[sa-code]

I would go a step further, cancel as soon as you subscribe. It's still valid for a month because you've paid for it!

If you ever need to use the service again just re-subscribe (and re-cancel)

In fact, what is stopping you from cancelling all your subscriptions right now? You can always buy back in when you like

[BloondAndDoom]

Recently cancelled something early so I won’t forget, they didn’t send my shipment even though I paid for it. They said I cancelled, tried to work with support but given after a point.

So yeah, not all companies do that.

[mschild]

Did you receive your money back?

If not, time for a charge back with your card provider.

[BloondAndDoom]

I didn’t, the thing with chargeback they don't do it after one month. At least that’s AMEX. I’m sure there is a fight to make and get it back, but I’d rather work and make money instead of fighting to stupid people and system.

[bauldursdev]

Maybe worth looking into other providers. I've never had issues disputing charges. Granted I dispute maybe 1% of the transactions I make, because I only do it if I legit got scammed. I think paying for a month and not getting a month is a scam.

[umpalumpaaa]

Charge back usually never works… at least in my case the provider never actually did it because the seller was in good standing.

[radlad]

Counterpoint: I've done 3 and all went through without drama.

[ndr]

With what credit card provider?

I've done it multiple times when a vendor wasn't behaving fairly and it always went through.

I don't recommend doing it to a vendor you plan to have business with again in the future as they might ban you (eg food delivery apps)

[BloondAndDoom]

This is another problem with charge back, EBay is screwing you? Do you want to be black listed from eBay all of your life or lose that $100? Can you dare to chargeback Apple or Google?

It’s too risky tbh.

[iwontberude]

I’ve never had an issue with charging back when they fail to deliver the product

[Kirby64]

You’re not providing adequate documentation then. I’ve charged back major companies before without issue when they were at fault and refused to help.

[MisterTea]

The one time I thought it would not work it did. Home depot rental generator that failed to run under load; store manager refused to test the unit under load as it was against store policy. Refused refund and instead gave me a $50 off coupon. I then called Chase, explained the situation and charges reversed on the spot. I took the coupon and bought a nice corded Milwaukee sawzall.

[FireBeyond]

Hertz tried something similar when I was a new immigrant (it was weird and seemed hyper-scammy anyway). Pre-paid for a rental to the airport, show up to get the vehicle. "System says we need to do a secondary ID verification, enter your SSN into the pinpad in front of you"... "System says there's an issue validating your SSN against your DOB" (no shit, because I'm an immigrant whose SSN wasn't issued til I was 28 years old).

Fine, already pulling up a map to Enterprise, "just give me a refund".

"Sorry sir, prepaid rentals are non-refundable".

So you take my money, refuse to give me a car, and want to keep my money? No. Let's talk about chargebacks.

[taormina]

Get a credit card that isn't dogshit then. You can absolutely charge back.

[dominicrose]

Maybe you should try Paypal next time, if allowed by the seller

[orsorna]

Some don't treat months as discrete units. Uber revokes your membership immediately.

[3form]

Also a common practice for free trials. Adobe does that if I'm not mistaken.

Love seeing companies worth tens or hundreds of billions acting like they couldn't spare a cent from underhanded shit like that. Scrooge McDuck type of behavior, except he also had some redeeming qualities.

[II2II]

With free trials, I can understand revoking the benefits once the subscription has been canceled. While I can understand the consumer's perspective of not wanting to be billed for future months (say if they forgot to cancel), free trials are intended to attract future customers. If a person signals that they are not going to be a future customer, why should the business offer the free service?

[wat10000]

Are they signaling that they're not going to be a future customer? Or are they just signaling that they want to take positive action if they make the decision to subscribe?

And what about signaling in the other direction? Canceling the trial immediately signals that they have no confidence in the product itself to sell you on it, that the company itself believes that if you use their product for another few days, you still won't want to give them any money for it. If the company has so little confidence in their own product then why would I pay for it?

[3form]

Sorry, but they set their signaling mechanisms so that that signal is worthless. How many people who don't cancel want to signal they are going to be a future customer, as opposed to it being an accident? How many people who do cancel do it to signal they don't want to be a customer, and not because they don't want to be automatically billed? I believe the answer for both is "not many".

I think the companies do it because it benefits them, and because they can.

[jonathanlydall]

Apple TV free trials due to new hardware (e.g. new iPhone) is like this too, I just set a reminder on my phone and cancel it one day before they’ll start billing me. The UI for cancelling is also painless.

[3form]

Uber is ahead of you. You need to cancel two days prior, or something on that note (I don't remember the exact timing).

[sebastiennight]

I must be missing something obvious. Pardon me asking.

Uber the cab service? People have recurring subscriptions to it? What does one get out of it?

I think I'm one of today's lucky 10,000

[bombcar]

You can subscribe to uber for discounts, priority, upgrades and maybe cheaper Uber Eats?

I’ve not bothered past one free trial but if you use it regularly maybe it’s worth it.

[3form]

It's mostly for Uber Eats. As long as you order 2-3 times per month it might pay back (depending on your location and where do you order from).

[lo_zamoyski]

Somewhat tangential, but I am reminded of a quote about an adjacent problem with analogous flavor from the pen of the venerable G. K. Chesterton...

'It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.'

[3form]

A nice summary, he would get quite a shock from seeing how advertisement business ended up. I wonder what addendum would he have to the oft-repeated claims of "we're genuinely helping people meet their needs", too.

[FireBeyond]

Reminds me of an anecdote from my middle class town:

Local bricks and mortar small business that closed down and the wife posted a completely tone deaf message on their business Facebook:

"It is a horrible shame that our long sought out dream had to die because the local "community" was not willing to support it."

I missed the part where "community" meant we are obligated to expend our own resources for your profit.

Doubly galling was the fact that there was generally "his n hers" G Wagons parked out front of their business. Doing better than 95% of the community and still pissed that the community wasn't giving them more.

[bombcar]

My kids tell me the proper response would be “lol get rekt noob”

[everdrive]

>Uber revokes your membership immediately.

Sounds like a great object lesson -- this a service that is will to take your money. Better to cancel now and not look back.

[NooneAtAll3]

> this a service that is will to take your money

rephrase?

[jLaForest]

Do they also give a prorated refund? Otherwise that seems to be blatant theft

[malfist]

Uber would never take any immoral action like that. They've always been upstanding citizens.

[dylan604]

What money did you give Uber in advance? Why would you have a balance needing to be refunded if you have not taken a ride?

[SauntSolaire]

Uber one exists as a subscription you pay with certain benefits for frequent users.

[sublinear]

The core value for most subscription services is their convenience. There's usually another less convenient way to get the same thing cheaper or free.

Most people are literally paying so they don't have to set all that shit up again and the cost is trivial to them.

If that's not you, fine, but my point is that nobody is "right" about this topic. Services exist because they make money.

[boplicity]

This is indeed my standard practice. In my head, I just tell myself "I'm buying a month."

[dominicrose]

The Playstation store subscriptions have different tiers and within each tier different prices depending on the number of months.

These psychological tricks don't need to work every time (or on everyone) to be effective.

[Semaphor]

When I actually use a service, it's more work to resubscribe. But money is also tight enough for me that I'm on top of my subscriptions and don't have any I don't need (and when I'm unsure, I set reminders to cancel)

[amunozo]

I currently do this with language models subscriptions.

[noja]

Because for some subscriptions the price goes up.

[jerf]

But the entire scheme here is to not have them continually. It's better to pay month+$2 in six months when you need it, than 6*month for the months you don't.

If you rotate subscriptions sensibly, they're much cheaper than the old cable model. If you're not looking, they can really bleed you out and be much more expensive than the old model.

[toomuchtodo]

You can also pay ~$20/month for an online locker that'll pull the torrent for you and serve to your devices, if that's within your philosophical tolerances. People need to get paid, but I do not much care of the enterprise value of media conglomerates and the resulting enshittification. I don't mind paying for Nebula.tv (~$36/year) and PBS Passport (~$60/year), for example, to directly support those media creators, as well as sending creators fiat directly or via Patreon (Coffeezilla and Peter Santenello, for example).

[jerf]

I have no problem with anyone just sending money if that's what they want to do; I have a number of Patreon supports also. I do strongly advocate for not letting subscriptions leak out without realizing it, and less strongly for considering whether or not you need something like Disney+ continuously or if you can rotate between it and other services.

[GolfPopper]

I canceled a Disney Plus subscription recently (after ordering it largely to watch a specific show), because when I purchased their "ad-free" tier, I found that after paying they just replace their generic ads with their own in-house ads, which they then pretend are different from ads because they're "trailers".

Yet another example of a media company making the paid service a worse viewing experience. (For me, the money isn't the point. My time is limited. I'd happily pay more for the handful of things I have both time and desire to watch. But charging me extra for no ads, and then shoving stuff in my brain anyway, is simultaneously both petty and beyond the pale.)

[soperj]

Wouldn't this be a good use of a 1 time credit card number?

[paconbork]

Yeah, this is the main thing I use privacy.com for

[throwaway2027]

I saw some small business owner complain about this behavior on twitter some time ago and he mentioned he only saw non-Americans do this and it made him really mad or something and he didn't provide the service and banned them or something. Funnily enough I do think this happens so sometimes I cancel instantly and sometimes deliberately wait until there are a few days left on the subscription exactly out of paranoia behavior that you'll get a worse service or something, that they must have some database field early cancel and mess with you or something.

[bji9jhff]

Why would they salt their own field it's hard to understand