[briandear]

I run a small SaaS and people sign up, forget they signed up and then dispute the charge. I have always won those disputes. A failure to cancel isn’t the same thing as you were charged inaccurately. How am I supposed to know you intend to cancel without you actually cancelling? Should I just lock people out of their accounts each month until they proactively renew? Subscription pricing is just that: subscription pricing. If you want to buy a single newspaper, you pay a higher price than if you are a subscriber? You get a cheaper price because you are subscribing. So how do I know you actually “cancelled” if you didn’t? Am I obligated to provide you service and then you decide after the fact that you don’t want to pay? Newspapers don’t refund your past subscriptions just because you claim you didn’t read the paper. That’s not my problem. A subscription is a contract, an agreement, a deal. When you sign up for something, you are agreeing to the terms. If you don’t like them, don’t sign up. But disputing a valid payment is nothing more than theft. Forgetting you signed up isn’t an excuse. Of course it’s a different story if you did cancel and they keep billing — that is absolutely wrong. But just because you forgot isn’t a valid excuse. How are we (the service provider) supposed to know if you forgot? We are still providing you the service — whether you use it or not isn’t our concern just as newspapers aren’t obligated to ensure that you actually read the paper every day. Auto-renewing free trials however, that is a bit deceptive, so I agree with Mastercard’s approach.

[jasonkester]

I agre with the sentiment but disagree with the conclusion.

My approach to customer payment is that i don't want your money unless you're happy with the service so if you've gone as far as stopping payment with your card provider, I'll take that as a sign you don't want to be a customer anymore.

I never dispute chargebacks, but instead try to get the customer to withdraw it and behave like an adult, letting me refund and cancel his subscription like we would have had he simply asked.

There's no situation where I'd consider chasing down a customer who didn't want to pay to claw back my fourteen dollars. In my mind, it's not mine to have if he doesn't want me to have it.

[gnicholas]

> I never dispute chargebacks, but instead try to get the customer to withdraw it and behave like an adult, letting me refund and cancel his subscription like we would have had he simply asked.

I've tried to do this too, but unfortunately you're in the position of asking a former customer a favor, and you can't give them anything in return. They end up in the same position (getting refunded), but have to waste time on the phone with their bank. It's a tough sell, in my experience.

[gingerlime]

As the sibling comment already pointed out, getting the customer to reverse the dispute is a losing battle. They already got what they want.

And we're happy to refund, just drop us an email. But going around us to your bank leaves us not only with the refund, but also a chargeback fee, plus it hits our merchant reputation. Granted, it's a tiny fraction of all transactions (because we don't use dark patterns), but just feels really unfair, and not the adult thing in the first place.

I guess both our small business and the customers (and even banks, having to process disputes etc) pay the price for all those big-co contracts that are notoriously hard to cancel.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Can you let me know the name of your SaaS so I can add it to my blacklist? Thanks.

[staticassertion]

> But disputing a valid payment is nothing more than theft.

I'm always happy to steal from companies that turn my free trials into subscriptions. I'd steal more if I could.

You're coming at this as if the service provider is innocent, and merely providing a service. But we're talking explicitly about companies that give you free trials with the "asterisk, ps, you will pay real money in for this every month on this".

[Dylan16807]

> But we're talking explicitly about companies that give you free trials with the "asterisk, ps, you will pay real money in for this every month on this".

No, this subthread is definitely about cancelling services in general.

[jasonkester]

asterix

As in you were skimming through the signup and didn't notice the part where you typed in your credit card details and clicked the subscribe button? That seems unlikely.

If you don't want to buy something, the best policy is not to buy it. Then you won't have bought it by accident and have to get your bank involved to unbuy it.

[Dylan16807]

You said in another comment that your service requires explicit user action to convert from free trial to paid subscription.

So why are you pretending not to know the difference in this comment?