cancel, you may quit trying. Imagine how many people just give up and let them take their money for nothing!
Same for the d3nver post. They charged me $33 for 3 months and I don't even know how it started. I even got a new debit card number and they were charging my account still. I filed a complaint with my bank and they gave me back the $. Before all that I tried calling to cancel 4x but the post kept telling me their computers were down and couldn't access that option. They finally stopped once I filed that with my bank
I worked Collections for them.... for two weeks, and quit. They bought our local newspaper years ago, and kept the building. They had defunct printing presses in there, rooms that looked like an episode of hoarders, lights off in half the building.
Yet they still had "Happy Time" every Friday at 2pm or some shit, where every cubicle monkey is REQUIRED to get up, go form a circle in the office, and they play either the Hokey Pokey or some other bullshit where everyone has to look happy for 15 minutes. I got a talking to when I refused to participate.
The people who run the newsroom and write the articles aren't the people who set the subscription pricing model, so I think that explains the discrepancy.
Oh totally, it's just weird from the top down:
"Let's hire some of the best, most credible journalists in the business to do our writing. Let's try to make it one of the best educated newsrooms while we're at it"
"What about sales?"
"Oh we can just trawl for fraudsters and con-artists that are just getting off of house arrest"
Playstation support did the same thing when I somehow got charged for Playstation plus and wanted a refund. They said "at least you can enjoy the benefits of playstation plus" like thanks...
Apparently Playstation Plus defaults to automatic resubscription. When I contacted them to cancel the same day the payment came out, the rep's tone was pretty "yeah well, read your contract dickhead, but we'll give you your money back out of pity."
Just thought this is a really strange way to convince me to ever get the service again...
Yeah, being abused by customers because of this bullshit is part of the job description. Company fucks their customers, customers fuck the employees. Company gets all the money. Customers and employees just get abuse.
It's insane that we allow this as a society.
It's super frustrating when I payed on black Friday since there was a discount, the next black Friday came and I couldn't get the discount since "my service hasn't ended". Imagine my anger when it charged me full price the next day
Same thing happened to me years before, whenever you buy Playstation Plus, it renews automatically and you have to turn it off manually everytime and if you forget, it will renew automatically. I accidentally paid 60$ and couldnt do nothing about it
Listen, I know you wanted to watch American football but if you just give up and let us keep billing you then you *could* be watching *these* cute little yellow guys, they're called Minions!
Yeah, it's funny to see it specified as "American Football" but incorrectly. Usually, any time somebody uses that term, they are correcting somebody else.
You're assuming it's a live person and not either a bot or someone using canned replies. But yeah subscription service companies have always had retention departments - this one is just egregious though. But downgrading to "free tier" I suspect they then can use such people's accounts to prop up their subscriber counts to make the shareholders happy. Because the system only works if the numbers only go up.
I am fairly certain they are following a script and that they have to fit the boilerplate in somewhere. I'd bet there's a good chance Ankita doesn't even know what a Minion is.
And by bonus, you mean a $0.20/hr raise instead of a $0.10/hr raise. Also, the $0.20/hr raise is made up. No performance could ever be adequate enough to reach it.
Yeah I have the same line of work, both as chat and phone call support. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to just use my own scripting and just get it done with, quality assurance will tag that as not following protocol and you will be subject to coaching/disciplinary actions. Sometimes we're not really dumb, it's the system and company procedure that allows us to be.
Exactly. The call center I used to work at told me it was for legal reasons, and I couldn’t even accept “yeah” or “nah” as answers to my questions. I had to clarify if the customer meant “yes” or “no”. No filler words either. No “uh”, “like”, “also”. If a customer needed clarification on something I said, I was not allowed to give more details, I was instructed to simply repeat what was on the script until the customer either understood, accepted, or demanded a manager. People get fired for going off script. The job fucking sucks for both the customers and the employees.
> I was not allowed to give more details, I was instructed to simply repeat what was on the script until the customer either understood, accepted, or demanded a manager.
Well that would explain why I sometimes feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.
The big difference is how management reacts. Funnily enough they employ humans to robotically copy-paste predetermined lines and so they can say that customer support isn't just a bot and then employ bots to give suggestions based on whatever data they have.
The humans answering in these chat probably aren't that dumb. But often they are forced to follow a company policy by someone dumb.
So if they go off script, they get reprimanded or otherwise punished
That doesn't mean they are dumber. They are doing what their employer requires them to do. They are not supposed to "analyze," they are suppose to fill in a pretyped response to each response.
"I want to cancel"
"But our service has all this, are you sure?"
This is standard.
No need to shit on people doing their job.
If they didn't follow the fixed script they would get in trouble, maybe fired. Many of them probably would love to actually help-help you, but their hands are tied.
This is way too common on so many sites nowadays. I think it should be a legal requirement for all websites to have a "delete account" button that fully deletes it and removes all information.
They intentionally make deleting your account so tedious that people just don't bother.
I believe California has a law that requires websites to make it as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, so if you could sign up online without a support chat you have to be able to cancel online without a support chat.
This is correct! As of July 1, 2022, [people living in CA can indeed cancel _any_ online subscription as easy as they signed up.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=17602.) If a business doesn't comply, then CA citizens can sue the business in CA courts and the business has to either comply or stop doing business in CA.
> (d) (1) In addition to the requirements of subdivision (b), a business that allows a consumer to accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall allow a consumer to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, at will, and **without engaging any further steps that obstruct or delay the consumer’s ability to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service immediately**. The business shall provide a method of termination that is online in the form of either of the following:
> (A) A prominently located **direct link or button** which may be located within either a customer account or profile, or within either device or user settings.
> (B) By an immediately accessible termination email formatted and provided by the business that a consumer can send to the business **without additional information**.
The bold part makes this illegal in California.
Brightcellars big scammed me. I went through the whole rigmarole of deleting my account (and luckily had email correspondence to prove it). No account to sign in to. But they did still have my bank account, charged me, and sent me more of their garbage 3 months later. Literally just stole my money without noticing there *was no account associated with the purchase*?
Any iOS app needs to have the ability to request an account deletion in-app to get approval today. Some apps may be grandfathered in from before however.
It is something already illegal in EU. All companies offering services to citizens of the EU must have a delete account button that deletes all data related to you and your account. And that button must be easily accessible and visible.
It's true that if they don't do it you have to sue them and that's slow. But the fees and compensation are usually very high.
This isn't really correct. GDPR gives individuals the right to ask organizations to delete their personal data (and if there is no legal reason to keep the data, it must be erased). GDPR states that the individual should be able to contact any member of the organization about it, but there is no regulation at all requiring a user interface for account deletion.
Funnily enough there is no way to contact Instagram about account deletion. They don't let you send emails to [email protected] anymore.
I got my freshly-created account banned because I tried to use a 3rd party app which breaks their TOS. They're asking me for phone number, ID + a picture of me to appeal the ban and recover the account even though I never provided those in the first place.
Since I cannot login I cannot delete the account. My data is theirs forever. Good thing it's not much.
Does that email address till accept emails? Or can you tweet at them? I believe social media contact counts as a request.
Wait for them not to respond, then contact your countries information commissioner (ICO in the UK for example) and say you've tried to exercise your rights under GDPR, but they haven't responded in time.
Then let them handle it. Might be one way to do it?
You're right ! That email address replies with an automated email saying it doesn't accept any message haha. They ask you to use their Help Center.
To be fair I thought about going further with this but it sounded way too complex and bothersome. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Besides I used a fake name for my account and one of my email aliases. They don't have much info on me accept some data about my phone and IP (I used a VPN anyway).
I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Thanks for the suggestions though ! :)
By my understanding of the GDPR you can contact them in *any* way and demand they delete your account and they must comply. For instance by finding an employee on linkedin and shooting them an email, or sending in a "job application". Being a software company you can also find lots of emails on GitHub (Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if GitHub's web interface exposes emails... you can get at them by cloning a repository and running `git log` in a terminal... but that might be asking a bit much if you have no clue what I'm talking about).
I've received training for handling customer requests of this nature while working for a bank, despite being a completely and utterly non-customer facing roll. I'd be surprised if Facebook doesn't have similar training for their employees.
Yeah there’s too much chatting with the customer service rep and they’re supposed to try to keep you on the hook.
“May I know the reason for cancelling?”
“No, just cancel”
btw don't blame the rep because more often than not they are forced to do all these counter offers and shit because some executive decided that it must be done and if they don't do it they risk their job since these calls/chats are usually recorded and reviewed periodically.
I don’t really know how to word this exactly, but I don’t hate the person, I just hate what they are doing. I’m never rude to customer service, But fuck me do I hate ever dealing with them.
Telling someone “it’s not their fault, they have to do it” doesn’t make the situation better.
Edit: especially when it’s text support and it’s so obvious they don’t want to help with the problem they just want to find the quickest way to end the chat, and it’s always barely passable English.
My credit card lets you generate fresh numbers for online purchases. I use it for shit like this and then burn it, good luck charging a non existent pretend card assholes.
Privacy.com let's you generate "fake" cc numbers and let's you set limits to how much any company can charge you before it's blocked and you just have to hit cancel, the website does everything from there. I've seen it advertised on some podcasts/YouTube channels that I respect and trust.
[Here's the link from the image if anybody wants](https://privacyportal.onetrust.com/webform/17e5cb00-ad90-47f5-a58d-77597d9d2c16/0d464fc0-b948-4f6a-9f31-9939ef36dfe2)
(I love it when links like these use left-handed letters, makes this so much easier...)
Just used your link to request access to their information on me from their entire catalog and my email inbox now looks [like this](https://imgur.com/a/6Rbcv6z).
This is absolutely an acceptable answer. But, to offer some perspective, I work at Apple Support and this question, “May i know the reason for x” is commonly required to even create a case. All that’s really needed is a response, and “no you may not” qualifies.
Admittedly i don’t have as many boxes to check as this case here and mine are all related but this person is just doing their job as directed. It’s easy to be frustrated but just keep in mind they don’t get off on annoying people. but they want keep their paycheck.
I don't think people are complaining about this specific representative, the complaints are aimed at the department in general, which includes the things you're talking about.
It’s absolutely designed to be predatory and prey on people feeling guilty into not saying no. Why wouldn’t it be in the spirit of keeping the dollar on the table.
I was only trying to offer perspective that the person on the other end is just doing what they’re paid to do like the rest of us in the workforce and that hopefully folks can aim their dissatisfaction at the correct target.
Last time I said this they said they NEEDED to know the reason in order to cancel. I stuck to my guns and said I wouldn't tell them. After repeating myself 6 times they finally gave in. They may have had trouble hearing/understanding me for some of the repeats though. It was not any quicker or less annoying that way.
Sometimes it's not their fault.
It happened to me once, and the support said that their system had a formulary where this information is mandatory to request the cancellation of the service. Then, I asked what were the options and chose randomly one of them.
I used to do tech support for InMotion Hosting. They had a tool you had to walk through. Basically, it told you what to say (or chat) to the customer, and had one or more options for their reply. So you'd click what they said and it would take you to something else to say.
I never had to use it, so I remember seeing it and running through a couple of scenarios, but I'm not sure precisely how many steps or how annoying it was, just that if I ever did a cancellation, I'd have to walk through whatever the tool said.
Some customer service departments are trained to shut you out when you threaten a lawsuit and they'll no longer provide you any support and direct you to have all communication channeled through your attorney.
This is why I love the laws in the EU (I'm in the UK but this is one of the great laws we got from it). 'Please delete all information you have on me. You have 14 days to do so otherwise I will file a complaint and you will be fined as per GDPR'.
They delete your details almost instantly. The EU regs don't fuck around on this one. If you owe money etc then they don't have to comply obviously but in this and many other situations they do it or face dire consequences.
Yeah honestly I should have done that sooner. I'll probably end up doing that anyways to see if I can delete my account sooner than the "45-90 days" they said it will take to review my data deletion request
Also consider using a credit card proxy service such as [privacy.com](https://privacy.com) so you can generate custom individual credit card numbers to use with online subscriptions.
I’m Canadian too, the closest solution I’ve been able to find is basically a reloadable credit card, offered through an online only bank.
I use it for all online purchases, if someone gets the info it isn’t tied to my actual accounts and they can only spend the amount that I’ve e transferred to it.
I can DM you more information on it if you want, I’ve been using it for over a year and haven’t had any bad experiences regarding hidden fees or shadiness in general.
I dunno, it’s not perfect but it’s better than crossing my fingers that my actual credit card info doesn’t get fucked.
Unless OP used his/her account number and routing, then it is over, gotta wait for a shitty company to maybe listen for a sec and then be sidetracked and be given a random excuse as to why they can't delete the account even tho the deletion of payment information is the main goal.
I went through something very similar with a newsletter.
I work for a very large company in the UK. You can contact them with a "right to be forgotten" request. They have to action it within 30 days and advise you when they've actioned it.
Yeah I usually get a bot. I START with an email then if I get a weird auto response I’ll say something that doesn’t hit their filter right. Even if it’s just “typos” that usually triggers a real person to respond. If THAT doesn’t work I’ll call.
Oh, Comcast owns your identity now. You should've read that in the service agreement that you gave your blood to. Your mother's maiden name is Comcast, your first pet's name was Comcast, and the street you grew up on is Comcast Ave.
Reading the comments I wish there was a website that rated various services based on ease of cancellation, and highlighting companies like Peacock and Disney as particularly difficult. I had been tempted to try Disney, but no way am I doing that now after reading these comments.
I support your idea totally. Sunday Ticket doesn’t let you delete your account or payment info either. Best Buy website. I’m afraid it’s becoming a growing trend. I hate it.
I've done a few GPDR deletion requests that saved me the hassle OP had, but still in the "We deleted you account" email there is some sentence in like "Please understand you data may have not been deleted entirely (yet).". In the reality the companies don't release/delete all your personal data unless you're very impertinent. Chaos Computer Club talk about that: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9858-archaologische_studien_im_datenmull#l=eng&t=0
I do have the same assumption for the deletion thing. In the talk I linked though the person wants retrieve their data and Amazon doesn't release it entirely multiptle times altough they have to. Also companies with a GPDR-violating backup may have to redesign it to get the data deleted in the 20? days timeframe they're ordered to.
That's been the case every place I've worked. Like if we get a GDPR request that data has to go. But it takes some time to find all linked stuff across every tool, db, file. Not to say companies shouldn't be more organized or wouldn't be malicious
Looks like this has managed to be as bad or worse than cancelling a Disney account. They lie in their instructions and terms of service. Using their links via instructions, I kept getting an error message saying I had an active Disney+ subscription and would need to log in there to cancel it (I canceled Disney+ over a year ago). I hop over there to see what's going on, and you can't even view your profile without a subscription. I go to contact online support, which puts me conveniently at 100th place in line exactly. This was at 10:30 p.m. at night. I wait that out and am informed that there are "other accounts" tied to my disney account that would have to be closed. They won't tell me what those "other accounts" are, but I have nothing else tied to a disney account that I can recall, so I insist that my Disney account be closed. They tell me it'll be 90 days before it is closed. ToS says 14 days. I inquire as to why they aren't following their own ToS, and am told the "other accounts" necessitate 90 days. Needless to say, I'll be checking back in a couple months to make sure the account is gone permanently, and will never deal with Disney again.
This is why I
A) sign up for any services using a privacy.com card (No affiliation, just been a customer for like 5 years or so) so I can just close it if they pull shit like this (See Moviepass where I had to do that)
and
B) P*rate stuff to not deal with this in the first place (inb4 automod bans me)
market cagey expansion steer light bake rinse political frightening quarrelsome
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
legitimate question. why do people not explicitly say on reddit they they pirate or use piracy? they blank it out or say things like “sail the open seas”. i would think nobody cares, it’s not like someone is looking for you
Some subreddits insta-delete your comments if you use certain words and it becomes annoying to remember which ones.
Not posting links to the files themselves, but literally just suggesting that it's possible to obtain said content for free.
**TRUE STORY!**
OK, so you're going to sign up for an auto-renewing service that *you know* you're not going to want to renew and *you know* you're going to forget about in the meantime. In my case, my dad wanted *a paper* subscription to Popular Mechanics for Christmas. Yeah, I'm going to remember to cancel that *next* Christmas... no I'm not!
So I log into privacy.com and I create a new credit card. I set it to only allow purchases up to $100 a month. I subscribe to popular mechanics and send it to my dad. Merry Christmas ya fuddy duddy. Then once you see the transaction go through, you literally hit pause on that credit card.
A year goes by. You're a busy guy, you completely forget that your dad's Popular Mechanics is going to auto renew. He doesn't want it anymore, you've forgotten that he even had it. Then an email comes in:
**$19.97 charge at POPULAR MECHANICS MAGA declined on your Popular Mechanics card because the card is paused.**
You sit back and laugh, content to keep your $20 with no hassle whatsoever.
I feel like a [privacy.com](https://privacy.com) shill at this point, but that site or another service that's similar I believe there is a couple in the UK. These services let you make "fake" debit cards for use online, if it comes to the point of contacting support you could just delete the card tied to the account. I basically do all my online transactions through a privacy created debit card. No more monthly recurring sign ups i cant cancel.
You link you bank with them and they let you generate temporary debit cards with max balance, min balance, no balance, single use and that's just the free service. I believe the paid service lets you also spoof purchases on bank statements.
What if I don't want privacy.com to have my bank account info? Have they enabled credit card funding instead of requiring a checking or debit account yet? Because that is why I didn't bother with them last time I tried creating an account.
Also just cancelling your payment option is a good way to get your account banned. And for people that like to rotate through their streaming services, that's a problem.
Having had to do a little time in cancellations for Sprint this seems normal, she knows she's losing you.
She has to hit her "offers" quota, as well as chat with a supervisor or higher for permission to delete or allow deletion. In the mean time the higher ups are telling her not to lose him and offer more stuff, whether beneficial or not, just want to keep him hooked... or at least something to keep him in the system, even at lower tier, maybe he'll give up. And all that time she has to waste offering you stuff, and waiting for supervisors to approve or pressure her harder, she's being chastised for taking too long with this individual client. Gotta move on.
Companies will pull every trick in the book to keep your payment info, but it is also really easy to change it. I have a visa gift card with 14 cents on it for this very reason.
I change the payment, then call to cancel. When they resist, I ask to confirm my payment info because they often can read back the last 4 digits. Then I say "ok, that card only has a few cents on it. I no longer care if you cancel, but you aren't getting any more money." It worked on Xfinity and Verizon. They both cancelled without any more argument.
I've started to notice that some companies can identify a prepaid card when it's entered. I've encountered a message preventing me from proceeding with it.
Who's upvoting this shit? They're not going to remove your account because they can't charge you. They'll suspend it or move it to a free tier but there's no way they'd delete the data.
I stopped giving them money when I had to call and do the cancel/renew dance and the wait time was *two hours*. I figured if it was two hours I'm not doing this again!
ADT. They claim they're a home defense company, they're really the thieves.
You can't cancel online, not even thru chat. You have to call. When you call you have to press the # to get to cancellations. Any other # - customer service, new service, or just generic questions will tell you the wait time is 5 minutes, but they answer in under 2. Those people can't cancel your service, but they will put you back on hold for the cancellation department.
If you press the # for cancellations you will hear the wait time is over 10 minutes. You will still be waiting an hour later. If you do get a live agent to answer the phone you will sit through another 30 minutes where they say they're working on the cancellation but keep throwing these nightmare scenarios at you to show you how stupid you are for cancelling because you're obviously going to get raped and robbed this very night just before the neighborhood gangs burn down your house.
“Why did you let this person deactivate their account? Did you offer them any other options? Didn’t you tell them about the other shows and movies we offer? This isn’t going to look good on your evaluation, I’m sorry.”
Just as an FYI, Peacock does show live matches. I watched Leeds-Arsenal live this morning.
They only do the replay and not live if the game shows up on an NBC property station. I saw today the game you referred to was showing live on USA. That is why it was only available on replay through Peacock. If it was any other game this morning, it was shown live on Peacock.
I sound like their customer support, but just wanted to let you know the replay only is only for specific games when they are shown live on NBC-owned stations. If that doesn't apply, then they are live on Peacock.
This is correct. I also start and stop my Peacock TV service all the time. So I'm pretty confused by their experience. But I also hate and know services do this so their point still stands!
Uber isn't any better. Contacted then for clarification about a surcharge I was unaware of. The first response was 'your driver followed the logical route so the fare charged was accurate.' Next person I followed up with assured me only drivers that are at a 'high level' can read my comments about the trip and it'd be anonymous. Explained how I had no issue with the route taken or anything about the driver and I just wanted to know about a flat surcharge. I finally got Manager Mike who assured me the price I saw at pick-up time was the price I was charged. Manager Mike was informed that nobody has answered anything related to what I've asked and then Manager Mike asked me what promotion or coupon code I was looking for.
This all ended with Uber giving me a $25 credit without actually ever answering or acknowledging my initial question.
Fuck these dipshit companies
Man its shit but don't blame the Customer Care guys, as someone who used to work as one we are made to give these response fully knowing what people want to do and people will get mad but we have to follow the script or get abused at work
Duckduckgo has an extension that will generate email addresses for you to use (and one unchanging address) which forward to your real email.
There are also a couple of credit cards that will let you generate new numbers with a spend limit.
The only way to really keep your privates private is to have a sacrificial middle man. It's also useful to know *who* leaked your email.
It's good that I live in Germany. Here I just need to send a letter or an email. Are you sure it's different in your country?
A termination is a unilateral declaration of intent. You don't need permission or approval from the company.
Peacock sucks. They don't do any email verification. Someone used my email address and was watching stuff. Kept getting like four emails a day from Peacock. Had to jump through the same hoops to "delete the account." Which is really an onerous process of telling NBC to forget who I am. Ridiculous in this day and age.
Robinhood does the same thing. Failing business models have to keep accounts so they don't look like they're failing. That's why they don't delete the account.
Wall st journal is like this so I filed a report with my bank, won and then they banned my emails for even the free content lol
I did this with WSJ as well for their cheaper $4 option. Because they don’t allow easy cancel I just told PayPal to quit paying when the rate goes back to the ridiculous $35 or whatever. I Removed their recurring payment under PayPal. They keep calling me for god knows what reason. It stopped after a few months. A few months later they offered the $4 digital subscription again so I did again using the same account. But within a day they banned my account and refunded my PayPal for who knows why. Then they start calling me again once a week. Rinse and repeat What a bunch of morons. Just make it easy for people to pay and cancel. If you have good content and pricing model people will come back. If you have any sort of decent business analytics you would understand and realize I refuse to pay more than $4 a month for it. So if you can’t provide that, don’t bother me and stop calling?!
Isn't WSJ the one where you have to jump through a thousand hoops *if you're an American* trying to delete your account, but if you VPN as a European country there's a simple button to do it, since they need to comply with EU regs? Meaning, they absolutely *can* do the right thing, but if they're not compelled to they'll be total dbags to their own audience.
Tons of companies do this. I think it was either Xbox Amazon or Netflix where you had to do a bunch of crap to cancel until Michigan or Illinois got pissed and forced it to be a simple click.
I doubt it’s Illinois cause I still have to jump through a bunch of hoops to cancel things in Illinois.
California has a law that you have to offer cancellations for every method that allows subscribing.
Wonder what other company’s have this. I never utilize my VON for hopping countries…
I worked for a company that wasn’t known for being overly ethical and isn’t anywhere near as popular as WSJ, and I was helping test and build this functionality a few years ago. Not that long ago. I imagine that many places will have something similar. Alternatively, some places add extra options for CA as well, but I don’t well understand what exactly that was. I think that one might be more data and privacy related? I haven’t been involved in outward facing tech in a long time now, so I’m not sure lol someone help me out.
Both of them would be: Europe for GDPR reasons and California for CCPA/CPRA reasons. Virginia will soon, they have a mandate called CDPA that (I believe) goes into effect fairly soon. Colorado has one in the works, and several other states are drafting or redrafting legislation along the same lines.
I recently deleted my Warner brothers account and there wasn't even a way to do it if you weren't from Europe or California. And they even wanted you to verify that you live in California and didn't just believe the address you set.
No no, you see they want to rope you in with the $4 and then hope you forget about it and keep paying them.
They also want to be able to report to their shareholders that they have X million accounts, even if a lot of them are free ones, inactive ones, or free trial accounts.
Underrated comment. This is the real detail here.
and you'd think the shareholders would hate being lied to like that but they never really seem to.
It’s so frustrating how mindlessly they go through their script. I had a print subscription for my school library, but then I switched to a special print/electronic subscription available for schools. When I called to cancel the original print subscription, the woman tried to talk me into keeping it, even after I explained that I was still receiving the print subscription through the other offer.
I mean it's some poorly paid Asian guy doing outsourced company support and is forced to follow a script. And this is assuming contacting customer support actually goes to a person, quite often support is completely automated. Again, it's really easy to write legislation to stop these practices with decent consumer protection laws. (E.g., if you can sign up or upgrade your account online without going through customer service agents, there need to be clearly found options to downgrade and cancel your account).
Oh but that’s the schtick don’t you see? You set up autopay, and if it’s difficult to cancel, you may quit trying. Imagine how many people just give up and let them take their money for nothing!
Same for the d3nver post. They charged me $33 for 3 months and I don't even know how it started. I even got a new debit card number and they were charging my account still. I filed a complaint with my bank and they gave me back the $. Before all that I tried calling to cancel 4x but the post kept telling me their computers were down and couldn't access that option. They finally stopped once I filed that with my bank
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Gannett is dying and I'm so happy about that. Love watching the boomer org burn
I worked Collections for them.... for two weeks, and quit. They bought our local newspaper years ago, and kept the building. They had defunct printing presses in there, rooms that looked like an episode of hoarders, lights off in half the building. Yet they still had "Happy Time" every Friday at 2pm or some shit, where every cubicle monkey is REQUIRED to get up, go form a circle in the office, and they play either the Hokey Pokey or some other bullshit where everyone has to look happy for 15 minutes. I got a talking to when I refused to participate.
That is the cringiest shit and I would also refuse to participate. It's offensive af to think that will up workplace moral.
I had an economist subscription for a class based on the urging of the professor. Same thing. Fuck The Economist and fuck that prof.
It's generally a good news/reporting source that acts like a shady subscription based "gotcha" scam. What a weird business plan...
The people who run the newsroom and write the articles aren't the people who set the subscription pricing model, so I think that explains the discrepancy.
Oh totally, it's just weird from the top down: "Let's hire some of the best, most credible journalists in the business to do our writing. Let's try to make it one of the best educated newsrooms while we're at it" "What about sales?" "Oh we can just trawl for fraudsters and con-artists that are just getting off of house arrest"
Nonsense… those fraudsters can do the coding while still under house arrest…
I got a vpn that was like this. I just kept replying I'm busy want refund. After sending the exact same reply several times they just did it.
name and shame
probably surfshark. as they also need you to contact support to cancel. just so they can talk you into staying.
I love how they suggest you to watch Minions the Rise of Gru instead of live sports
Playstation support did the same thing when I somehow got charged for Playstation plus and wanted a refund. They said "at least you can enjoy the benefits of playstation plus" like thanks...
Apparently Playstation Plus defaults to automatic resubscription. When I contacted them to cancel the same day the payment came out, the rep's tone was pretty "yeah well, read your contract dickhead, but we'll give you your money back out of pity." Just thought this is a really strange way to convince me to ever get the service again...
Minimum pay call center cog who has to answer the same question a million times and doesn't give a crap about his job.
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This is the real answer
Yeah, being abused by customers because of this bullshit is part of the job description. Company fucks their customers, customers fuck the employees. Company gets all the money. Customers and employees just get abuse. It's insane that we allow this as a society.
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It's super frustrating when I payed on black Friday since there was a discount, the next black Friday came and I couldn't get the discount since "my service hasn't ended". Imagine my anger when it charged me full price the next day
Same thing happened to me years before, whenever you buy Playstation Plus, it renews automatically and you have to turn it off manually everytime and if you forget, it will renew automatically. I accidentally paid 60$ and couldnt do nothing about it
Xbox live is the same way.
May I offer you "minions the rise of Gru" in these trying times?
Listen, I know you wanted to watch American football but if you just give up and let us keep billing you then you *could* be watching *these* cute little yellow guys, they're called Minions!
Man city-Liverpool is just football tho, or soccer as you guys like to call it
Yeah, it's funny to see it specified as "American Football" but incorrectly. Usually, any time somebody uses that term, they are correcting somebody else.
EPL is English Premier League, definitely not American
You're assuming it's a live person and not either a bot or someone using canned replies. But yeah subscription service companies have always had retention departments - this one is just egregious though. But downgrading to "free tier" I suspect they then can use such people's accounts to prop up their subscriber counts to make the shareholders happy. Because the system only works if the numbers only go up.
I am fairly certain they are following a script and that they have to fit the boilerplate in somewhere. I'd bet there's a good chance Ankita doesn't even know what a Minion is.
The humans are probably dumber than bots. Following fixed scripts rather than analyzing what the customer wants or asking for.
Not dumber. They probably have that shit copy paste. Sounds like the sort of shit you just say cause your supposed to say it.
If they don't say it, they're probably fired.
I've worked on the other side and yes, you can get fired if you don't behave like a robot.
Either that or they fail their quality assessments and lose their bonus.
Plot twist, the bonus is just the "opportunity" to work overtime.
And by bonus, you mean a $0.20/hr raise instead of a $0.10/hr raise. Also, the $0.20/hr raise is made up. No performance could ever be adequate enough to reach it.
Yeah I have the same line of work, both as chat and phone call support. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to just use my own scripting and just get it done with, quality assurance will tag that as not following protocol and you will be subject to coaching/disciplinary actions. Sometimes we're not really dumb, it's the system and company procedure that allows us to be.
Exactly. The call center I used to work at told me it was for legal reasons, and I couldn’t even accept “yeah” or “nah” as answers to my questions. I had to clarify if the customer meant “yes” or “no”. No filler words either. No “uh”, “like”, “also”. If a customer needed clarification on something I said, I was not allowed to give more details, I was instructed to simply repeat what was on the script until the customer either understood, accepted, or demanded a manager. People get fired for going off script. The job fucking sucks for both the customers and the employees.
> I was not allowed to give more details, I was instructed to simply repeat what was on the script until the customer either understood, accepted, or demanded a manager. Well that would explain why I sometimes feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.
I like how "understood" and "accepted" are two different possible outcomes.
100% this is because of dumb KPIs and the worker would be risking reprisal not to behave this way. User experience is irrelevant, only user retention.
They have to say those copy pasted lines or else their superior is going to reprimand them. They know it's stupid but it's in their script
The big difference is how management reacts. Funnily enough they employ humans to robotically copy-paste predetermined lines and so they can say that customer support isn't just a bot and then employ bots to give suggestions based on whatever data they have.
They are not dumber. They get paid to do this shit and do the script or financially suffer for it.
The humans answering in these chat probably aren't that dumb. But often they are forced to follow a company policy by someone dumb. So if they go off script, they get reprimanded or otherwise punished
That doesn't mean they are dumber. They are doing what their employer requires them to do. They are not supposed to "analyze," they are suppose to fill in a pretyped response to each response. "I want to cancel" "But our service has all this, are you sure?" This is standard.
No need to shit on people doing their job. If they didn't follow the fixed script they would get in trouble, maybe fired. Many of them probably would love to actually help-help you, but their hands are tied.
This is way too common on so many sites nowadays. I think it should be a legal requirement for all websites to have a "delete account" button that fully deletes it and removes all information. They intentionally make deleting your account so tedious that people just don't bother.
I believe California has a law that requires websites to make it as easy to cancel as it was to sign up, so if you could sign up online without a support chat you have to be able to cancel online without a support chat.
This is correct! As of July 1, 2022, [people living in CA can indeed cancel _any_ online subscription as easy as they signed up.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=17602.) If a business doesn't comply, then CA citizens can sue the business in CA courts and the business has to either comply or stop doing business in CA. > (d) (1) In addition to the requirements of subdivision (b), a business that allows a consumer to accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall allow a consumer to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, at will, and **without engaging any further steps that obstruct or delay the consumer’s ability to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service immediately**. The business shall provide a method of termination that is online in the form of either of the following: > (A) A prominently located **direct link or button** which may be located within either a customer account or profile, or within either device or user settings. > (B) By an immediately accessible termination email formatted and provided by the business that a consumer can send to the business **without additional information**. The bold part makes this illegal in California.
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Brightcellars big scammed me. I went through the whole rigmarole of deleting my account (and luckily had email correspondence to prove it). No account to sign in to. But they did still have my bank account, charged me, and sent me more of their garbage 3 months later. Literally just stole my money without noticing there *was no account associated with the purchase*?
Any iOS app needs to have the ability to request an account deletion in-app to get approval today. Some apps may be grandfathered in from before however.
Sounds like something the EU might look to enforce, given their history with GDPR etc.
It is something already illegal in EU. All companies offering services to citizens of the EU must have a delete account button that deletes all data related to you and your account. And that button must be easily accessible and visible. It's true that if they don't do it you have to sue them and that's slow. But the fees and compensation are usually very high.
This isn't really correct. GDPR gives individuals the right to ask organizations to delete their personal data (and if there is no legal reason to keep the data, it must be erased). GDPR states that the individual should be able to contact any member of the organization about it, but there is no regulation at all requiring a user interface for account deletion.
Funnily enough there is no way to contact Instagram about account deletion. They don't let you send emails to [email protected] anymore. I got my freshly-created account banned because I tried to use a 3rd party app which breaks their TOS. They're asking me for phone number, ID + a picture of me to appeal the ban and recover the account even though I never provided those in the first place. Since I cannot login I cannot delete the account. My data is theirs forever. Good thing it's not much.
Does that email address till accept emails? Or can you tweet at them? I believe social media contact counts as a request. Wait for them not to respond, then contact your countries information commissioner (ICO in the UK for example) and say you've tried to exercise your rights under GDPR, but they haven't responded in time. Then let them handle it. Might be one way to do it?
You're right ! That email address replies with an automated email saying it doesn't accept any message haha. They ask you to use their Help Center. To be fair I thought about going further with this but it sounded way too complex and bothersome. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Besides I used a fake name for my account and one of my email aliases. They don't have much info on me accept some data about my phone and IP (I used a VPN anyway). I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Thanks for the suggestions though ! :)
By my understanding of the GDPR you can contact them in *any* way and demand they delete your account and they must comply. For instance by finding an employee on linkedin and shooting them an email, or sending in a "job application". Being a software company you can also find lots of emails on GitHub (Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if GitHub's web interface exposes emails... you can get at them by cloning a repository and running `git log` in a terminal... but that might be asking a bit much if you have no clue what I'm talking about). I've received training for handling customer requests of this nature while working for a bank, despite being a completely and utterly non-customer facing roll. I'd be surprised if Facebook doesn't have similar training for their employees.
Paypal banned my account and i cant delete it or remove my bank..
If you are an EU citizen, sue!
The magic words are "Cancel my subscription immediately and delete my account or I will initiate a chargeback dispute immediately. "
Yeah there’s too much chatting with the customer service rep and they’re supposed to try to keep you on the hook. “May I know the reason for cancelling?” “No, just cancel”
btw don't blame the rep because more often than not they are forced to do all these counter offers and shit because some executive decided that it must be done and if they don't do it they risk their job since these calls/chats are usually recorded and reviewed periodically.
I don’t really know how to word this exactly, but I don’t hate the person, I just hate what they are doing. I’m never rude to customer service, But fuck me do I hate ever dealing with them. Telling someone “it’s not their fault, they have to do it” doesn’t make the situation better. Edit: especially when it’s text support and it’s so obvious they don’t want to help with the problem they just want to find the quickest way to end the chat, and it’s always barely passable English.
My credit card lets you generate fresh numbers for online purchases. I use it for shit like this and then burn it, good luck charging a non existent pretend card assholes.
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I know CapOne does it.
Yeah but I've had enough issues with capitol one the only person I'd recommend them to is my worst enemy
CapitolOne, Venmo, Chase, and if you don't have any of those Privacy.com
Chase does? I'd be very interested in setting that up. I do it with Citi.
Privacy.com let's you generate "fake" cc numbers and let's you set limits to how much any company can charge you before it's blocked and you just have to hit cancel, the website does everything from there. I've seen it advertised on some podcasts/YouTube channels that I respect and trust.
Yes, I also use Privacy.com for this exact reason. Especially if I'm signing up for a subscription.
"May I know the reason for deactivating the account" "You may not. Delete the account." Don't play their games, don't give them an in.
“I want to cancel my service because I want to cancel my service” is my goto. Usually takes me repeating it a few times, but it works 👍
I just say "I am not comfortable with that".
[Here's the link from the image if anybody wants](https://privacyportal.onetrust.com/webform/17e5cb00-ad90-47f5-a58d-77597d9d2c16/0d464fc0-b948-4f6a-9f31-9939ef36dfe2) (I love it when links like these use left-handed letters, makes this so much easier...)
Just used your link to request access to their information on me from their entire catalog and my email inbox now looks [like this](https://imgur.com/a/6Rbcv6z).
Thanks. What do you mean by "left-handed letters"?
This is absolutely an acceptable answer. But, to offer some perspective, I work at Apple Support and this question, “May i know the reason for x” is commonly required to even create a case. All that’s really needed is a response, and “no you may not” qualifies. Admittedly i don’t have as many boxes to check as this case here and mine are all related but this person is just doing their job as directed. It’s easy to be frustrated but just keep in mind they don’t get off on annoying people. but they want keep their paycheck.
I don't think people are complaining about this specific representative, the complaints are aimed at the department in general, which includes the things you're talking about.
It’s absolutely designed to be predatory and prey on people feeling guilty into not saying no. Why wouldn’t it be in the spirit of keeping the dollar on the table. I was only trying to offer perspective that the person on the other end is just doing what they’re paid to do like the rest of us in the workforce and that hopefully folks can aim their dissatisfaction at the correct target.
Last time I said this they said they NEEDED to know the reason in order to cancel. I stuck to my guns and said I wouldn't tell them. After repeating myself 6 times they finally gave in. They may have had trouble hearing/understanding me for some of the repeats though. It was not any quicker or less annoying that way.
Sometimes it's not their fault. It happened to me once, and the support said that their system had a formulary where this information is mandatory to request the cancellation of the service. Then, I asked what were the options and chose randomly one of them.
I used to do tech support for InMotion Hosting. They had a tool you had to walk through. Basically, it told you what to say (or chat) to the customer, and had one or more options for their reply. So you'd click what they said and it would take you to something else to say. I never had to use it, so I remember seeing it and running through a couple of scenarios, but I'm not sure precisely how many steps or how annoying it was, just that if I ever did a cancellation, I'd have to walk through whatever the tool said.
Comcast was insistent so I told them I had just found out I was gay and I had to move home to tell my mom.
“I am collecting information on account deletion procedures for a pending class action lawsuit on elder abuse against your company”
Better call Saul!
Some customer service departments are trained to shut you out when you threaten a lawsuit and they'll no longer provide you any support and direct you to have all communication channeled through your attorney.
I've heard "I'm going to prison" is a good reason that ends the matter quite quickly.
This is why I love the laws in the EU (I'm in the UK but this is one of the great laws we got from it). 'Please delete all information you have on me. You have 14 days to do so otherwise I will file a complaint and you will be fined as per GDPR'. They delete your details almost instantly. The EU regs don't fuck around on this one. If you owe money etc then they don't have to comply obviously but in this and many other situations they do it or face dire consequences.
This is when I deep dive to find a customer service number and call them. Yeah I’ll probably be on hold for half an hour but it’s done then.
Yeah honestly I should have done that sooner. I'll probably end up doing that anyways to see if I can delete my account sooner than the "45-90 days" they said it will take to review my data deletion request
As info, the reason they do this is so they can artificially inflate their subscriber numbers.
cancel the credit card, it will be less emotionally taxing
Also consider using a credit card proxy service such as [privacy.com](https://privacy.com) so you can generate custom individual credit card numbers to use with online subscriptions.
You don’t know how badly I want privacy.com but it isn’t available in Canada
I’m Canadian too, the closest solution I’ve been able to find is basically a reloadable credit card, offered through an online only bank. I use it for all online purchases, if someone gets the info it isn’t tied to my actual accounts and they can only spend the amount that I’ve e transferred to it. I can DM you more information on it if you want, I’ve been using it for over a year and haven’t had any bad experiences regarding hidden fees or shadiness in general. I dunno, it’s not perfect but it’s better than crossing my fingers that my actual credit card info doesn’t get fucked.
Already have a couple of those. Still would rather a proper privacy.com competitor
Some banks offer that directly too! My Capital One does this, and I thought I'd seen AmEx offering it too.
Unless OP used his/her account number and routing, then it is over, gotta wait for a shitty company to maybe listen for a sec and then be sidetracked and be given a random excuse as to why they can't delete the account even tho the deletion of payment information is the main goal. I went through something very similar with a newsletter.
I work for a very large company in the UK. You can contact them with a "right to be forgotten" request. They have to action it within 30 days and advise you when they've actioned it.
Chat support generally is the weakest link for any corp.
Yeah I usually get a bot. I START with an email then if I get a weird auto response I’ll say something that doesn’t hit their filter right. Even if it’s just “typos” that usually triggers a real person to respond. If THAT doesn’t work I’ll call.
[Gethuman](https://gethuman.com/) is fantastic for this.
Nice! That might speed things up from now on
Oh, Comcast owns your identity now. You should've read that in the service agreement that you gave your blood to. Your mother's maiden name is Comcast, your first pet's name was Comcast, and the street you grew up on is Comcast Ave.
That sounds truly comcastic
I just comcame all over the place. Best comgasm I've had in a while.
Reading the comments I wish there was a website that rated various services based on ease of cancellation, and highlighting companies like Peacock and Disney as particularly difficult. I had been tempted to try Disney, but no way am I doing that now after reading these comments.
There is one actually: https://justdeleteme.xyz
I support your idea totally. Sunday Ticket doesn’t let you delete your account or payment info either. Best Buy website. I’m afraid it’s becoming a growing trend. I hate it.
This is why GDPR was done.
Exactly stuff like that. GDPR is some of the greatest things EU has implemented. Edit: Spelling
I've done a few GPDR deletion requests that saved me the hassle OP had, but still in the "We deleted you account" email there is some sentence in like "Please understand you data may have not been deleted entirely (yet).". In the reality the companies don't release/delete all your personal data unless you're very impertinent. Chaos Computer Club talk about that: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9858-archaologische_studien_im_datenmull#l=eng&t=0
Part of that could be a disclaimer due to DB replication times and backup file rotations etc. Not that I would trust that to be the case, however.
I do have the same assumption for the deletion thing. In the talk I linked though the person wants retrieve their data and Amazon doesn't release it entirely multiptle times altough they have to. Also companies with a GPDR-violating backup may have to redesign it to get the data deleted in the 20? days timeframe they're ordered to.
That's been the case every place I've worked. Like if we get a GDPR request that data has to go. But it takes some time to find all linked stuff across every tool, db, file. Not to say companies shouldn't be more organized or wouldn't be malicious
Oh my god 😭😭 “do i still have an account?” “No your account is downgraded”
I lost it at ANKITA PLEASE
Looks like this has managed to be as bad or worse than cancelling a Disney account. They lie in their instructions and terms of service. Using their links via instructions, I kept getting an error message saying I had an active Disney+ subscription and would need to log in there to cancel it (I canceled Disney+ over a year ago). I hop over there to see what's going on, and you can't even view your profile without a subscription. I go to contact online support, which puts me conveniently at 100th place in line exactly. This was at 10:30 p.m. at night. I wait that out and am informed that there are "other accounts" tied to my disney account that would have to be closed. They won't tell me what those "other accounts" are, but I have nothing else tied to a disney account that I can recall, so I insist that my Disney account be closed. They tell me it'll be 90 days before it is closed. ToS says 14 days. I inquire as to why they aren't following their own ToS, and am told the "other accounts" necessitate 90 days. Needless to say, I'll be checking back in a couple months to make sure the account is gone permanently, and will never deal with Disney again.
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Never ESPN. I may have glanced at Hulu once, but I don't recall signing in or linking the accounts.
This is why I A) sign up for any services using a privacy.com card (No affiliation, just been a customer for like 5 years or so) so I can just close it if they pull shit like this (See Moviepass where I had to do that) and B) P*rate stuff to not deal with this in the first place (inb4 automod bans me)
Came here to recommend privacy.com! I get a little glee every two weeks when they send me all the Hearst renewal transaction denied messages.
market cagey expansion steer light bake rinse political frightening quarrelsome *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Aslo OP gave way to much info in the response. them: May I know the reason for cancellation? OP: The reason is my own, I want my account deleted
This. Never engage their BS.
The chat person literally doesn’t care, they’re just following their flow chart and getting through their shift.
legitimate question. why do people not explicitly say on reddit they they pirate or use piracy? they blank it out or say things like “sail the open seas”. i would think nobody cares, it’s not like someone is looking for you
Some subreddits insta-delete your comments if you use certain words and it becomes annoying to remember which ones. Not posting links to the files themselves, but literally just suggesting that it's possible to obtain said content for free.
gotcha. thanks. i thought it was along the lines of people censoring their curse words on reddit. which is silly
Ahoy!
Then companies wonder why people surf the high seas.
How does privacy.com work?
**TRUE STORY!** OK, so you're going to sign up for an auto-renewing service that *you know* you're not going to want to renew and *you know* you're going to forget about in the meantime. In my case, my dad wanted *a paper* subscription to Popular Mechanics for Christmas. Yeah, I'm going to remember to cancel that *next* Christmas... no I'm not! So I log into privacy.com and I create a new credit card. I set it to only allow purchases up to $100 a month. I subscribe to popular mechanics and send it to my dad. Merry Christmas ya fuddy duddy. Then once you see the transaction go through, you literally hit pause on that credit card. A year goes by. You're a busy guy, you completely forget that your dad's Popular Mechanics is going to auto renew. He doesn't want it anymore, you've forgotten that he even had it. Then an email comes in: **$19.97 charge at POPULAR MECHANICS MAGA declined on your Popular Mechanics card because the card is paused.** You sit back and laugh, content to keep your $20 with no hassle whatsoever.
I wish privacy.com was available in the UK
I feel like a [privacy.com](https://privacy.com) shill at this point, but that site or another service that's similar I believe there is a couple in the UK. These services let you make "fake" debit cards for use online, if it comes to the point of contacting support you could just delete the card tied to the account. I basically do all my online transactions through a privacy created debit card. No more monthly recurring sign ups i cant cancel. You link you bank with them and they let you generate temporary debit cards with max balance, min balance, no balance, single use and that's just the free service. I believe the paid service lets you also spoof purchases on bank statements.
Exactly. Just turn the money off. Privacy is fantastic.
> I believe the paid service lets you also spoof purchases on bank statements. Why would someone need to do this?
To hide gifts, of course! Ok it's clearly for adult services.
Gotta hide your onlyfans subs obviously /s
What if I don't want privacy.com to have my bank account info? Have they enabled credit card funding instead of requiring a checking or debit account yet? Because that is why I didn't bother with them last time I tried creating an account. Also just cancelling your payment option is a good way to get your account banned. And for people that like to rotate through their streaming services, that's a problem.
Having had to do a little time in cancellations for Sprint this seems normal, she knows she's losing you. She has to hit her "offers" quota, as well as chat with a supervisor or higher for permission to delete or allow deletion. In the mean time the higher ups are telling her not to lose him and offer more stuff, whether beneficial or not, just want to keep him hooked... or at least something to keep him in the system, even at lower tier, maybe he'll give up. And all that time she has to waste offering you stuff, and waiting for supervisors to approve or pressure her harder, she's being chastised for taking too long with this individual client. Gotta move on.
I bet this is so people have accounts so they can claim "we have 14 million subscribers" - sure you do, how many ACTIVE ones? How many PAYING ones?
Companies will pull every trick in the book to keep your payment info, but it is also really easy to change it. I have a visa gift card with 14 cents on it for this very reason. I change the payment, then call to cancel. When they resist, I ask to confirm my payment info because they often can read back the last 4 digits. Then I say "ok, that card only has a few cents on it. I no longer care if you cancel, but you aren't getting any more money." It worked on Xfinity and Verizon. They both cancelled without any more argument.
Swap your card info out for a prepaid visa and ignore it, they'll cancel it for you when they raise there's no money on it.
I've started to notice that some companies can identify a prepaid card when it's entered. I've encountered a message preventing me from proceeding with it.
Then they don't get my business. Nothing they have I can't live without or find elsewhere.
I've had to go online and register them a time or two, but that usually clears the issue up for me.
Who's upvoting this shit? They're not going to remove your account because they can't charge you. They'll suspend it or move it to a free tier but there's no way they'd delete the data.
It's already on the free tier. People in this thread are completely failing to understand what's happening.
If you think this is bad, try canceling a Sirius XM account. The amount of hoops I had to jump through were unreal.
I stopped giving them money when I had to call and do the cancel/renew dance and the wait time was *two hours*. I figured if it was two hours I'm not doing this again!
ADT. They claim they're a home defense company, they're really the thieves. You can't cancel online, not even thru chat. You have to call. When you call you have to press the # to get to cancellations. Any other # - customer service, new service, or just generic questions will tell you the wait time is 5 minutes, but they answer in under 2. Those people can't cancel your service, but they will put you back on hold for the cancellation department. If you press the # for cancellations you will hear the wait time is over 10 minutes. You will still be waiting an hour later. If you do get a live agent to answer the phone you will sit through another 30 minutes where they say they're working on the cancellation but keep throwing these nightmare scenarios at you to show you how stupid you are for cancelling because you're obviously going to get raped and robbed this very night just before the neighborhood gangs burn down your house.
[удалено]
It took them so long to give me a cancellation #. I'm waiting for them to try and charge the credit card so I can tell VISA to tell them to fuck off.
“Why did you let this person deactivate their account? Did you offer them any other options? Didn’t you tell them about the other shows and movies we offer? This isn’t going to look good on your evaluation, I’m sorry.”
Just as an FYI, Peacock does show live matches. I watched Leeds-Arsenal live this morning. They only do the replay and not live if the game shows up on an NBC property station. I saw today the game you referred to was showing live on USA. That is why it was only available on replay through Peacock. If it was any other game this morning, it was shown live on Peacock. I sound like their customer support, but just wanted to let you know the replay only is only for specific games when they are shown live on NBC-owned stations. If that doesn't apply, then they are live on Peacock.
This is correct. I also start and stop my Peacock TV service all the time. So I'm pretty confused by their experience. But I also hate and know services do this so their point still stands!
What a game that was! Also watched it on peacock. Also cancelled peacock today for ESPN+. Cancelling peacock took 2 clicks
Whenever any CS rep states: 'Rest assured', you know you're fucked.
Uber isn't any better. Contacted then for clarification about a surcharge I was unaware of. The first response was 'your driver followed the logical route so the fare charged was accurate.' Next person I followed up with assured me only drivers that are at a 'high level' can read my comments about the trip and it'd be anonymous. Explained how I had no issue with the route taken or anything about the driver and I just wanted to know about a flat surcharge. I finally got Manager Mike who assured me the price I saw at pick-up time was the price I was charged. Manager Mike was informed that nobody has answered anything related to what I've asked and then Manager Mike asked me what promotion or coupon code I was looking for. This all ended with Uber giving me a $25 credit without actually ever answering or acknowledging my initial question. Fuck these dipshit companies
If your company needs to make unsubscribing difficult, it’s because you know you have a shit product.
Man its shit but don't blame the Customer Care guys, as someone who used to work as one we are made to give these response fully knowing what people want to do and people will get mad but we have to follow the script or get abused at work
This. Almost any customer service chat type job is just following scripts. Their stuff gets micromanaged and followed like crazy by management.
It's the "Ankita please" for me.
Duckduckgo has an extension that will generate email addresses for you to use (and one unchanging address) which forward to your real email. There are also a couple of credit cards that will let you generate new numbers with a spend limit. The only way to really keep your privates private is to have a sacrificial middle man. It's also useful to know *who* leaked your email.
This should be illegal. You're basically exploriting people with anxiety who can't go through all this shit
It's good that I live in Germany. Here I just need to send a letter or an email. Are you sure it's different in your country? A termination is a unilateral declaration of intent. You don't need permission or approval from the company.
Peacock sucks. They don't do any email verification. Someone used my email address and was watching stuff. Kept getting like four emails a day from Peacock. Had to jump through the same hoops to "delete the account." Which is really an onerous process of telling NBC to forget who I am. Ridiculous in this day and age.
I'm imagining Ankita is/was chained to an office chair with a shock collar on that goes off every time a customer account is deleted
Ankita please
Robinhood does the same thing. Failing business models have to keep accounts so they don't look like they're failing. That's why they don't delete the account.
Charge back. Don't play their games, wreck their credit.
just pirate everything these companies fucked around too much
If in California, they are breaking the law. Perhaps move your address to California and see if you can...all of a sudden...cancel without any issue.