Can’t you sue the company directly (via a small claims court) if they don’t follow the FTC rules?
If i’m not mistaken, here in brazil the consumer protection agency usually goes after the worst offenders, but if a company breaks those rules, it is pretty easy to win against them in a small claims court by just pointing at the specific rule and showing the incorrect bills/payments to get the double of the amount payed and sometimes an additional fine.
I had this happen with one of those coffee subscription sites, the coffee i got was nice but i only tried it initially because i had a nice coupon code/discount. The process of signing up was easy peasy, to cancel however they required you to email them and explain why you wanted to cancel and it was the only way to do so. I figured the quickest way to avoid going back and forth was to lie and tell them my financial situation was so dire that i couldn’t afford it and just wanted it canceled.
Surely you mean SiriusXM?
(And yeah, they really make it hard to cancel – even if you no longer have equipment capable of receiving it. “But you can just downgrade to a streaming-only package!”, etc.)
They are, and stop calling them “Shirley”.
The only time I ever had an easy time of cancelling a subscription with the likes of Comcast or AT&T was when I left the US. I had since decided that if I’m ever in such a situation again, “I’m leaving the country” would be my go-to argument, even if I’m not going anywhere and just want to cancel. Click to cancel would be much better, though.
I’ve used a similar lie but it was “i’m moving to a new area that doesn’t have you guys as a service provider” and that made the interaction pretty quick
Maybe, but most of the agreements have forced arbitration clauses, usually set in some corporation friendly jurisdiction, and making recovery onerous and often more expensive than the claim (and stipulating that each party pays their own legal fees, which means you don’t get to recover those expenses).
It’s a PITA. I’ve used the “moving out of the country” excuse, as well as have cancelled my credit card to end services.
They have to do this cancellation routine with a buffer like a phone or some maddening website. If it were done in person the mortality rate on retention agents would be astronomical. I once called SiriusXM while my son was driving on the interstate. It was a long trip and a great time to get calls out of the way. After several minutes of insanity like the videos posted I was reduced to screaming NO and yelling obscenities’ so loud that the boy had to pull over and park because he was in hysterics. It was absolutely maddening how adroit these jerks are at giving you circular responses without just complying with a simple NO I don’t want your service. In retrospect it would have been a great video. I was frothing, barking rabid, the kid was reduced to a helpless wreck of laughter and that bastard kept making insane offers for better service. For days after my idiot child would start yelling NO NO No you stupid, sorry-ass bastard, No then laugh like a loon. In the end the agent finally said ok, we’ll discontinue your service.
Stopping a payment method does not stop the obligation, you just aren’t paying the bills that are accruing. So a company will gladly allow those charges to rack up and then add late charges and interest and termination fees and when those go unpaid they will wreck your credit and file collection actions.
I had the same thing happen when trying to cancel Sirius. The amount of discounts they offered was pretty amazing, I think it went from $14/month to $5/month by the time they offered me the “lowest price they can possibly go”. And then somehow they managed to keep the service connected for a few months even after I’d cancelled. It was downright shady. I take my revenge on them by telling everyone I know who has Sirius to call saying they want to cancel to drastically reduce their monthly rates. And it works literally every time.
The Grey Lady engaging in deceptive business practices? Never!
Is comcast still hard to cancel? When I last had them and switched to wow, I just walked into an xfinity store and handed over my equipment, they scanned it in, and I was done.
My original point was that I’d have notified them that I was terminating the subscription. I also implicitly assumed it was a ‘subscription’ and not a contract. If you have a contract with a minimum term then it is reasonable for the company to levy an early termination fee or expect you to honour it to the end of the agreed term. If it is an open-ended subscription (e.g. ongoing monthly payments) then there is no commitment to honour. I guess I’d assumed it was the latter.
“Boom, and quite possibly, tish”.
Makes sense, except the whole issue is with the “notified them that I was termination the subscription” part. That’s what they make impossible, and if you don’t spend the hours on the phone dealing with it you can not notify them. And canceling the subscription payment does not serve as notification. All said with a lens on US law of course!
when i finally got a live person on the line at the LA Times, it was all pushback and hard sell, i calmly repeated “I want to cancel my digital subscription” a dozen times before they finally acquiesced…
That’s how I quit them, too. “Here’s your crap, give me a receipt.”. Done.
I had to confront our citizen advice bureau (unless it’s mony we don’t know) after rheumatoid society put me on their mailing list just for asking a question…
ended up writing a snail mail pleading me to be unsubscribed
Judges love capital, judges hate the working class.
So, maybe you win in small claims court. But judges will almost always side with capital. Not human beings.
That’s because the ISPs have all divided up the land so they can run their little monopolies with the fig leaf of pretending there’s competition.
If you’re moving to another gang’s turf, that other gang gets to claim you.
