Subscribe to good.store products and WE ACTUALLY MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU TO CANCEL. -John p.s. John's Channel livestream coming later this afternoon: youtube.com/@johnschannel1007
I found I had to make an account before I could try cancelling, which was a bit confusing and I gave up the first time I thought about cancelling. But overall it was pretty easy once I figured out what it needed me to do. I really appreciate the skip month feature! it feels very customer friendly and encourages me to stay subscribed
This is also a disability rights issue. If you have any disability which makes it hard to communicate verbally, being deaf, autistic etc. this makes it impossible to cancel.
I was cancelling my grandmother's ISP using the chat service and the agent said I'd have to call their number to cancel. I explained that I (my grandmother) have a disability and can't effectively communicate on the phone and that agent was suddenly able to cancel it immediately.
The idea used to be to trey to "trick" you into speaking to a "retention specialist". People who were authorized to do more than the average employee, often including giving you you're original bill back (usually with a couple more "account processing fees" added, so they still got more from you than they used to, but only a couple dollars instead of $10). Somewhere along the line, a whole lot of businesses decided just decided to become explicitly hostile to customers looking to leave, and made the process so convoluted and excruciating that people would quit trying to cancel their subscription.. I'm not quite sure when that change happened (I've always kept as few subscriptions as possible; i never liked their game, not even when it wasn't hellish), but I'm definitely not a fan.
@@hoodiesticks I hate that this is probably true but then it's also really frustrating that you have to like out yourself kor another person) as being a disabled person for them to take you seriously. It's ableism at its finest....
My dad was the account holder for TH-cam TV for the family but the payment was on my mom's card. After my dad died we tried to cancel the account since it was too expensive but they literally wouldn't let us without a WILL AND DEATH CERTIFICATE. Despite my moms name being on the account. The only way we were able to finally stop it was to call our bank and have them block all payments to TH-cam. Absolutely disgusting practices by TH-cam.
One time, as a deaf person, I found it easier to just report my debit card as LOST to have an entirely new one issued so that companies like this could no longer take my money. Imagine that being your best option.
I'm so sorry you've had to deal with that. There's so much casual ableism built into systems. This isn't aimed at you specifically, more as a general comment to people who might read your comment: be very careful about doing this when there's a contract involved. You may still be held responsible for the cost, and if so, it'll continue to accumulate until they send a debt collection agency after you. Not only is it stressful, but it affects your credit rating.
My bank has just implemented a 'feature' as part of a terms and conditions update (which most people ignore of course) which ensure any charges to my old card are transferred to my new card. How about, no thank you - I'll decide what gets charged to my new card, especially if the old card has been lost/stolen or had unauthorised charges on it.
@BanthaWorship Are you able to dispute transactions with your bank? or do they require you call. I would setup a Paypal to pay for subscriptions. They have a feature that makes it very easy to deauthorize merchants on their website. There's also services that can do it on your behalf.
Virtual Credit Cards are the way to go. There are many companies running these services. You create a virtual credit card to pay a specific repeating bill, and when you want to discontinue that subscription, and they make it hard to cancel, you can just delete the card. Boom, they get no more money from you.
It would be hilarious to start doing this: "Hey, yeah, credit card company? I want to close my account with you. There is a company that's made it difficult to cancel a subscription so I'm doing away with credit cards entirely and going forward I will only be paying with cash. I'm going to let you kudgel them."
Recently I had to cancel a service, and they put me into one of those live chat sessions with someone to try and keep me there. Luckily, at the time, I lived in California and knew of that legislation, so when they said "Sorry, sir, you can't cancel online", I cited the exact law back to them, with a link to it, and suddenly they were able to do it right then and there. I'll be chasing that rush for a while
I recall having to shout "let me speak to a supervisor" over and over at a "retention specialist" from DirectTV in order to get them to cancel my subscription. No wonder they have gone bankrupt so many times.
@@nitehawk86 I used to work retention for Sprint. It's a miserable, awful job. I guarantee that the person on the other end of the line was just as frustrated as you were. They told us in training, "Not everyone you talk to will be angry, but everyone who is angry is going to talk to you." They rarely ever give you anything to actually help the customers who are upset, you're just supposed to be able to either talk them into staying, or be enough of a hindrance that they give up. (At Sprint we had to try to convince folks who called in to cancel the lines of people who were DEAD to get a tablet or wifi hotspot on that line instead.) I wouldn't wish retention calls on my worst enemy.
The problem is "good actors" say that they will lose business to their competition who lock people in. That's why it's going through the FTC, so it's fair.
Yes, although people get really defensive of random bad actors. I've had a bunch of people accuse me of making stuff up when I point out that WGU nearly kicked me out for merely asking for support services that they promise every student prior to enrolling and refused to tell me what I could do to avoid getting in trouble again for the "unprofessional conduct" that was so bad that they had to edit out all the disrespectful things their employees had said to make ti seem like I was being unreasonable.
If you call them out by name you encourage copy cats. It is the same with murders, vandalism, and many other criminals or people who have bad behaviors. Warnings on tv about how bad smoking was, caused an increase in smoking, what worked was not talking about smoking at all on tv. Almost no one actually ate tide pods, until the news started talking about and the calls to poison control for kids eating tide pods skyrocketed literally over night. They even tracked it by local areas, when that area had a news report about it, calls skyrocketed to poison control.
I want the FTC to pass a rule that requires any subscription/service requires the same or less number of actions and the same method as signed up to cancel.
This is actually in the rule!!! As a business owner I actually don't love this because I don't want to be forced to not give you a chance to tell me why you're unsubscribing, but I get it!!
@@vlogbrothers Well there's always the "reason for cancelling? (Optional)" text box, so they can choose to tell you if they want, or just skip it and click cancel. I hate the ones where the text box is mandatory. Some have even required me to put a minimum number of words in so I can't just put "N/A"
A similar law has been in effect in Europe for a few years now that requires companies to accept cancellations on the same communication channel as subscriptions. If you can sing up online, you can cancel online. Really enjoying that
That’s amazing! I hate how little control we as consumers have. Another grievance I wish was changed (at least in the states where I have the issue): refunds should be instant as soon as you cancel or returned a product! I love how places can take my money instantaneously, but take 7-10 business days to put it back in my account. I’m bipolar, and one of my symptoms is that I impulse buy A LOT. I often want to return things and over spend for the dopamine rush I get, but I’m also broke most of the time. Having to wait for refunds to go through really makes life difficult, for anyone on a budget!
Also, at least in Norway, if a person dies the banks are required to instantly put a freeze on their accounts. Any subscription services they got are locked out from day 1 of notification. Once a custodian has been assigned this person can transfere money out of the account and pay for things, but the ability to request money still stays locked until the bank account is cancled. You'll be amazed at how efficient subscription service becomes at shutting down their service when the money stops coming.
Same in Australia. I have a subscription to NY Times that isn't under that law and I had to call them during business hours NY time which is crazy hours here, despite signing up online 🤦♀️
In the Netherlands we now also have a law where it's mandatory to have a customer service phone line, to prevent all those maddening loops of chatbots and unhelpful FAQ articles on the website
this is SO FRUSTRATING!!!! Just went through this trying to cancel things after my grandma died! Her cell phone company sent me to their Retention department...I'm like she's dead, there's literally nothing to retain!!! Thank you for making The Good Store so user friendly!!!
I doubt he did it personally but good people tend to surround themselves with good people so all the people who work on good store probably tend to be very kind thoughtful people
@@Kane0123 ye, he is at least transparent about it though and made sure that even though it was promotion it was still entertaining ... also i feel like he would have talked about this even if it was not an ad
Thank you Hank, I've been really upset about this since my mom lost her ability to speak due to ALS. I became her voice, and I had many interesting conversations where people said to me "You can't speak on her behalf, you're not even allowed to listen in because of legal privacy reasons." And I said "Cool, then please allow her to text you, or video chat or communicate online, and she will be very happy to communicate with you directly. I would love for her to have independence and agency to do this for herself." To which they squirmed and said "You're her daughter? Then I guess this one time will be ok." Because getting power of attorney over someone who is of sound mind, or waiting for them to die, is easier than providing reasonable accessibility using technology they already have 99.9% in place. Also yeah, I don't want to talk on the phone. I can, but really don't want to do it. I signed up online, let me cancel online.
Sending you big hugs. My fiance is my carer, and a lot of the time has to be my voice. It's incredibly frustrating watching them waste his time when he's saving everyone strained effort. I'm sure your mother feels the same watching you fight for her. Just wanted to say you're awesome and appreciated.
Because this is how identity theft scams work… You Karened your way into getting someone to risk their job! You fucking moron. Hope someone calls into your bank and pretends you can’t speak and that they are your kid…
I figured all you would have to do to leave the Xenu cult was just threaten to tell everyone about all the "secrets" and I figured they would just throw you out.
i tried using amazon prime years ago, they "locked me out" of my profile, I couldnt cancel until it autocancelled after they sucked out all of my money (since i didnt work, i didnt earn, they took whatever was left and then it autocancelled), same password, same pc, same everything, after it cancelled the prime i could go into payment options again without an issue, not just my profile like before. freakin hate amazon, their support also refused to help me!
Doing anything with Amazon is next to impossible (except returns, for some weird reason). So, why are we all so addicted to them even when we have problems. BTW..... I never knew there were so many "Bobs, Kevins and Susans" in Mumbai
@@BillMooney-r5c I wouldn't say we all are. I've had an Amazon account for probably 15 years now at least, and I can _maybe_ count on both hands the amount of times that I have ever used their site to make a purchase. Everyone has different spending habits of course, for instance those who make regular / impulse purchases probably still feel like they are getting some net value out of the convenience of online shopping, even if it's provided by a corporation that they also claim to resent.
The option to skip a month of subscription without having to cancel and resubscribe is an absolutely genius idea, can we please make that a new standard feature???
It is for a lot of product subscriptions (at least the ones I use) and often you can just reschedule the delivery for much later if you're not going through it as fast. If I can't do that for a subscription I cancel generally.
I disagree, it's an anti-consumerist trick to make people spend more money than they were willing especially when it is the default option you have to decline instead of something you can accept. It is purely for the business's profits.
Two I use have this: Chewy for my pet food subscription and Dollar Shave Club. I've skipped shipments on each many times. I've also, many times on each, clicked the "process now" button because I needed it sooner. I love flexibility!
@DenArgJordgubbe-vg3li I'd argue it depends on various things and isn't black or white. If it's way easier to do and is pushed aggressively as the main option in an attempt to get people to skip a month and then forget they're about to be charged again, then yeah, it's pretty bad. But even then it's not all bad, because there still will be customers who are traveling or are otherwise busy will want to resubscribe to said service in a month's time, and they might want one less thing to think about. As shown by the commenter here, as well as myself, there are people in the world who want this as a feature, so if it's offered with the same amount if force as subscribing and is not favored or pushed over simply stopping, then there's nothing wrong with it.
I canceled my subscription for the Awesome Coffee Club before my daughter was born, as we were cutting back before a big financial life change. (Diapers. so many diapers.) I can confirm that canceling was very easy. I am now re-subscribed. Just one point of data in your favor.
See this makes so much sense to me! Also, word of mouth is a huge thing! Companies should prioritize making everyone happy, not just the people that continue to pay them. That would encourage more people to start paying them in the first place.
Yep, if they make it easy for me to cancel, as in provide advance notification, especially if there's a link to cancel from the notification, I'm probably going to subscribe again if whatever it is is of use to me again in the future. And I'll probably recommend it to my friends if applicable. If I have to spend a half hour cursing at retention specialists because I've made it clear that I want to cancel and won't change my mind, they'll hear that as well. AOL is not something that I will ever give money to ever again as a result of that many years ago.
I really appreciate you speaking on this. I was honestly outraged when the gym planet fitness not only charge a cancelation fee during the pandemic but also made everyone that wanted to cancel to go personally to the gym to do so. The cancelation line was longer then people going to actually workout. I can't imagine that actually being good for business. I actually get a discount with work for a membership, but will never sign up with them again.
I wish I could use virtual credit cards for everything, but the last time I checked they were all backed up by a bank account instead of my actual credit card so that I'd be forfeiting any credit card points on the purchases.
As much as people love to dunk on California, there are so many things like this where companies are doing bad stuff until CA passes a law and because it's such a huge market, companies basically have to follow it. You see it everywhere, but especially in matters of privacy, environmental impact, and consumer protections. It's so ubiquitous that it has a name: The California Effect. I didn't think most Americans even understand how much they benefit from it.
Also happens a lot with the EU regulations. They've got some good things going, like single type of charger to reduce electronics waste. The privacy regulations. Hell I can just email a company and tell them to remove all my data because of the GDPR and they have to do that. I like that a lot.
The hours these places often have their phone lines open is a big problem too. Most people are at work while they're open, meaning that unless your boss is cool with you being on your phone at work for an extended period of time, you literally don't have time to cancel.
This is something that I've written about many times as an autistic person. For people with autism, or high anxiety, or worse.. imagine non-verbal people... picking up a phone is difficult at the best of times but near impossible when you know you're heading into a confrontational situation. This sort of "business practice" literally abuses disabled people, trapping them in a lifelong subscription.
Could not agree more. I've been getting charged $17 a month for a dental plan I no longer use for FIVE YEARS because of this. Do me a favor and don't tell me how much that adds up to because it's too depressing 💀
SAME as an autistic person, phone calls give me so much anxiety. i hate them! let me email! let me message! let me do it myself on a website! it takes so much more mental work for me to both prepare for and do a phone call that i end up scheduling out an hour for a 5 minute call. god forbid they ask something im not ready to answer or are looking for special magic words to do what im asking them to do in plain terms
I actually just did this at Good Store, reducing my tea subscriptions. I assumed it would be the normal hassle. When it wasn't, I thought, "Oh, of course. They keep it classy. Perfectly on brand."
I had an extended car warranty once and tried to cancel the day that the next bill was due. The agent tried guilting me into staying on, then said I couldn't cancel that day, then said it was illegal to call my bank to dispute the charge. When I called my bank, she laughed and basically said "let our lawyers worry about that part"
I was building a website for a client and i was able to convince them that they should have a "no explanation required returns" where if you want to return the product but don't want to talk to us and explain why you don't like it then you just pay postage (US postage would be under $5 for most people) and write your order number, email address, or anything and they will look up the order and refund you. The company targets ADHD and Autistic people. So far it's been a hit and people keep saying they are buying purely for making the return policy clear and easy and upfront. Yeah maybe someone buys it and returns it for stupid reasons but most won't. Give 99.9% of your customers a good experience and don't worry about the 0.1%>
While not the same, exactly, your last line reminded me of a coffee company I took calls for at a call center. The company had started as a "free" trial ("Just pay shipping!"...which is how they get your card info) and then a month later, people would be sent more of the coffee and billed the full amount if they hadn't cancelled in time. If this happened, they had to send the coffee back, unopened, to get a refund. It was a pain in the ass and the calls were super stressful. The trial package was advertised on a lot of websites frequented by younger people who used it to get points for things (telling on myself here, but there is a very old avatar-based chat website called IMVU. You get virtual money in the game that can be bought with real money. But if you don't want to do that, or want to minimize what you spend, you can watch ads or sign up for trial services. This coffee company was one such service and would net you a good amount of virtual currency). However, some young person just signing up for virtual credits likely isn't paying attention to the information about it becoming a subscription, or they fake that they didn't know about it (even though the checkout requires confirming you've read and understood this. And it wasn't even in fine print, it was only three or four sentences into the summary page, which was in regular text). I left that job after about two years but years after that, I got curious to see if they were still using that subscription model...and was proud to see that they weren't! They had a full-blown, buy once and be done website! They did still have an optional subscription but it wasn't like the trial- to-subscription model like before. There would be no way someone could sign up and not know what they were doing. I was absurdly proud of this company 😅. Even the specialty seasonal flavors were now available year-round. And then I checked this year and...they've gone out of business! Their coffee is instead being sold off to another company and their website links to the new company. The bags will no longer use the old name. I'm a little sad for them. They didn't go bankrupt, the owner of the company died and those left in charge decided to just shut the whole thing down. But, I'm still proud that they had moved away from trying to get the business of a rather flakey customer base and instead by setting up a full-scale website, they were able to capture a bigger and more honest market. As you mentioned, don't worry about the 0.1%, focus on the rest.
That's what Amazon does too. First time I needed to do a return, I had all my evidence lined up for CS, and they didn't even have a process for seeing pictures I took of the item. Just rubber stamped it, good to go.
@@GamesFromSpace Sometimes if the item isn't worth much, and possibly depending on the reason for the return, they don't even ask for it back. Just a refund and you're on your way.
I feel like being honest and fair is like 99.9% of the issue, I don’t even mind when a small business doesn’t do returns, I just want to know upfront so I know what’s up, and if you do returns/ cancellation/ end subscriptions/ memberships then definitely make it easy, a form, an email, a chat function
4:22 the irony of ignoring the companies begging to cancel the rule that makes it harder for them to ignore consumers begging to cancel their subscriptions is very tasty.
Our gym membership that we signed up for online requires canceling in person. We moved further away and didn’t cancel before moving. We finally were able to drive over there and they told us “oh only managers can cancel and there won’t be one on site for 2 days, so come back Monday”
That is definitely where you go to your bank and instruct them to cancel the payment. The bank is at least motivated to keep you happy. The gym is not.
Gyms are notoriously bad for this. I used to go to one, and I had stopped going. Couldn't cancel online. I called, and they said I had to go to the gym I signed up at to cancel.... I signed up online! Apparently, the first gym I visited upon signing up counts as my "home gym," even though I'd since moved states. I ended up canceling the payments through my bank, and THEY THREATENED TO SEND ME TO COLLECTIONS! I had to get a lawyer to send a letter to get them to cancel that "debt"
Yes, it was Planet Fitness. I had the same problem. Moved 2 hrs from my "home gym"... paid for months after. F*** that noise, will never go back. (Sorry, so heated, I'm assuming that's who it is😅😅)
Yepp Planet Fitness is decent ... Until you need to cancel I still go to planet fitness but am aware they are trash for cancelling and will likely need to block their charges since they illegally won't let me cancel @@lowlyjester
I've had more than one gym company make me show up in person to the gym to sign paperwork that I was canceling my membership and of course it was like a month's+ notice (as in I would get charged a whole 'nother month before the membership was officially canceled) in order for it to go into effect.
Oh my goodness, try and cancel services after someone dies away. When my mum passed way I was on the phone with her cellphone provider forever. I had to keep say No I don’t want to upgrade her service, and no I didn’t want to transfer her number/account to someone else. At one point I even said “I am talking to you on the cell phone that I already pay for, why would I take on a second one?!?!” According to the representative I spoke with people do that all the time…BS. I was the worst, and I was already in a vulnerable state trying to settle my mother affairs. Total nightmare.
Your story and others I'm seeing in the comments are insane. Companies just can't do stuff like that in the UK. If you call and say one of their customers has passed away, you will get put through to a dedicated probate team who will mark the account accordingly, and start their built-in procedures for closure (provided you are the executor). The other stuff though, making it difficult to cancel? Yeah, there is a little bit of that, but it's less difficult in the UK than it sounds like it is in the US.
I had a similar thing happen where they tried to convince us to keep my father's phone on our plan after his death with a story about having access to the recording of his voice on the voicemail message. We could not afford to keep an additional line open based solely on emotional manipulation.
That's one of the few times where I feel it would be absolutely justified to lose your composure for a moment and tell them clearly, in no-uncertain words: what has happened and why they need to stop trying to push a sale when the person who owned the service is no longer among the living. I try to be as polite and sensible to customer service representatives: but some things really shouldn't be so hard to do!
I feel sorry for you. One way to fix this is the Norwegian way. Pass a law that forces banks to put a freeze on accounts when their client dies. Legally assigned custodians can still transfer money and pay for things, but external parties can no longer request money from the account. When a person dies here the cellphone provider gets nothing more once the bank is notified. You'll be amazed at how efficient a provider is at stoping a service once the money isn't automatically deducted. You don't even have to contact them. Which shows how predatory subscription service can be when it comes to canceling subscriptions.
That’s insane! I’m sorry to hear about your loss and sorry that they hassled you! I’m one of those people who work at a call centre and I used to be ok the retention team. Whenever a client would pass we would offer our condolences and then send them to a different department to cancel and close out the account. We could ask if they wanted to transfer but if they didn’t that was the end of it and normally I wouldn’t even ask that. The whole thing took all of five minutes at most
I had do mention a LAWSUIT in my email once to cancel a subscription because they don’t wanted to cancel it. They apologised in an email and cancelled it. Just…wow.
I paid out like $200 in resume service subscription payments without knowing it because they were unclear that you couldn't cancel online and I thought I had. I am a broke college student making $15 an hour and was clearly looking for a job when I subscribed. I find this ridiculously predatory
The very idea of a resume subscription service is predatory That’s not something you need more than once every few years, if it’s any good… the only reason to make that a subscription is hoping people forget to cancel it
@@cashnelson2306To be fair, there are definitely fields where it’s good to leave your résumé somewhere discoverable, as recruiters will actively seek out and contact you, but that’s definitely not the average, and still wouldn’t need a subscription service.
Charities are the same. I recently had to end some charitable giving due to a financial trouble. Only two of the ten allowed me to cancel online. Now that the trouble is over I only started giving to the two that allowed me to quit online. The rest lost out.
I recently moved and the previous person who lived here, has since passed away. Her kids made sure to cancel everything. Several months later I still received letters from charities that she used to give to, asking for a payment. Had to return some to sender with "recipient has passed away" written on it and they seem to have finally caught the message. No new letters. So far...
This is EXACTLY what AOL used to do back in the day. You could go through all the steps to cancel your subscription service, but unless you put in a stop payment with your bank, they would just keep charging you and completely ignore the cancellation request. I had heard this as a kid and neglected to share this information with my mother when she cancelled our AOL sub, allowing me to still get online surreptitiously.
Gym memberships are the worst with this. My partner is in the military and we moved across the country a few months ago and forgot in all the craziness to cancel our gym memberships. Which we use a lot but that gym does not exist in the state we were moving to. So a couple weeks go by and I go to their website to cancel our memberships (he’s out of town a lot, military life, so I handle the details of stuff like that). Can’t cancel online you have to call them. Fine. I called them. You can’t cancel over the phone, you have to come in in person to cancel. So they honestly think that the policy should be that I have to fly from Virginia to Ohio just to cancel a gym membership? One that I originally started online, not in person. Eventually they told me I had to send them certified letters with certain information and wet signatures. I did that. It’s been months. Still not cancelled. If I could start the membership without a wet signature (online) I should be able to cancel the membership without a wet signature (online). Madness. Should not be legal.
AMEN! Planet Fitness is the only thing in my price range around here in my area of Ohio. They made it VERY HIDDEN AND DIFFICULT to cancel. I believe I had to do it in person as you said! Ridiculous. Luckily I live by them still, but I hate going into places where I feel I’m gonna be hassled into staying. Fortunately they didn’t care and let me cancel easily in-person, but if I was moved I have no idea how they would have let me cancel! Probs same hassle as you!
If it isn't already, see if you can switch your payment method to a credit card. Then request your bank to stop payment and reverse charges. This can be a hassle depending on your bank but may be worth it if you're losing a fair bit of money.
Yepppp, I was only gonna be somewhere for a year, told them that upfront and asked if I could cancel the member ship early (as I had signed up some months after I had moved there), they said it would be no problem! And then when the time came for me to leave, the RING AROUND they gave me to cancel with no fees was insane. Turned me off any kind of gym membership completely.
They should also remember the 16th Rule Of Acquisition, "A deal is a deal." If they provide a subscription service with the agreement of the customer being able to leave that subscription, then they need to uphold their end of the bargain! And the worse they do it, the more they wreck their chances of the customer ever coming back. It seems like common sense, but perhaps it's not as common as I thought it was.
Commenting to say I just canceled my Good Store Subscription because we are expecting a baby and are cutting back in several subscription services. It was by far the easiest subscription to cancel! In the future, I would be perfectly happy to resubscribe when it fits our budget!
Moved recently and had to do some cancellations. If it needs to be on the phone saying: "I am moving countries, I can't use your service over there." is the fastest way to have them give up any sales tactic. This might be harder in the US, not sure moving state works as well.
I told Comcast I was moving in with someone who already had internet and they still called me two or three extra times to see if I was really sure (although each additional call did end very quickly when I explained)
Life hack for companies that don't actually process the cancellation or stonewall you: send a letter asking that your subscription be canceled to the company via certified mail before calling, then call a week later and ask if the cancellation has been processed. The person on the phone won't be able to do anything, but you can use the certified letter as evidence to dispute the charge with your bank or credit card company the next time they try to bill you.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate Lina Khan. For the first time since basically FDR, the FTC under her leadership is finally starting to push back against monopolies and I think that’s awesome!
I was subscribed to a company that sent you something monthly and you had the option to skip. Well, I was skipping more and more so I decided to cancel. On my second attempt to contact them, I let the phone ring for 3 hours before anyone answered! Yes, I waited because after I tried the first time I went online and found that many other people were unable to cancel because they couldn’t get someone on the phone. I was literally that episode of FRIENDS where Phoebe waits on the phone all day. It was ridiculous and I will never resubscribe or promote the business in any way.
Once I got locked into a 45 minute call with virign media retentions team who aggressively tried to not let me cancel even though the last ten minutes was me just saying I WANT TO CANCEL over and over
That's when I just say, "Cancel my subscription or I will sue you for financial fraud. My Credit Union has a fraud department for a reason, and companies like you are the reason." Never had any of them argue with me after that.
Auto renewal should also be opt-in as opposed to opt-out. This is why we need an empowered and powerful Better Business Bureau. Lina Khan is excellent! We need more people like her everywhere!
As funny as it sounds, fishing licences in my state are the perfect model of this. You have to opt into auto-renewal, and even after you do, they send you an email about 2 weeks before your renewal, making sure you still want to renew, and providing the option to change your licence type when it renews, like going from a combo licence down to cheaper freshwater one, or adding a lobster trap permit to your acount.
I love how easy it is to switch up my Good Store subscriptions! Like most of the world, I get by month-to-month and need to manage my budget closely to make sure I can pay my bills. I am always swapping for different products, skipping months, and basically making it work for me in a way that allows me to keep supporting this business that I believe in. Thank you to the Good Store team for their work!
Also, I live in California, and we still have to call to cancel internet service which I desperately wish was covered by the click to cancel law. I made my partner call for me because the way that call centers speak to you on the phone makes me want to cry in a corner. Why do powerful business owners make human beings treat each other this way 😢
Where I live, there's a 24 hr fitness gym that has the worst rating on Google because they employ this exact tactic to get new members. It makes me sad, because my town is mostly comprised of retired old folk. So, there's a lot of people in retirement getting stolen from, even though they THOUGHT they had canceled services several years ago.
When my brother in law’s grandmother passed away, they literally had to close her bank accounts to stop the autopay on some of her services because they absolutely couldn’t cancel the subscriptions. They’d call and no one would ever answer. Websites didn’t have a cancel button. And they didn’t know enough about her payment process to stop the ACH.
I think a similar thing happened when my grandmother passed away. She had like a yearlong contract with her phone company, and my parents had to haggle with them on the phone to say “this person is deceased, you have to let us cancel,” because they wouldn’t let them cancel it early. I think they eventually got it through, but it was way harder than it needed to be.
While I agree with your outrage, your use of "literally" leaves me unsettled. The word should not be used for emphasis, but rather to distinguishing that something is not being done figuratively. That said, linguistics is a loose science and English is a living language. By all means, I encourage you to give form to thought without repressing your natural flow. You do you and you should keep using this tool as you see fit. Just for me, one could literally put the mistake in this sentence on top of an ambulance to direct traffic.
As a probate attorney, this is one of the most frustrating things my clients deal with. It takes some seriously evil intention to be more infuriating than attorneys!
As Hank points out, companies make it impossible to cancel because they've already lost you as a customer. That incentive is even stronger for a person who has died and can objectively never return as a future customer.
The Wall Street Journal does this. I was paying for it in college because I was required to summarize a financial article twice a week from the WSJ for a class(which come on, why did it have to be from the WSJ). At the end of the semester I went to cancel it with the plan to renew after I graduated and realized I could only call to cancel, even though I set it up online. I was so pissed I called, told them I wanted to their manager, and told the manager to cancel my subscription and that I wouldn't be coming back. Didn't make me feel better, it's been 8 years and I"m still mad just thinking about it.
Same thing happened to me in college with The New York Times! Had to call three separate times to get fully unsubscribed (twice it “failed to go through” apparently 🙄. The first time I thought they were just accidentally sending me newspapers still and I was somehow lucky/scamming them lmao, but when I called two weeks later, it turned out they were still charging me).
@@mathnerd97 Wish I had known that. At least I was getting a student discount so I think I was pay like $5 or $10 a month. Pretty sure my professor just liked the WSJ.
My favourite one was several years ago I was cancelling my internet service when I was moving. I called to cancel and spoke to a person who could change any of my services except he wasn't allowed to fully cancel them. I had to call back the next day when the retentions department was open in order to get a spiel to try and get me to not cancel. The kicker was: They didn't offer service where I was moving to so it didnt matter.
This tactic makes no sense when people are moving. The ISP my husband works for doesn’t even have this kind of team. They’re like “Oh, you’re moving? Have a good move and we hope we can provide service to you again soon.”
I have paid for subscriptions to things that I literally never use for several years after deciding that I should cancel because I had to call to cancel. I really hope that law making it illegal goes into effect nationwide soon.
Thank you for talking about this. I unsubscribed from a subscription recently and had to have a full blown argument over email with customer service to get my plan cancelled. Don’t think I’ve been more annoyed in my life. It’s MY money.
On Tumblr, I once read about a scene in Brooklyn99 where Ramirez asked Chief Holt to cancel a cable subscription for her (at least I think it was a subscription), and it immediately cuts to Holt yelling at the phone and not getting anywhere. Because this was Tumblr, someone reblogged pointing these predatory practices with tips on how to fight them. The government should make this and data brokers illegal.
I was pretty mad when Netflix emailed me saying they were ending the ad free subscription I've had for years but at least I didn't have to call anyone to cancel it.
True story: I accidentally ended up with an Awesome Coffee sub from both ACC and Good Store (my fault). Press button, send message, prompt response from human to confirm preferences, and SOLVED. Good Store practices should be the standard.
You should call them out honestly. They do not deserve the anonimity. Also mark it as fraud with your bank so you get that $35 back. You tried to cancel and they lied about the terms
Yeah, he should out the name. Louis Rossman outs all the names, like LA Fitness requiring you to send a cancellation letter by certified mail (well, they recommend certified because it's more of a pita, and so they probably just trash anything that's not certified) to their corporate office po box to cancel your gym membership that took two minutes to sign up for online. When you go to their membership faq, it states: "Be environmentally conscious and make payments online. It's easy." Yet when you click cancel two links below that, it states you have to print off a cancellation letter and it needs to be postmarked 5 business days before your month renews or they'll charge you for another month, despite the fact that when you signup they collect the first and last month's dues on day 1. I guess they only care about the environment when you're paying them. If you want to pause your membership, they allow that to be done online but will charge you $10 a month forever or until you unpause it and pay the full price again. As is, I will never ever give any money to LA Fitness (or buy any of their retail products) even after they are forced to change these shady practices. Since lots of gyms are like this and/or have shady exorbitant signup fees (LA Fitness charges a $75 startup fee for the opportunity to give them $40 per month and also an annual fee of $60). I spent a couple of grand on stuff for my home gym and kept adding on to it and am happy with the decision.
Agree that it should be illegal to require people to go through more steps to cancel a service than they went through to subscribe to it. Ironically, if the company hadn't raised their prices, they would have continued collecting $25 a month from you indefinitely, rather than one $35 payment and then nothing.
My internet tried doing this, i was sat on the phone for 2 hours just to be told im not allowed to cancel. no reason, nothing explained, just "no." I told my bank to block the payments and haven't heard from them since. I'm done being cordial with companies that actively despise their customers, if I can't afford to pay/do not need your service anymore, there's no arguing. You get *nothing.* (Note: I am one of many disabled fans commenting, that call took me a fortnight to prepare for and felt about as long while I was sat on it. This "call us to cancel" bull should be illegal for that alone)
Similar thing happened to me. I moved out of an apartment and visited a local store to return my router, which I had rented. They accepted that back but wouldn't let me cancel the plan in person, and that I had to call a support line. They claimed that it was not possible to cancel my subscription because the new tenant replacing me had already set up that company's service at that address (no surprise, ISPs form effective regional monopolies). After a nice long chat with the customer retention center I was able to cancel the service, but they still charged me for the next month. It frustrates me that Xfinity was willing to charge twice for a service they were not providing at the time, but who is going to stop them?
If you use a California VPN I think it’s required to be able to cancel on the computer, which is probably why there’s an online affordance that only sometimes works. But agree! It should be illegal!
The VPN thing doesn't sound right to me, to be honest. I'm assuming the subscription service has Hank's actual address, so they know he lives in Montana. So why should they apply California rules to him even if he happens to connect from a CA IP?
@@BalooSJ Because on the development side it might be easier to serve a page based on geo-ip than having a customer login and lookup their billing address, some services might not even have your billing address if they use a 3rd party payment processor like Stripe. Plus it avoids edge cases like people moving so they are in California without an updated address.
a gym once refused to cancel my plan. I then had the bank stop all payments. The bank had no issues doing this. The Gym send me an email saying that the payment didn't go through and i just ignored it.
I really hope the Non Compete bill passes for personal reasons. What else should be illegal is companies selling your personal information. Got an insurance quote the other day. The very next day I got phone calls, emails, and then letters FROM COMPETING COMPANIES.
Should be noted it is not a bill. It is a rule change unilaterally enacted by the FTC. At no point did your congressman or senator vote on this rule. Even if it is a good rule, which it is, this should not be how such a rule is put into place in a democratic republic.
@@evancombs5159 All branches of government (FTC being created by congress and enabled/appointed by the executive) should be empowered to act to protect the citizenry. If congress thinks it has a better plan for regulating employees fleeing toxic companies for their competitors, then they can write a new bill to overrule the FTC rule. Why should we wait on our deadlocked congress to protect our rights?
@@JeffBishop we should wait for congress because only congress has the power to enact new laws. The executive and judicial branches do not and should not. By giving the FTC/Executive branch the power to create new "law" without going through the proper procedure defeats the whole purpose of having a legislature. You have these separation of powers to make sure no branch gets too powerful. You do not undermine that structure just because you think you have a good idea. The next person might not be so benevolent. If the national legislature is too slow to act, you need to act at the local and state level where you have more influence, and can get things done more easily. Under the Constitution the FTC doesn't even have the authority to enforce such a rule at the local or state level. They can only enforce when a person is moving between states for a job, which would make the rule almost pointless because almost all non-compete clauses only apply to the local market.
what I most appreciate about my Awesome Socks subscription is that I get an email every month BEFORE getting charged the subscription fee. I love the heads-up
I’ve wanted to resubscribe to a service for ages, but every time I think about it I remember how easy it was to sign up online last time, and that I had to call the UK, in their business hours, to cancel!
I had this exact issue when trying to cancel an old subscription a year or two ago. The representative I spoke to tried everything she could to get me not to cancel. "Oh, but it's only xxx$/month, isn't that worth keeping?" No, I just need to cancel. No, there's no problem with the service and the price is not the issue, I just need to cancel. I wish I had been able to record that call, I lost count of the number of times I said "I just need to cancel it". Don't even ask how long I was on the phone for. At one point I felt like saying "are you having difficulty with the English language? I just need to cancel it." - Come to think of it, I might have said that. 😜
Lina Kahn is the bomb! 💣 I watched her interview with John Stewart on the Daily Show earlier this year and was thoroughly impressed. I hope she stays around for a long while and nails some of these nasty corporations. Thanks Hank for being a responsible and respectable business owner.
Yeah, I feel similarly... I had a [insert meal service that you have to cook yourself] subscription at one point and they allow you to skip weeks, I skipped a week ~8 hours before the deadline, but they decided to ship it to me anyway. I immediately contacted their customer support when they "locked in" the "order" and told them that they made a mistake, to which they replied basically "tough luck. sucks to be you" so I unsubscribed and never gave them another cent of my money.
I had hellofresh deliver a box to me after I cancelled the card I used for the sub. They asked for the money, I refused and then tried to ask for the food back. I said they were welcome to organise a collection for a box of warm food ingredients. They just let it go after I made it clear I wasn't going to budge.
The same thing happened to me when I, stupidly, subscribed to the Wall Street Journal during their seasonal offer. I couldn’t cancel online and they didn’t respond to my emails or calls. Eventually, I had to cancel my card from the bank and issued a new one.
Can confirm, that when I got laid off, and I needed to unsubcribe from the awesome coffee club, it was so easy! And when I started working again, I resubcribed and it was great! Thank you awesome coffee club!
Can I just say it is SO easy to change your subscription? I over estimated the amount of soap my kids would use and after building up a lil backstock I just went online, pushed a button for fewer bars per month and boom! Done.
As someone who upgraded to the 5lb bags of Awesome Coffee, then fast found myself in a situation with 3 bags of 5lbs of coffee, it was indeed easy to cancel. I'm down to the bottom of the last bag, and have intention to resubscribe (at a smaller amount) once I get through... all the other coffee... my family keeps foisting on me... Also, big shoutout to the notifications about upcoming billing cycles, so that I had a reminder to cancel. That should be mandatory for a subscription too!
oh my goodness yes those notification emails are excellent--it's a perfect reminder not just of the charge but of the "hey if you need to cancel/pause/etc." option. So, so helpful.
On canceling subscriptions this also of course penalizes people who are lower income with stricter jobs the most bc it’s so hard to find the time to call DOCTORS let alone some streaming service
I remember that I once wanted to cancel my mobile phone contract, logged in to the website and went to the control center, tried to cancel it says contact customer support. I call them they tell me I have to cancel via the control center. I tell them that this is what send me to them. They say this is odd, we cannot cancel the contract. I search the FAQ and it says I have to go the store and cancel in person there. I go to the store and guy there says that I have to cancel via the control center, I show him the FAQ and he calls HQ and it turns out the only way to cancel the contract is by sending a letter to HQ.
The cancel and resubcribe thing is so true. I had financial hurdle and had to pause a news subscription I really enjoyed and the hassle of the (forced) chat with a serivice person begging me to to stay annoyed me enough I still havent resubed even though I liked the content
As someone who had to cancel my tea subscription temporarily for financial reasons, I appreciate this because I would like to resubscribe some time in the future!
100%!!! Like a lot of disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent folx, I have horrendous anxiety around the telephone, this shady practice is using people's disabilities as a weapon to keep taking money from those who often have the least of it to spare. Thank you Hank, for talking about this on your channel!!
@@Unknown-jt1jo Personally, I find the willful exploitation of vulnerable people to be the far more reprehensible. We're also often the people that are labelled "lazy", because not all disabilities are visible, and abled people would rather assume someone else's "poor" behaviour is a character flaw, rather than there being an underlying rationale. It's scumbaggery either way, I just find the targeting of marginalised people to be worthy of additional vilification. But that's just me, everyone else's' mileage may vary.
I had this problem with a Car Wash subscription once. They wanted me to visit in person to cancel my subscription. I ended up calling my bank and telling them to not give that car wash another cent of my money.
When I was faced with a sub where I wanted to cancel, but the website told me I can only do it on the phone - I just went to my bank and cancelled the sub there. When the same happened with another place - I blacklisted them via paypal. I don't bother with subs anymore unless I ABSOLUTELY need and use them AND it's easy to cancel. So you're spot-on about the damage these slimy businesses do to the overall subscription market.
I subscribed to the awesome socks club for my dad last year, before the good store was around, and I had some trouble logging in to cancel because my dad has enough socks now. A wonderful human just cancelled it for me! Y'all really are committed to easy cancellations!
I wonder how outrageous this could get before becoming clearly illegal. Cancel via phone, only open for five minutes every third Wednesday of the month at 4 am. Cancel in-person, our offices are in Tuvalu. Or go full-on sweepstakes: cancel only via hand-written 3" by 5" card to an address only found hidden deep inside our terms of service, invalid or illegible cards will be ignored without warning.
I had to cancel parking once I have in my city. I could easily sign up online but to cancel required mail, a drafted document starting your intent to stop paying for parking, and 30-days notice, they'd have to receive this by the 1st of the month or they'd charge you for the next month. Failure to pay would result in your license plate suspension.
For the congressional hearing where they listen to the concerns of the businesses they should use the same setup those businesses use to file complaints
We love the sun basin soap, my husband, who usually isn't very particular about soap, refuses to use anything else. AND I appreciate how easy it is to update our subscription because I just upped us to two bars a month, because one bar isn't enough for two people. Thank you, Good Store (And Green Brothers)!
Remove your payment option or change it to a card you can close. If they bill your old card, dispute the charge which they weren't authorized to make anyway
This is what I plan to do. Reloadable credit cards with only a few months or however long you anticipate needing the service. They can't take money that ain't there!
This is what I plan to do. Reloadable credit cards with only a few months or however long you anticipate needing the service. They can't take money that ain't there!
as an autistic person with auditory processing issues... there is no way I'm willingly making a phone call. Tactics like this are not only super consumer unfriendly but also ableist
You could look at hooking up a computer a to phone line and configuring it to feed the incoming audio through a speech-to-text program, then setting up text-to-speech for your replies as well :) Then the audio is basically irrelevant :)
It’s not “ableist” EVERYONE needs to accept they can’t do EVERYTHING. That’s life. Finding work arounds for our own limitations is part of being Human. If you stop playing victim and join us you might have a better life experience.
@@alexandercastleberry480 So let's say, I need something essential, maybe I need a document, but I can't get into the building because there are stairs I can't get up .. should I figure things out too? Maybe grow an extra pair of legs hat work? Or wings? And people tell, welp "Stop playing the Victim, figure things out" that not ableist? Sorry, but yes, hiding something, especial some everyday thing, everybody needs or does, behind a hurdle, knowing it will make things much harder or impossible for people with disabilities, for no good reason is abliest af. They are hoping that you are unable to find a way around it. And it doesn't matter if the disability is visible, or even physical.
@@alexandercastleberry480 shut up, do the world a favor and shut up. not only should you shut up, you should go into the mountains and never return to the civilized world
I subscribed to a service that’s very popularly advertised on TH-cam, and they required me to email them to cancel my subscription. Not only did it make me decide to never use them again, it also damaged my trust in the TH-camrs who advertise it.
I am the person in my friend group who is always willing to make phone calls for people who need to make them and don't want to. I have plenty of anxieties, but I'm SO GOOD at the phone.
I wonder if if those of us who can do the phone can set up a volunteer service to handle this for those who can’t. I know several people who would jump on that.
For anyone reading this, all credit card companies allow you to charge back something like this. If you can show them you attempted to reach them to cancel, and they refuse to cancel and charge you, contact your card provider, they'll charge it back to them
Make sure you write/call your reps and Harris to communicate this because donors are spending hundreds of millions to have her removed. Tell them it will cost them your vote (even if it isn't true).
One of the premises of GDPR here in Europe is that it should be as easy to withdraw consent for a company to handle your data as it was to give consent in the first place. Great idea but hardly any companies actually abide by this so we still end up in a similar situation with some companies.
The fact that something is illegal often means little. People and companies break the law all the time because they know that enforcement is non-existent. An unenforced law is just wasted ink on wasted paper. What's worse, politicians often deliberately leave loopholes in laws that don't get publicized. So they get credit publicly for making bad behavior "illegal," but they get paid privately for putting language into the legislation that actually renders the law toothless.
Colorado requires every scheduled job to post the schedule a month in advance, the DOL has another few years before they can start investigating reports that companies are breaking that law.
reminds me of that mcdonald's case where that woman got bad burns because they figured it was cheaper for them to take on litigation costs than keep the coffee at a legal temperature and throw more away. and then it was pushed as ahaha silly americans need to be told their coffee is hot 😜
I've had to turn of my PIH donations in the past (and now) because my financial situation changes. Previously, they made me call in order to cancel. This time I was able to cancel just online which was really great!
In ny home country it took me 9 months of pestering and legal threats from both parties to disconnect fully from my cable/internet provider. Consumer protections are so incredibly important it's unreal.
Subscribe to good.store products and WE ACTUALLY MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU TO CANCEL. -John
p.s. John's Channel livestream coming later this afternoon: youtube.com/@johnschannel1007
To be fair, I cancled my socks subscribtion once and resubscribed, so it worked
I found I had to make an account before I could try cancelling, which was a bit confusing and I gave up the first time I thought about cancelling. But overall it was pretty easy once I figured out what it needed me to do.
I really appreciate the skip month feature! it feels very customer friendly and encourages me to stay subscribed
aight lil bro
I've tried to find how to cancel my sticker subscription from last Pizzamas for the last 3 months. So maybe tend to that too?
@@3countylaugh it's under "manage subscriptions" on the pizzamas site.
This is also a disability rights issue. If you have any disability which makes it hard to communicate verbally, being deaf, autistic etc. this makes it impossible to cancel.
++++++
I argue this at my place of work often and have pushed for a more accessible system to disconnect.
++++++++++
@@ragerequiem6323 good for you! Thank you for doing that.
Was just going to say this; dark patterns are inherently ableist.
I was cancelling my grandmother's ISP using the chat service and the agent said I'd have to call their number to cancel. I explained that I (my grandmother) have a disability and can't effectively communicate on the phone and that agent was suddenly able to cancel it immediately.
Of course they were! 😅
They would probably get into legal trouble with disability accommodation if they didn't let her cancel.
Grrrrrrrrr
The idea used to be to trey to "trick" you into speaking to a "retention specialist". People who were authorized to do more than the average employee, often including giving you you're original bill back (usually with a couple more "account processing fees" added, so they still got more from you than they used to, but only a couple dollars instead of $10). Somewhere along the line, a whole lot of businesses decided just decided to become explicitly hostile to customers looking to leave, and made the process so convoluted and excruciating that people would quit trying to cancel their subscription..
I'm not quite sure when that change happened (I've always kept as few subscriptions as possible; i never liked their game, not even when it wasn't hellish), but I'm definitely not a fan.
@@hoodiesticks I hate that this is probably true but then it's also really frustrating that you have to like out yourself kor another person) as being a disabled person for them to take you seriously. It's ableism at its finest....
My dad was the account holder for TH-cam TV for the family but the payment was on my mom's card. After my dad died we tried to cancel the account since it was too expensive but they literally wouldn't let us without a WILL AND DEATH CERTIFICATE. Despite my moms name being on the account. The only way we were able to finally stop it was to call our bank and have them block all payments to TH-cam. Absolutely disgusting practices by TH-cam.
One time, as a deaf person, I found it easier to just report my debit card as LOST to have an entirely new one issued so that companies like this could no longer take my money. Imagine that being your best option.
I'm so sorry you've had to deal with that. There's so much casual ableism built into systems.
This isn't aimed at you specifically, more as a general comment to people who might read your comment: be very careful about doing this when there's a contract involved. You may still be held responsible for the cost, and if so, it'll continue to accumulate until they send a debt collection agency after you. Not only is it stressful, but it affects your credit rating.
My bank has just implemented a 'feature' as part of a terms and conditions update (which most people ignore of course) which ensure any charges to my old card are transferred to my new card. How about, no thank you - I'll decide what gets charged to my new card, especially if the old card has been lost/stolen or had unauthorised charges on it.
@BanthaWorship Are you able to dispute transactions with your bank? or do they require you call. I would setup a Paypal to pay for subscriptions. They have a feature that makes it very easy to deauthorize merchants on their website. There's also services that can do it on your behalf.
Virtual Credit Cards are the way to go.
There are many companies running these services.
You create a virtual credit card to pay a specific repeating bill, and when you want to discontinue that subscription, and they make it hard to cancel, you can just delete the card.
Boom, they get no more money from you.
It would be hilarious to start doing this: "Hey, yeah, credit card company? I want to close my account with you. There is a company that's made it difficult to cancel a subscription so I'm doing away with credit cards entirely and going forward I will only be paying with cash. I'm going to let you kudgel them."
Recently I had to cancel a service, and they put me into one of those live chat sessions with someone to try and keep me there. Luckily, at the time, I lived in California and knew of that legislation, so when they said "Sorry, sir, you can't cancel online", I cited the exact law back to them, with a link to it, and suddenly they were able to do it right then and there. I'll be chasing that rush for a while
Incredible. Way to go!
I recall having to shout "let me speak to a supervisor" over and over at a "retention specialist" from DirectTV in order to get them to cancel my subscription. No wonder they have gone bankrupt so many times.
you went full ace attourney on them, Take that !
@@nitehawk86 I used to work retention for Sprint. It's a miserable, awful job. I guarantee that the person on the other end of the line was just as frustrated as you were. They told us in training, "Not everyone you talk to will be angry, but everyone who is angry is going to talk to you." They rarely ever give you anything to actually help the customers who are upset, you're just supposed to be able to either talk them into staying, or be enough of a hindrance that they give up. (At Sprint we had to try to convince folks who called in to cancel the lines of people who were DEAD to get a tablet or wifi hotspot on that line instead.) I wouldn't wish retention calls on my worst enemy.
You ABSOLUTELY SHOULD call them out by name. NEVER protect bad actors.
This happens at many companies.
The problem is "good actors" say that they will lose business to their competition who lock people in. That's why it's going through the FTC, so it's fair.
Yes, although people get really defensive of random bad actors. I've had a bunch of people accuse me of making stuff up when I point out that WGU nearly kicked me out for merely asking for support services that they promise every student prior to enrolling and refused to tell me what I could do to avoid getting in trouble again for the "unprofessional conduct" that was so bad that they had to edit out all the disrespectful things their employees had said to make ti seem like I was being unreasonable.
I just went through the same debacle. It's siriusXM, 100%.
If you call them out by name you encourage copy cats. It is the same with murders, vandalism, and many other criminals or people who have bad behaviors. Warnings on tv about how bad smoking was, caused an increase in smoking, what worked was not talking about smoking at all on tv. Almost no one actually ate tide pods, until the news started talking about and the calls to poison control for kids eating tide pods skyrocketed literally over night. They even tracked it by local areas, when that area had a news report about it, calls skyrocketed to poison control.
I want the FTC to pass a rule that requires any subscription/service requires the same or less number of actions and the same method as signed up to cancel.
Yess. A big yes.
This is actually in the rule!!! As a business owner I actually don't love this because I don't want to be forced to not give you a chance to tell me why you're unsubscribing, but I get it!!
@@vlogbrothers Well there's always the "reason for cancelling? (Optional)" text box, so they can choose to tell you if they want, or just skip it and click cancel. I hate the ones where the text box is mandatory. Some have even required me to put a minimum number of words in so I can't just put "N/A"
@@MyVanHaventhats when you do the anjdbchadbfadhkvbadkhcakdhbcdahkcbuoaegfihaiehfhuaoohcuhadknadjffojdapg'bsndn tactic
@@MyVanHaveni hate that too, i usually just hold fullstop (or any random key) then move on once it comes off.
A similar law has been in effect in Europe for a few years now that requires companies to accept cancellations on the same communication channel as subscriptions. If you can sing up online, you can cancel online. Really enjoying that
That’s amazing! I hate how little control we as consumers have. Another grievance I wish was changed (at least in the states where I have the issue): refunds should be instant as soon as you cancel or returned a product! I love how places can take my money instantaneously, but take 7-10 business days to put it back in my account. I’m bipolar, and one of my symptoms is that I impulse buy A LOT. I often want to return things and over spend for the dopamine rush I get, but I’m also broke most of the time. Having to wait for refunds to go through really makes life difficult, for anyone on a budget!
Also, at least in Norway, if a person dies the banks are required to instantly put a freeze on their accounts. Any subscription services they got are locked out from day 1 of notification. Once a custodian has been assigned this person can transfere money out of the account and pay for things, but the ability to request money still stays locked until the bank account is cancled.
You'll be amazed at how efficient subscription service becomes at shutting down their service when the money stops coming.
This is the norm in comparisons between EU and USA consumer protection law. It's the same for privacy law.
Same in Australia. I have a subscription to NY Times that isn't under that law and I had to call them during business hours NY time which is crazy hours here, despite signing up online 🤦♀️
In the Netherlands we now also have a law where it's mandatory to have a customer service phone line, to prevent all those maddening loops of chatbots and unhelpful FAQ articles on the website
this is SO FRUSTRATING!!!! Just went through this trying to cancel things after my grandma died! Her cell phone company sent me to their Retention department...I'm like she's dead, there's literally nothing to retain!!! Thank you for making The Good Store so user friendly!!!
"WE MADE THEM MAKE IT BIG FOR US!" Never change, Hank.
The team at Good Store kicks ass...
I doubt he did it personally but good people tend to surround themselves with good people so all the people who work on good store probably tend to be very kind thoughtful people
Bro then made a lengthy ad and almost definitely increased their revenue by telling people. Outstanding.
@@Kane0123 ye, he is at least transparent about it though and made sure that even though it was promotion it was still entertaining ... also i feel like he would have talked about this even if it was not an ad
Thank you Hank, I've been really upset about this since my mom lost her ability to speak due to ALS. I became her voice, and I had many interesting conversations where people said to me "You can't speak on her behalf, you're not even allowed to listen in because of legal privacy reasons."
And I said "Cool, then please allow her to text you, or video chat or communicate online, and she will be very happy to communicate with you directly. I would love for her to have independence and agency to do this for herself."
To which they squirmed and said "You're her daughter? Then I guess this one time will be ok."
Because getting power of attorney over someone who is of sound mind, or waiting for them to die, is easier than providing reasonable accessibility using technology they already have 99.9% in place.
Also yeah, I don't want to talk on the phone. I can, but really don't want to do it. I signed up online, let me cancel online.
Sending you big hugs. My fiance is my carer, and a lot of the time has to be my voice. It's incredibly frustrating watching them waste his time when he's saving everyone strained effort. I'm sure your mother feels the same watching you fight for her. Just wanted to say you're awesome and appreciated.
Because this is how identity theft scams work…
You Karened your way into getting someone to risk their job! You fucking moron. Hope someone calls into your bank and pretends you can’t speak and that they are your kid…
Canceling my kindle membership was harder than leaving Scientology it’s absolutely ridiculous
I figured all you would have to do to leave the Xenu cult was just threaten to tell everyone about all the "secrets" and I figured they would just throw you out.
i tried using amazon prime years ago, they "locked me out" of my profile, I couldnt cancel until it autocancelled after they sucked out all of my money (since i didnt work, i didnt earn, they took whatever was left and then it autocancelled), same password, same pc, same everything, after it cancelled the prime i could go into payment options again without an issue, not just my profile like before. freakin hate amazon, their support also refused to help me!
Doing anything with Amazon is next to impossible (except returns, for some weird reason). So, why are we all so addicted to them even when we have problems.
BTW..... I never knew there were so many "Bobs, Kevins and Susans" in Mumbai
@@BillMooney-r5c I wouldn't say we all are. I've had an Amazon account for probably 15 years now at least, and I can _maybe_ count on both hands the amount of times that I have ever used their site to make a purchase.
Everyone has different spending habits of course, for instance those who make regular / impulse purchases probably still feel like they are getting some net value out of the convenience of online shopping, even if it's provided by a corporation that they also claim to resent.
Actually all you needed to do was block payments to them through your bank account.
The option to skip a month of subscription without having to cancel and resubscribe is an absolutely genius idea, can we please make that a new standard feature???
It is for a lot of product subscriptions (at least the ones I use) and often you can just reschedule the delivery for much later if you're not going through it as fast. If I can't do that for a subscription I cancel generally.
I disagree, it's an anti-consumerist trick to make people spend more money than they were willing especially when it is the default option you have to decline instead of something you can accept. It is purely for the business's profits.
Two I use have this: Chewy for my pet food subscription and Dollar Shave Club. I've skipped shipments on each many times. I've also, many times on each, clicked the "process now" button because I needed it sooner. I love flexibility!
@DenArgJordgubbe-vg3li I'd argue it depends on various things and isn't black or white. If it's way easier to do and is pushed aggressively as the main option in an attempt to get people to skip a month and then forget they're about to be charged again, then yeah, it's pretty bad. But even then it's not all bad, because there still will be customers who are traveling or are otherwise busy will want to resubscribe to said service in a month's time, and they might want one less thing to think about. As shown by the commenter here, as well as myself, there are people in the world who want this as a feature, so if it's offered with the same amount if force as subscribing and is not favored or pushed over simply stopping, then there's nothing wrong with it.
😂
I canceled my subscription for the Awesome Coffee Club before my daughter was born, as we were cutting back before a big financial life change. (Diapers. so many diapers.) I can confirm that canceling was very easy. I am now re-subscribed. Just one point of data in your favor.
well that's awesome
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter!
Congrats on your little small person. May you have your coffee not because you need it. But because you want it and can reasonably budget.
See this makes so much sense to me! Also, word of mouth is a huge thing! Companies should prioritize making everyone happy, not just the people that continue to pay them. That would encourage more people to start paying them in the first place.
Yep, if they make it easy for me to cancel, as in provide advance notification, especially if there's a link to cancel from the notification, I'm probably going to subscribe again if whatever it is is of use to me again in the future. And I'll probably recommend it to my friends if applicable. If I have to spend a half hour cursing at retention specialists because I've made it clear that I want to cancel and won't change my mind, they'll hear that as well. AOL is not something that I will ever give money to ever again as a result of that many years ago.
I really appreciate you speaking on this. I was honestly outraged when the gym planet fitness not only charge a cancelation fee during the pandemic but also made everyone that wanted to cancel to go personally to the gym to do so. The cancelation line was longer then people going to actually workout. I can't imagine that actually being good for business. I actually get a discount with work for a membership, but will never sign up with them again.
This sort of stuff is why more and more people are using virtual credit cards for recurring subscriptions so that they can be cancelled at any time.
I wish I could use virtual credit cards for everything, but the last time I checked they were all backed up by a bank account instead of my actual credit card so that I'd be forfeiting any credit card points on the purchases.
@@sparkyb6My AmEx has a virtual card
@@sparkyb6 Capitol One has virtual credit cards. Not saying you need another credit card.
@@sparkyb6 There are credit cards you can get with rotating CCVs. It's the same idea, but one account. Downside is that it's phone only.
+
As much as people love to dunk on California, there are so many things like this where companies are doing bad stuff until CA passes a law and because it's such a huge market, companies basically have to follow it. You see it everywhere, but especially in matters of privacy, environmental impact, and consumer protections. It's so ubiquitous that it has a name: The California Effect. I didn't think most Americans even understand how much they benefit from it.
Also happens a lot with the EU regulations. They've got some good things going, like single type of charger to reduce electronics waste. The privacy regulations. Hell I can just email a company and tell them to remove all my data because of the GDPR and they have to do that. I like that a lot.
That must be the cause of so many products with messages similar to "This product contains carcinogens according to the state of California".
@@snazzypazzy California is like the Europe of the US XD
@@Laura-kl7vi the podcast 99 percent invisible did a really interesting episode on those labels. The story behind them is fascinating
Americans benefitting from commiefornia yeah fosho bro keep on drinking that coolaid.
The hours these places often have their phone lines open is a big problem too. Most people are at work while they're open, meaning that unless your boss is cool with you being on your phone at work for an extended period of time, you literally don't have time to cancel.
This is something that I've written about many times as an autistic person. For people with autism, or high anxiety, or worse.. imagine non-verbal people... picking up a phone is difficult at the best of times but near impossible when you know you're heading into a confrontational situation. This sort of "business practice" literally abuses disabled people, trapping them in a lifelong subscription.
Could not agree more. I've been getting charged $17 a month for a dental plan I no longer use for FIVE YEARS because of this. Do me a favor and don't tell me how much that adds up to because it's too depressing 💀
@@duchessconlonhopefully you are in therapy as that is not a mentally stable behavior and I imagine it causes you stress.
SAME as an autistic person, phone calls give me so much anxiety. i hate them! let me email! let me message! let me do it myself on a website! it takes so much more mental work for me to both prepare for and do a phone call that i end up scheduling out an hour for a 5 minute call. god forbid they ask something im not ready to answer or are looking for special magic words to do what im asking them to do in plain terms
You have to remember that it's their money, you're just earning it for them. :)
@@lijohnyoutube101 bro, i get you're probably just trying to be helpful, but do you really think they don't know that?
I actually just did this at Good Store, reducing my tea subscriptions. I assumed it would be the normal hassle. When it wasn't, I thought, "Oh, of course. They keep it classy. Perfectly on brand."
And that's how you keep customers considering your business in the future.
Very demure. Very respectful.
I had an extended car warranty once and tried to cancel the day that the next bill was due. The agent tried guilting me into staying on, then said I couldn't cancel that day, then said it was illegal to call my bank to dispute the charge. When I called my bank, she laughed and basically said "let our lawyers worry about that part"
i can't believe having an extended car warranty is real and not just made up by scam robocalls
@@geenskeen It is a scam. The OP got scammed and still doesn't get it.
I was building a website for a client and i was able to convince them that they should have a "no explanation required returns" where if you want to return the product but don't want to talk to us and explain why you don't like it then you just pay postage (US postage would be under $5 for most people) and write your order number, email address, or anything and they will look up the order and refund you.
The company targets ADHD and Autistic people. So far it's been a hit and people keep saying they are buying purely for making the return policy clear and easy and upfront.
Yeah maybe someone buys it and returns it for stupid reasons but most won't. Give 99.9% of your customers a good experience and don't worry about the 0.1%>
While not the same, exactly, your last line reminded me of a coffee company I took calls for at a call center. The company had started as a "free" trial ("Just pay shipping!"...which is how they get your card info) and then a month later, people would be sent more of the coffee and billed the full amount if they hadn't cancelled in time. If this happened, they had to send the coffee back, unopened, to get a refund.
It was a pain in the ass and the calls were super stressful. The trial package was advertised on a lot of websites frequented by younger people who used it to get points for things (telling on myself here, but there is a very old avatar-based chat website called IMVU. You get virtual money in the game that can be bought with real money. But if you don't want to do that, or want to minimize what you spend, you can watch ads or sign up for trial services. This coffee company was one such service and would net you a good amount of virtual currency). However, some young person just signing up for virtual credits likely isn't paying attention to the information about it becoming a subscription, or they fake that they didn't know about it (even though the checkout requires confirming you've read and understood this. And it wasn't even in fine print, it was only three or four sentences into the summary page, which was in regular text).
I left that job after about two years but years after that, I got curious to see if they were still using that subscription model...and was proud to see that they weren't! They had a full-blown, buy once and be done website! They did still have an optional subscription but it wasn't like the trial- to-subscription model like before. There would be no way someone could sign up and not know what they were doing. I was absurdly proud of this company 😅. Even the specialty seasonal flavors were now available year-round.
And then I checked this year and...they've gone out of business! Their coffee is instead being sold off to another company and their website links to the new company. The bags will no longer use the old name. I'm a little sad for them. They didn't go bankrupt, the owner of the company died and those left in charge decided to just shut the whole thing down. But, I'm still proud that they had moved away from trying to get the business of a rather flakey customer base and instead by setting up a full-scale website, they were able to capture a bigger and more honest market. As you mentioned, don't worry about the 0.1%, focus on the rest.
That's what Amazon does too. First time I needed to do a return, I had all my evidence lined up for CS, and they didn't even have a process for seeing pictures I took of the item. Just rubber stamped it, good to go.
If I can't see the exit from the entrance, I ain't going in.
(Figuratively speaking)
@@GamesFromSpace Sometimes if the item isn't worth much, and possibly depending on the reason for the return, they don't even ask for it back. Just a refund and you're on your way.
I feel like being honest and fair is like 99.9% of the issue, I don’t even mind when a small business doesn’t do returns, I just want to know upfront so I know what’s up, and if you do returns/ cancellation/ end subscriptions/ memberships then definitely make it easy, a form, an email, a chat function
4:22 the irony of ignoring the companies begging to cancel the rule that makes it harder for them to ignore consumers begging to cancel their subscriptions is very tasty.
Please submit your objections in-person at the Antarctica Research Station at 3am tomorrow in order to be considered.
@@jbutler8585 😆
@@jbutler8585 This made me snort. Thank you.
Yes it would have been terrific if they had given them a phone number that was always busy for them to submit their objections 😅
Our gym membership that we signed up for online requires canceling in person. We moved further away and didn’t cancel before moving. We finally were able to drive over there and they told us “oh only managers can cancel and there won’t be one on site for 2 days, so come back Monday”
That is definitely where you go to your bank and instruct them to cancel the payment. The bank is at least motivated to keep you happy. The gym is not.
Gyms are notoriously bad for this. I used to go to one, and I had stopped going. Couldn't cancel online. I called, and they said I had to go to the gym I signed up at to cancel.... I signed up online! Apparently, the first gym I visited upon signing up counts as my "home gym," even though I'd since moved states.
I ended up canceling the payments through my bank, and THEY THREATENED TO SEND ME TO COLLECTIONS!
I had to get a lawyer to send a letter to get them to cancel that "debt"
Was it planet fitness? I’m having the same problem right now.
@@ДанкМимс Any 24 Hr Fitness does this too.
Yes, it was Planet Fitness. I had the same problem. Moved 2 hrs from my "home gym"... paid for months after. F*** that noise, will never go back. (Sorry, so heated, I'm assuming that's who it is😅😅)
Yepp
Planet Fitness is decent
...
Until you need to cancel
I still go to planet fitness but am aware they are trash for cancelling and will likely need to block their charges since they illegally won't let me cancel
@@lowlyjester
I've had more than one gym company make me show up in person to the gym to sign paperwork that I was canceling my membership and of course it was like a month's+ notice (as in I would get charged a whole 'nother month before the membership was officially canceled) in order for it to go into effect.
Oh my goodness, try and cancel services after someone dies away. When my mum passed way I was on the phone with her cellphone provider forever. I had to keep say No I don’t want to upgrade her service, and no I didn’t want to transfer her number/account to someone else. At one point I even said “I am talking to you on the cell phone that I already pay for, why would I take on a second one?!?!” According to the representative I spoke with people do that all the time…BS.
I was the worst, and I was already in a vulnerable state trying to settle my mother affairs. Total nightmare.
Your story and others I'm seeing in the comments are insane. Companies just can't do stuff like that in the UK. If you call and say one of their customers has passed away, you will get put through to a dedicated probate team who will mark the account accordingly, and start their built-in procedures for closure (provided you are the executor). The other stuff though, making it difficult to cancel? Yeah, there is a little bit of that, but it's less difficult in the UK than it sounds like it is in the US.
I had a similar thing happen where they tried to convince us to keep my father's phone on our plan after his death with a story about having access to the recording of his voice on the voicemail message. We could not afford to keep an additional line open based solely on emotional manipulation.
That's one of the few times where I feel it would be absolutely justified to lose your composure for a moment and tell them clearly, in no-uncertain words: what has happened and why they need to stop trying to push a sale when the person who owned the service is no longer among the living.
I try to be as polite and sensible to customer service representatives: but some things really shouldn't be so hard to do!
I feel sorry for you. One way to fix this is the Norwegian way. Pass a law that forces banks to put a freeze on accounts when their client dies. Legally assigned custodians can still transfer money and pay for things, but external parties can no longer request money from the account.
When a person dies here the cellphone provider gets nothing more once the bank is notified. You'll be amazed at how efficient a provider is at stoping a service once the money isn't automatically deducted. You don't even have to contact them. Which shows how predatory subscription service can be when it comes to canceling subscriptions.
That’s insane! I’m sorry to hear about your loss and sorry that they hassled you! I’m one of those people who work at a call centre and I used to be ok the retention team. Whenever a client would pass we would offer our condolences and then send them to a different department to cancel and close out the account. We could ask if they wanted to transfer but if they didn’t that was the end of it and normally I wouldn’t even ask that. The whole thing took all of five minutes at most
I had do mention a LAWSUIT in my email once to cancel a subscription because they don’t wanted to cancel it. They apologised in an email and cancelled it. Just…wow.
I paid out like $200 in resume service subscription payments without knowing it because they were unclear that you couldn't cancel online and I thought I had. I am a broke college student making $15 an hour and was clearly looking for a job when I subscribed. I find this ridiculously predatory
The very idea of a resume subscription service is predatory
That’s not something you need more than once every few years, if it’s any good… the only reason to make that a subscription is hoping people forget to cancel it
Yeah sounds like an unfair business practice
@@cashnelson2306To be fair, there are definitely fields where it’s good to leave your résumé somewhere discoverable, as recruiters will actively seek out and contact you, but that’s definitely not the average, and still wouldn’t need a subscription service.
Charities are the same. I recently had to end some charitable giving due to a financial trouble. Only two of the ten allowed me to cancel online. Now that the trouble is over I only started giving to the two that allowed me to quit online. The rest lost out.
It 's pretty frustrating when charities use the same bad faith practices as for profit companies :/ I expect better from them
I recently moved and the previous person who lived here, has since passed away. Her kids made sure to cancel everything. Several months later I still received letters from charities that she used to give to, asking for a payment. Had to return some to sender with "recipient has passed away" written on it and they seem to have finally caught the message. No new letters. So far...
As it should be.
This is EXACTLY what AOL used to do back in the day. You could go through all the steps to cancel your subscription service, but unless you put in a stop payment with your bank, they would just keep charging you and completely ignore the cancellation request.
I had heard this as a kid and neglected to share this information with my mother when she cancelled our AOL sub, allowing me to still get online surreptitiously.
Gym memberships are the worst with this. My partner is in the military and we moved across the country a few months ago and forgot in all the craziness to cancel our gym memberships. Which we use a lot but that gym does not exist in the state we were moving to.
So a couple weeks go by and I go to their website to cancel our memberships (he’s out of town a lot, military life, so I handle the details of stuff like that). Can’t cancel online you have to call them.
Fine. I called them. You can’t cancel over the phone, you have to come in in person to cancel. So they honestly think that the policy should be that I have to fly from Virginia to Ohio just to cancel a gym membership? One that I originally started online, not in person.
Eventually they told me I had to send them certified letters with certain information and wet signatures. I did that. It’s been months. Still not cancelled.
If I could start the membership without a wet signature (online) I should be able to cancel the membership without a wet signature (online).
Madness. Should not be legal.
AMEN! Planet Fitness is the only thing in my price range around here in my area of Ohio. They made it VERY HIDDEN AND DIFFICULT to cancel. I believe I had to do it in person as you said! Ridiculous. Luckily I live by them still, but I hate going into places where I feel I’m gonna be hassled into staying. Fortunately they didn’t care and let me cancel easily in-person, but if I was moved I have no idea how they would have let me cancel! Probs same hassle as you!
If it isn't already, see if you can switch your payment method to a credit card. Then request your bank to stop payment and reverse charges. This can be a hassle depending on your bank but may be worth it if you're losing a fair bit of money.
Yes! I had to have my bank block the payments for me. Then the gym emailed me all angry.
This exact thing happened to me when I moved from Texas and tried to cancel planet fitness
Yepppp, I was only gonna be somewhere for a year, told them that upfront and asked if I could cancel the member ship early (as I had signed up some months after I had moved there), they said it would be no problem! And then when the time came for me to leave, the RING AROUND they gave me to cancel with no fees was insane. Turned me off any kind of gym membership completely.
Companies never forget the first Rule of Acquisition: "Once you have their money, never give it back."
They need to remember the 8th Rule of Acquisition: "Small print leads to large risk"
🖖🏻
They should also remember the 16th Rule Of Acquisition, "A deal is a deal." If they provide a subscription service with the agreement of the customer being able to leave that subscription, then they need to uphold their end of the bargain! And the worse they do it, the more they wreck their chances of the customer ever coming back. It seems like common sense, but perhaps it's not as common as I thought it was.
"A contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi"
"Good customers are as rare as latinum; treasure them."
Commenting to say I just canceled my Good Store Subscription because we are expecting a baby and are cutting back in several subscription services. It was by far the easiest subscription to cancel! In the future, I would be perfectly happy to resubscribe when it fits our budget!
Once this happened to me and I reported the future charges as fraudulent to my bank. That escalation quickly solved the problem
You're lucky they didn't send a collector after you and hurt your credit.
Moved recently and had to do some cancellations.
If it needs to be on the phone saying: "I am moving countries, I can't use your service over there." is the fastest way to have them give up any sales tactic.
This might be harder in the US, not sure moving state works as well.
“Oh where are you moving?”
“Prison.”
I've done this in the US and it has worked so fast every time! 10/10 recommended route
This is genius
I told Comcast I was moving in with someone who already had internet and they still called me two or three extra times to see if I was really sure (although each additional call did end very quickly when I explained)
just lie
Life hack for companies that don't actually process the cancellation or stonewall you: send a letter asking that your subscription be canceled to the company via certified mail before calling, then call a week later and ask if the cancellation has been processed. The person on the phone won't be able to do anything, but you can use the certified letter as evidence to dispute the charge with your bank or credit card company the next time they try to bill you.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate Lina Khan. For the first time since basically FDR, the FTC under her leadership is finally starting to push back against monopolies and I think that’s awesome!
I was subscribed to a company that sent you something monthly and you had the option to skip. Well, I was skipping more and more so I decided to cancel. On my second attempt to contact them, I let the phone ring for 3 hours before anyone answered! Yes, I waited because after I tried the first time I went online and found that many other people were unable to cancel because they couldn’t get someone on the phone. I was literally that episode of FRIENDS where Phoebe waits on the phone all day. It was ridiculous and I will never resubscribe or promote the business in any way.
Once I got locked into a 45 minute call with virign media retentions team who aggressively tried to not let me cancel even though the last ten minutes was me just saying I WANT TO CANCEL over and over
That's when I just say, "Cancel my subscription or I will sue you for financial fraud. My Credit Union has a fraud department for a reason, and companies like you are the reason."
Never had any of them argue with me after that.
Auto renewal should also be opt-in as opposed to opt-out. This is why we need an empowered and powerful Better Business Bureau. Lina Khan is excellent! We need more people like her everywhere!
The BBB is not affiliated with the government and has no regulatory authority. It's essentially Yelp for boomers.
As funny as it sounds, fishing licences in my state are the perfect model of this. You have to opt into auto-renewal, and even after you do, they send you an email about 2 weeks before your renewal, making sure you still want to renew, and providing the option to change your licence type when it renews, like going from a combo licence down to cheaper freshwater one, or adding a lobster trap permit to your acount.
what kind of empowerment would you like to see for a private non-profit that only exists to run PR distractions for the Chamber of Commerce?
@@Ahzpayne I'd like it not to be empowered to where it can do its job instead of us just run PR distractions for the Chamber of Commerce.
I love how easy it is to switch up my Good Store subscriptions! Like most of the world, I get by month-to-month and need to manage my budget closely to make sure I can pay my bills. I am always swapping for different products, skipping months, and basically making it work for me in a way that allows me to keep supporting this business that I believe in. Thank you to the Good Store team for their work!
Also, I live in California, and we still have to call to cancel internet service which I desperately wish was covered by the click to cancel law. I made my partner call for me because the way that call centers speak to you on the phone makes me want to cry in a corner. Why do powerful business owners make human beings treat each other this way 😢
Where I live, there's a 24 hr fitness gym that has the worst rating on Google because they employ this exact tactic to get new members. It makes me sad, because my town is mostly comprised of retired old folk. So, there's a lot of people in retirement getting stolen from, even though they THOUGHT they had canceled services several years ago.
When my brother in law’s grandmother passed away, they literally had to close her bank accounts to stop the autopay on some of her services because they absolutely couldn’t cancel the subscriptions. They’d call and no one would ever answer. Websites didn’t have a cancel button. And they didn’t know enough about her payment process to stop the ACH.
I think a similar thing happened when my grandmother passed away. She had like a yearlong contract with her phone company, and my parents had to haggle with them on the phone to say “this person is deceased, you have to let us cancel,” because they wouldn’t let them cancel it early. I think they eventually got it through, but it was way harder than it needed to be.
While I agree with your outrage, your use of "literally" leaves me unsettled.
The word should not be used for emphasis, but rather to distinguishing that something is not being done figuratively.
That said, linguistics is a loose science and English is a living language.
By all means, I encourage you to give form to thought without repressing your natural flow.
You do you and you should keep using this tool as you see fit.
Just for me, one could literally put the mistake in this sentence on top of an ambulance to direct traffic.
As a probate attorney, this is one of the most frustrating things my clients deal with. It takes some seriously evil intention to be more infuriating than attorneys!
As Hank points out, companies make it impossible to cancel because they've already lost you as a customer. That incentive is even stronger for a person who has died and can objectively never return as a future customer.
@@PatrickStaight I would recommend seeing a counselor, as this should literally not upset you so much that you write an essay.
The Wall Street Journal does this. I was paying for it in college because I was required to summarize a financial article twice a week from the WSJ for a class(which come on, why did it have to be from the WSJ). At the end of the semester I went to cancel it with the plan to renew after I graduated and realized I could only call to cancel, even though I set it up online. I was so pissed I called, told them I wanted to their manager, and told the manager to cancel my subscription and that I wouldn't be coming back. Didn't make me feel better, it's been 8 years and I"m still mad just thinking about it.
Most of the big newspapers do it this way unfortunately
Same thing happened to me in college with The New York Times! Had to call three separate times to get fully unsubscribed (twice it “failed to go through” apparently 🙄. The first time I thought they were just accidentally sending me newspapers still and I was somehow lucky/scamming them lmao, but when I called two weeks later, it turned out they were still charging me).
You don't have to subscribe to read their articles now. You can just disable JavaScript in your browser
@@mathnerd97 Wish I had known that. At least I was getting a student discount so I think I was pay like $5 or $10 a month. Pretty sure my professor just liked the WSJ.
@@dstutz I always just read the free sites and block the ones that require a subscription. 😄
My favourite one was several years ago I was cancelling my internet service when I was moving.
I called to cancel and spoke to a person who could change any of my services except he wasn't allowed to fully cancel them. I had to call back the next day when the retentions department was open in order to get a spiel to try and get me to not cancel.
The kicker was: They didn't offer service where I was moving to so it didnt matter.
This tactic makes no sense when people are moving. The ISP my husband works for doesn’t even have this kind of team. They’re like “Oh, you’re moving? Have a good move and we hope we can provide service to you again soon.”
I have paid for subscriptions to things that I literally never use for several years after deciding that I should cancel because I had to call to cancel. I really hope that law making it illegal goes into effect nationwide soon.
Thank you for talking about this. I unsubscribed from a subscription recently and had to have a full blown argument over email with customer service to get my plan cancelled. Don’t think I’ve been more annoyed in my life. It’s MY money.
Thanks for mentioning Ms. Kahn. She is AMAZING! (Which is why corporations & corporate politicians want her gone.)
and they understaff the line for cancellations so you'll end up waiting for ages to be answered, then the runaround they'll give you
Or don't staff the line at all.
On Tumblr, I once read about a scene in Brooklyn99 where Ramirez asked Chief Holt to cancel a cable subscription for her (at least I think it was a subscription), and it immediately cuts to Holt yelling at the phone and not getting anywhere. Because this was Tumblr, someone reblogged pointing these predatory practices with tips on how to fight them. The government should make this and data brokers illegal.
ha this video made me think of that scene actually
I love tumblr
I was pretty mad when Netflix emailed me saying they were ending the ad free subscription I've had for years but at least I didn't have to call anyone to cancel it.
True story: I accidentally ended up with an Awesome Coffee sub from both ACC and Good Store (my fault). Press button, send message, prompt response from human to confirm preferences, and SOLVED. Good Store practices should be the standard.
You should call them out honestly. They do not deserve the anonimity.
Also mark it as fraud with your bank so you get that $35 back. You tried to cancel and they lied about the terms
Yeah, he should out the name. Louis Rossman outs all the names, like LA Fitness requiring you to send a cancellation letter by certified mail (well, they recommend certified because it's more of a pita, and so they probably just trash anything that's not certified) to their corporate office po box to cancel your gym membership that took two minutes to sign up for online.
When you go to their membership faq, it states: "Be environmentally conscious and make payments online. It's easy." Yet when you click cancel two links below that, it states you have to print off a cancellation letter and it needs to be postmarked 5 business days before your month renews or they'll charge you for another month, despite the fact that when you signup they collect the first and last month's dues on day 1. I guess they only care about the environment when you're paying them. If you want to pause your membership, they allow that to be done online but will charge you $10 a month forever or until you unpause it and pay the full price again.
As is, I will never ever give any money to LA Fitness (or buy any of their retail products) even after they are forced to change these shady practices. Since lots of gyms are like this and/or have shady exorbitant signup fees (LA Fitness charges a $75 startup fee for the opportunity to give them $40 per month and also an annual fee of $60). I spent a couple of grand on stuff for my home gym and kept adding on to it and am happy with the decision.
Agree that it should be illegal to require people to go through more steps to cancel a service than they went through to subscribe to it.
Ironically, if the company hadn't raised their prices, they would have continued collecting $25 a month from you indefinitely, rather than one $35 payment and then nothing.
My internet tried doing this, i was sat on the phone for 2 hours just to be told im not allowed to cancel. no reason, nothing explained, just "no." I told my bank to block the payments and haven't heard from them since.
I'm done being cordial with companies that actively despise their customers, if I can't afford to pay/do not need your service anymore, there's no arguing. You get *nothing.*
(Note: I am one of many disabled fans commenting, that call took me a fortnight to prepare for and felt about as long while I was sat on it. This "call us to cancel" bull should be illegal for that alone)
Similar thing happened to me. I moved out of an apartment and visited a local store to return my router, which I had rented. They accepted that back but wouldn't let me cancel the plan in person, and that I had to call a support line.
They claimed that it was not possible to cancel my subscription because the new tenant replacing me had already set up that company's service at that address (no surprise, ISPs form effective regional monopolies).
After a nice long chat with the customer retention center I was able to cancel the service, but they still charged me for the next month.
It frustrates me that Xfinity was willing to charge twice for a service they were not providing at the time, but who is going to stop them?
If you use a California VPN I think it’s required to be able to cancel on the computer, which is probably why there’s an online affordance that only sometimes works. But agree! It should be illegal!
I gotta not comment 1 minute in.
@@richardsmith3021no no this is good. Thanks. I need to read something multiple times
As a Canadian, I definitely appreciate this information.
The VPN thing doesn't sound right to me, to be honest. I'm assuming the subscription service has Hank's actual address, so they know he lives in Montana. So why should they apply California rules to him even if he happens to connect from a CA IP?
@@BalooSJ Because on the development side it might be easier to serve a page based on geo-ip than having a customer login and lookup their billing address, some services might not even have your billing address if they use a 3rd party payment processor like Stripe. Plus it avoids edge cases like people moving so they are in California without an updated address.
a gym once refused to cancel my plan. I then had the bank stop all payments. The bank had no issues doing this. The Gym send me an email saying that the payment didn't go through and i just ignored it.
No soap, no grass, what am I supposed to eat??
I hear lip gloss is delicious 👍
@@thefabooDONT😂😂😂
Pizza, you can never go wrong with pizza, with or without pineapple
@@typemasters2871pineapple forever!
@@typemasters2871 Just make sure said pizza has glue on it for AI approved nutritional value.
I really hope the Non Compete bill passes for personal reasons. What else should be illegal is companies selling your personal information. Got an insurance quote the other day. The very next day I got phone calls, emails, and then letters FROM COMPETING COMPANIES.
Should be noted it is not a bill. It is a rule change unilaterally enacted by the FTC. At no point did your congressman or senator vote on this rule. Even if it is a good rule, which it is, this should not be how such a rule is put into place in a democratic republic.
@@evancombs5159 All branches of government (FTC being created by congress and enabled/appointed by the executive) should be empowered to act to protect the citizenry. If congress thinks it has a better plan for regulating employees fleeing toxic companies for their competitors, then they can write a new bill to overrule the FTC rule. Why should we wait on our deadlocked congress to protect our rights?
@@JeffBishop we should wait for congress because only congress has the power to enact new laws. The executive and judicial branches do not and should not. By giving the FTC/Executive branch the power to create new "law" without going through the proper procedure defeats the whole purpose of having a legislature.
You have these separation of powers to make sure no branch gets too powerful. You do not undermine that structure just because you think you have a good idea. The next person might not be so benevolent.
If the national legislature is too slow to act, you need to act at the local and state level where you have more influence, and can get things done more easily. Under the Constitution the FTC doesn't even have the authority to enforce such a rule at the local or state level. They can only enforce when a person is moving between states for a job, which would make the rule almost pointless because almost all non-compete clauses only apply to the local market.
@@evancombs5159 i'm honestly confused by your logic here. there are plenty of government agencies that make laws/policies...
The simple concept of banning the sale of personal data - that would be amazing. We need that.
Call. Them. Out. By. Name.
There is no downside to this.
what I most appreciate about my Awesome Socks subscription is that I get an email every month BEFORE getting charged the subscription fee. I love the heads-up
+++++++
I’ve wanted to resubscribe to a service for ages, but every time I think about it I remember how easy it was to sign up online last time, and that I had to call the UK, in their business hours, to cancel!
I had this exact issue when trying to cancel an old subscription a year or two ago. The representative I spoke to tried everything she could to get me not to cancel.
"Oh, but it's only xxx$/month, isn't that worth keeping?" No, I just need to cancel. No, there's no problem with the service and the price is not the issue, I just need to cancel.
I wish I had been able to record that call, I lost count of the number of times I said "I just need to cancel it". Don't even ask how long I was on the phone for. At one point I felt like saying "are you having difficulty with the English language? I just need to cancel it." - Come to think of it, I might have said that. 😜
That sounds like she had a script she had to follow or risk being penalized.
@@slwrabbits Probably, yes
@@slwrabbits That's a "her problem", not a "your problem".
Lina Kahn is the bomb! 💣 I watched her interview with John Stewart on the Daily Show earlier this year and was thoroughly impressed. I hope she stays around for a long while and nails some of these nasty corporations.
Thanks Hank for being a responsible and respectable business owner.
Yeah, I feel similarly... I had a [insert meal service that you have to cook yourself] subscription at one point and they allow you to skip weeks, I skipped a week ~8 hours before the deadline, but they decided to ship it to me anyway. I immediately contacted their customer support when they "locked in" the "order" and told them that they made a mistake, to which they replied basically "tough luck. sucks to be you" so I unsubscribed and never gave them another cent of my money.
I had hellofresh deliver a box to me after I cancelled the card I used for the sub. They asked for the money, I refused and then tried to ask for the food back. I said they were welcome to organise a collection for a box of warm food ingredients. They just let it go after I made it clear I wasn't going to budge.
The same thing happened to me when I, stupidly, subscribed to the Wall Street Journal during their seasonal offer. I couldn’t cancel online and they didn’t respond to my emails or calls. Eventually, I had to cancel my card from the bank and issued a new one.
Can confirm, that when I got laid off, and I needed to unsubcribe from the awesome coffee club, it was so easy! And when I started working again, I resubcribed and it was great! Thank you awesome coffee club!
This video reminded me to cancel a subscription I couldn't cancel on my phone. Thanks, Hank! You probably saved me $9!
Can I just say it is SO easy to change your subscription?
I over estimated the amount of soap my kids would use and after building up a lil backstock I just went online, pushed a button for fewer bars per month and boom! Done.
As someone who upgraded to the 5lb bags of Awesome Coffee, then fast found myself in a situation with 3 bags of 5lbs of coffee, it was indeed easy to cancel. I'm down to the bottom of the last bag, and have intention to resubscribe (at a smaller amount) once I get through... all the other coffee... my family keeps foisting on me...
Also, big shoutout to the notifications about upcoming billing cycles, so that I had a reminder to cancel. That should be mandatory for a subscription too!
oh my goodness yes those notification emails are excellent--it's a perfect reminder not just of the charge but of the "hey if you need to cancel/pause/etc." option. So, so helpful.
LOVE these reminder emails
On canceling subscriptions this also of course penalizes people who are lower income with stricter jobs the most bc it’s so hard to find the time to call DOCTORS let alone some streaming service
I remember that I once wanted to cancel my mobile phone contract, logged in to the website and went to the control center, tried to cancel it says contact customer support. I call them they tell me I have to cancel via the control center. I tell them that this is what send me to them. They say this is odd, we cannot cancel the contract. I search the FAQ and it says I have to go the store and cancel in person there. I go to the store and guy there says that I have to cancel via the control center, I show him the FAQ and he calls HQ and it turns out the only way to cancel the contract is by sending a letter to HQ.
The cancel and resubcribe thing is so true. I had financial hurdle and had to pause a news subscription I really enjoyed and the hassle of the (forced) chat with a serivice person begging me to to stay annoyed me enough I still havent resubed even though I liked the content
The "service" is not only a dark pattern and ableist, it is also a security risk to require anything over phone nowadays.
good point!
I'm perfectly happy when all of these videos turn into an ad. Keep doing you. Love good store 😊
As someone who had to cancel my tea subscription temporarily for financial reasons, I appreciate this because I would like to resubscribe some time in the future!
100%!!! Like a lot of disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent folx, I have horrendous anxiety around the telephone, this shady practice is using people's disabilities as a weapon to keep taking money from those who often have the least of it to spare. Thank you Hank, for talking about this on your channel!!
They're mostly using people's laziness/busy-ness against them. Far more common than disabilities.
@@Unknown-jt1jo Personally, I find the willful exploitation of vulnerable people to be the far more reprehensible. We're also often the people that are labelled "lazy", because not all disabilities are visible, and abled people would rather assume someone else's "poor" behaviour is a character flaw, rather than there being an underlying rationale. It's scumbaggery either way, I just find the targeting of marginalised people to be worthy of additional vilification. But that's just me, everyone else's' mileage may vary.
I had this problem with a Car Wash subscription once. They wanted me to visit in person to cancel my subscription. I ended up calling my bank and telling them to not give that car wash another cent of my money.
When I was faced with a sub where I wanted to cancel, but the website told me I can only do it on the phone - I just went to my bank and cancelled the sub there. When the same happened with another place - I blacklisted them via paypal.
I don't bother with subs anymore unless I ABSOLUTELY need and use them AND it's easy to cancel. So you're spot-on about the damage these slimy businesses do to the overall subscription market.
This video reminded me to skip my next Good Store sub shipment! It was super easy and that's why I've been with you for YEARS. Good looking out John
I subscribed to the awesome socks club for my dad last year, before the good store was around, and I had some trouble logging in to cancel because my dad has enough socks now. A wonderful human just cancelled it for me! Y'all really are committed to easy cancellations!
I wonder how outrageous this could get before becoming clearly illegal. Cancel via phone, only open for five minutes every third Wednesday of the month at 4 am. Cancel in-person, our offices are in Tuvalu. Or go full-on sweepstakes: cancel only via hand-written 3" by 5" card to an address only found hidden deep inside our terms of service, invalid or illegible cards will be ignored without warning.
I hope more ppl understand that some of us just hate making phone calls
That’s what some of these companies are counting on. If their customers don’t want to call in to cancel, they might just keep paying them.
@@someone1999 Yeah I came to say this... they aren't not realizing it.. they are counting on it.
I had to cancel parking once I have in my city. I could easily sign up online but to cancel required mail, a drafted document starting your intent to stop paying for parking, and 30-days notice, they'd have to receive this by the 1st of the month or they'd charge you for the next month. Failure to pay would result in your license plate suspension.
For the congressional hearing where they listen to the concerns of the businesses they should use the same setup those businesses use to file complaints
+++++++++++++++++++++++
We love the sun basin soap, my husband, who usually isn't very particular about soap, refuses to use anything else. AND I appreciate how easy it is to update our subscription because I just upped us to two bars a month, because one bar isn't enough for two people. Thank you, Good Store (And Green Brothers)!
Remove your payment option or change it to a card you can close. If they bill your old card, dispute the charge which they weren't authorized to make anyway
This is why using PayPal is so convenient. You can cancel agreements on their site.
This is what I plan to do. Reloadable credit cards with only a few months or however long you anticipate needing the service. They can't take money that ain't there!
This is what I plan to do. Reloadable credit cards with only a few months or however long you anticipate needing the service. They can't take money that ain't there!
I work at a YMCA and we have an option to put a membership on hold for three months. People are so grateful!
Predatory subscriptions are awful and I appreciate you taking a stand against them!!
as an autistic person with auditory processing issues... there is no way I'm willingly making a phone call. Tactics like this are not only super consumer unfriendly but also ableist
You could look at hooking up a computer a to phone line and configuring it to feed the incoming audio through a speech-to-text program, then setting up text-to-speech for your replies as well :)
Then the audio is basically irrelevant :)
@@TheEvilAdministrator Or they could just use an email and not deal with all that trouble.
It’s not “ableist”
EVERYONE needs to accept they can’t do EVERYTHING. That’s life.
Finding work arounds for our own limitations is part of being Human. If you stop playing victim and join us you might have a better life experience.
@@alexandercastleberry480 So let's say, I need something essential, maybe I need a document, but I can't get into the building because there are stairs I can't get up .. should I figure things out too? Maybe grow an extra pair of legs hat work? Or wings?
And people tell, welp "Stop playing the Victim, figure things out" that not ableist?
Sorry, but yes, hiding something, especial some everyday thing, everybody needs or does, behind a hurdle, knowing it will make things much harder or impossible for people with disabilities, for no good reason is abliest af. They are hoping that you are unable to find a way around it.
And it doesn't matter if the disability is visible, or even physical.
@@alexandercastleberry480 shut up, do the world a favor and shut up. not only should you shut up, you should go into the mountains and never return to the civilized world
I subscribed to a service that’s very popularly advertised on TH-cam, and they required me to email them to cancel my subscription. Not only did it make me decide to never use them again, it also damaged my trust in the TH-camrs who advertise it.
So as a public service, tell us the name of that subscription service!
Which service?
Which service?
Scentbird.
@@middlemuse ahh. Thank you for the heads up on that, I was actually considering trying them out
I am the person in my friend group who is always willing to make phone calls for people who need to make them and don't want to. I have plenty of anxieties, but I'm SO GOOD at the phone.
youre doing gods work
I wonder if if those of us who can do the phone can set up a volunteer service to handle this for those who can’t. I know several people who would jump on that.
You're amazing for that. I hate the telephone so much.
For anyone reading this, all credit card companies allow you to charge back something like this. If you can show them you attempted to reach them to cancel, and they refuse to cancel and charge you, contact your card provider, they'll charge it back to them
LENA KAHN WOOOOO consumer protections is a great platform for the dems! i love this
Make sure you write/call your reps and Harris to communicate this because donors are spending hundreds of millions to have her removed. Tell them it will cost them your vote (even if it isn't true).
I have been SO frustrated over this before I’m so glad to hear you talk about this too!
One of the premises of GDPR here in Europe is that it should be as easy to withdraw consent for a company to handle your data as it was to give consent in the first place. Great idea but hardly any companies actually abide by this so we still end up in a similar situation with some companies.
The fact that something is illegal often means little. People and companies break the law all the time because they know that enforcement is non-existent. An unenforced law is just wasted ink on wasted paper. What's worse, politicians often deliberately leave loopholes in laws that don't get publicized. So they get credit publicly for making bad behavior "illegal," but they get paid privately for putting language into the legislation that actually renders the law toothless.
Colorado requires every scheduled job to post the schedule a month in advance, the DOL has another few years before they can start investigating reports that companies are breaking that law.
If the punishment for an illegal act is a fine, that is the same as saying that it is legal for a fee.
reminds me of that mcdonald's case where that woman got bad burns because they figured it was cheaper for them to take on litigation costs than keep the coffee at a legal temperature and throw more away. and then it was pushed as ahaha silly americans need to be told their coffee is hot 😜
3 questions to ask about lawbreaking: Is it illegal? Okay, whats the punishment. Okay, whats the chances of getting caught?
Truer words have never been spoken.
I've had to turn of my PIH donations in the past (and now) because my financial situation changes. Previously, they made me call in order to cancel. This time I was able to cancel just online which was really great!
In ny home country it took me 9 months of pestering and legal threats from both parties to disconnect fully from my cable/internet provider. Consumer protections are so incredibly important it's unreal.