Recently cancelled something early so I won’t forget, they didn’t send my shipment even though I paid for it. They said I cancelled, tried to work with support but given after a point.
The one time I thought it would not work it did. Home depot rental generator that failed to run under load; store manager refused to test the unit under load as it was against store policy. Refused refund and instead gave me a $50 off coupon. I then called Chase, explained the situation and charges reversed on the spot. I took the coupon and bought a nice corded Milwaukee sawzall.
Also a common practice for free trials. Adobe does that if I'm not mistaken.
Love seeing companies worth tens or hundreds of billions acting like they couldn't spare a cent from underhanded shit like that. Scrooge McDuck type of behavior, except he also had some redeeming qualities.
With free trials, I can understand revoking the benefits once the subscription has been canceled. While I can understand the consumer's perspective of not wanting to be billed for future months (say if they forgot to cancel), free trials are intended to attract future customers. If a person signals that they are not going to be a future customer, why should the business offer the free service?
When I actually use a service, it's more work to resubscribe. But money is also tight enough for me that I'm on top of my subscriptions and don't have any I don't need (and when I'm unsure, I set reminders to cancel)
I saw some small business owner complain about this behavior on twitter some time ago and he mentioned he only saw non-Americans do this and it made him really mad or something and he didn't provide the service and banned them or something. Funnily enough I do think this happens so sometimes I cancel instantly and sometimes deliberately wait until there are a few days left on the subscription exactly out of paranoia behavior that you'll get a worse service or something, that they must have some database field early cancel and mess with you or something.
But the entire scheme here is to not have them continually. It's better to pay month+$2 in six months when you need it, than 6*month for the months you don't.
If you rotate subscriptions sensibly, they're much cheaper than the old cable model. If you're not looking, they can really bleed you out and be much more expensive than the old model.
You can also pay ~$20/month for an online locker that'll pull the torrent for you and serve to your devices, if that's within your philosophical tolerances. People need to get paid, but I do not much care of the enterprise value of media conglomerates and the resulting enshittification. I don't mind paying for Nebula.tv (~$36/year) and PBS Passport (~$60/year), for example, to directly support those media creators, as well as sending creators fiat directly or via Patreon (Coffeezilla and Peter Santenello, for example).
I have no problem with anyone just sending money if that's what they want to do; I have a number of Patreon supports also. I do strongly advocate for not letting subscriptions leak out without realizing it, and less strongly for considering whether or not you need something like Disney+ continuously or if you can rotate between it and other services.
Companies who wish for more casual subscribers should support services (such as Apple App Store subscriptions) and anti-dark-pattern laws which reassure the public that unsubscribing will be easy.
Then the complacency and other psychological effects that this article seeks to inoculate users against will be maximized.
Buy a domain. Get Proton, or Apple, or any other custom-domain email service.
Setup catch-all incoming mail.
Every merchant receives an email like merchantname@donotwriteto.me
Then you can either sort those out, or if they are malicious and not deleting you from your email lists, you can block the incoming traffic on that email.
This way you still can verify your email, comm stays private and you can have your own peace of mind, but you don't have to keep the spam in your primary inbox.
I've been doing something similar with Firefox relay to have proxy emails that I can regenerate if needed, it worked well but not for every site. Recently I've been testing SimpleLogin and it worked every time, it's by Proton.
Highly recommend this, I no longer need any spam filtering following this approach.
My old Gmail would be loaded with spam and the filter would screw up and mislabel legitimate mail. Now, no spam at all.
It also helps when your email is involved in a data breach which is becoming the norm now.
Although be prepared for awkward in person interactions when a business wants your email. Everything from "no, your email silly not mine" to "I own this business name you can't have it in your email address"
I tried this idea for the books and gave up. No rules for book purchases.
But for something like netflix, I create a list. And when I start repeating something like Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, etc. rather than not-yet-watched items from the list, I cancel the subscription. And I don't renew till some time passes (6 months). Only then there are a few different movies/ series I can add to the list.
If you ever need to use the service again just re-subscribe (and re-cancel)
In fact, what is stopping you from cancelling all your subscriptions right now? You can always buy back in when you like
So yeah, not all companies do that.
If not, time for a charge back with your card provider.
I've done it multiple times when a vendor was behaving fairly and it always went through.
I don't recommend doing it to a vendor you plan to have business with again in the future as they might ban you (eg food delivery apps)
Love seeing companies worth tens or hundreds of billions acting like they couldn't spare a cent from underhanded shit like that. Scrooge McDuck type of behavior, except he also had some redeeming qualities.
These psychological tricks don't need to work every time (or on everyone) to be effective.
If you rotate subscriptions sensibly, they're much cheaper than the old cable model. If you're not looking, they can really bleed you out and be much more expensive than the old model.
Most people are literally paying so they don't have to set all that shit up again and the cost is trivial to them.
If that's not you, fine, but my point is that nobody is "right" about this topic. Services exist because they make money.
Yes, the people who "subscribe" to costco are more loyal, etc.
But it also excludes. The general public is probably a lot more labor-intensive for costco, and they eliminate that.
Then the complacency and other psychological effects that this article seeks to inoculate users against will be maximized.
Buy a domain. Get Proton, or Apple, or any other custom-domain email service.
Setup catch-all incoming mail.
Every merchant receives an email like merchantname@donotwriteto.me
Then you can either sort those out, or if they are malicious and not deleting you from your email lists, you can block the incoming traffic on that email.
This way you still can verify your email, comm stays private and you can have your own peace of mind, but you don't have to keep the spam in your primary inbox.
I've been doing something similar with Firefox relay to have proxy emails that I can regenerate if needed, it worked well but not for every site. Recently I've been testing SimpleLogin and it worked every time, it's by Proton.
My old Gmail would be loaded with spam and the filter would screw up and mislabel legitimate mail. Now, no spam at all.
It also helps when your email is involved in a data breach which is becoming the norm now.
Although be prepared for awkward in person interactions when a business wants your email. Everything from "no, your email silly not mine" to "I own this business name you can't have it in your email address"
But for something like netflix, I create a list. And when I start repeating something like Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, etc. rather than not-yet-watched items from the list, I cancel the subscription. And I don't renew till some time passes (6 months). Only then there are a few different movies/ series I can add to the list.