Go to Privacy.com. Register and give your real credit card. Don't get the $10/month subscription for "real" privacy, unless you really don't want a record of your purchases.
Now when you "subscribe" to WhizBang online, go to Privacy and create a special credit card just for WhizBang. Give WhizBang a fake name and address as well, and don't use your "regular" email. Create some spares on ProtonMail or some other low-friction service.
When WhizBang goes to verify your credit card, your fake name & address are not checked. You can give them whatever you want.
Your purchase will appear on your regular credit card records. If you want Privacy to use a fake seller, you have to pay for that.
When you want to cancel WhizBang, you just close their credit card. They will get a Decline when they go to charge it, and they'll eventually cancel you. You can go through their official cancellation process, if you want to.
To those arguing that legions of lawyers are going to track you down and sue you:
Yes, in many jurisdictions, including the US, canceling your credit card does not change your obligation to pay. (Imagine buying a $10,000 physical product and the seller forgets to charge until the day after delivery, and you've canceled the card. You're not getting out of that.)
However, there is substantial friction in the American legal system. Of course, if they can find you, they will send a threatening form letter from a lawyer. If you're not experienced with the legal system, this seems scary. But: big whoop.
It costs $5k-20k to fully pursue a contractual claim. Nobody does this for small consumer purchases. (They will send you to collections, if they know your identity, though. But if they don't have good ID, they can't even attach to your credit score.)
Nobody is going to send a subpoena for your $15/mo subscription on a dead credit card.
These concerns are all frivolous and irrelevant for 99% of consumer purchases that charge in the tens of dollars per month.
In the American legal system, it is important to distinguish between what is possible versus what is practical. And exploit that difference whenever you can.
This entire comment is waxing poetic about an imagined loophole that almost no one is actually relying on. If your credit card charge doesn’t go through, nearly every consumer oriented digital subscription simply revokes your access to the product. Neither side has any obligation to continue doing anything. There is no debt to collect on because nothing was delivered. There is no contract that was breached because the purchaser is not obligated to subscribe to future services.
I don't buy it. What you say may be true if some small percentage of customers do it, however if this advice would start to become common knowledge, the amounts on the table change and so probably does the willingness to go after the customers.
Also, this sounds like a great opportunity for privacy.com to have a lucrative side business of bulk-selling the real customer data to collections agencies - or maybe just open up a collections agency themselves. How much do you trust them?
Yes. Apparently this works differently in the US, but in any European country the ability to deduct currency is not governing the existence of an obligation of payment. That is determined by the (implicit) contract you agree to when subscribing to the service/product.
One great feature of Privacy.com is that you can use pseudonyms rather than your legal name for making purchases. One "failure" mode I've encountered (twice!) is that if you accidentally reuse an old credit card account with a second service (eg. if you accidentally created a card for "donations" and use it at two different websites, or you create one for Ko-Fi or similar and it gets charged by multiple different "merchants" under the same service), the second transaction will fail. You'll get an email telling you the transaction was declined, but if you don't have email notifications enabled, it can get quite confusing why the payment isn't going through.
I generate free virtual cards with the Capital One Eno chrome browser extension
Works great and you can set a date for it to lock itself after to block charges, they even suggest it as a use case for stopping trials from charging you, etc. It generates a card per website and you can replace it as many times as you want all for free.
it doesn't always work though. Some companies can detect if you're using temporary credit cards and won't let the txn go through. Frustratingly it's often the ones that I would like to use it with the most.
I am curious if the card #s I can get directly from Citi might work but haven't tested it out. Those are a pain to generate compared to privacy.com though.
The first 6–8 digits of a credit card number represent the issuer (IIN, see [0]). Merchants can perform a lookup of those first few digits to their own denylist. Citi’s IIN for temporary cards should (in theory) be the same IIN used to issue non-temporary ones.
Chewy does this really well, and follows this same advice.
I get pet food on subscription. Chewy sends me a notice my order is about to ship. I can skip or cancel if I want.
Shopify on the other hand is hostile. I have a small store there I've deprioritized. They have a $9 / mo inactive plan, where they keep your stuff but customers can't buy. If you want to stop paying, they delete all of your stuff & domain: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/pause-deacti...
I've certainly done it both ways. Pushing a shipment back or outright canceling it. I've also added a whole bunch of additional things. In the long run, they still get most of my pet food/toy money.
Yeah. Chewy's autoship is pretty nice. We have two cats and we've got the quantities and timing to where just as they're going through the last of their current food, the next shipment arrives.
That and we have a subscription box from Meowbox for them as well. We used to get treats, but they didn't like the majority of them so it's just toys now.
This is why I recommend Woocommerce over Shopify, I already have hosting, if I'm gonna try and make some money in ecommerce, might as well try it without having limits. I can have unlimited products/choices on WooCommerce. WP is a shit show, but so is Shopify's subscription model.
Personally, I'd like to see them move to a model where it's completely free until you have 100 sales, then you have to upgrade or something. That would encourage more people to use/try it, plus give them a chance to actually see success and start their small business, rather than fail because they're running out of money for their business.
Yeah that would just encourage the scammers out there. Atomic Shrimp on youtube covers a lot of these scammers. I would say 100 views of the cart by distinct ip addresses to cover people just randomly opening shopify accounts.
Why should Shopify store all your information if you stop paying them? You can export everything you need from your Shopify account. They never offer a free tier to anyone, so it's not like they trick with you a free service and then force you to keep paying to store stuff you created while it was free. The $9/month is a very small amount and a meaningful discount from their cheapest option at $29/month. How is that hostile?
They could store it on aws glacier or something and it would cost them cents per month. They probably do something like that anyway when you cancel as someone said they could restore their shop after having cancelled two years before that. $9 is quite a lot for something that does nothing. I often have side projects ‘I need to come back to some day’ and then 3 years later I think ah… not good if that was 3x12x9. Export is great if you are guaranteed to be able to just import and it will work as before. I don’t see that much; usually exports from years back give a nice ‘your export was done with an older version, sorry’. How does that work with shopify export/import?
Actually they retain store data for years. I shut my store down and didn’t pay for a year or two, as I had too much other work on. I later re-opened my account and voila my entire store and data appeared. I was rather grateful.
I use it for toiletries and other routine consumables at home. Amazon trucks are going to be on the road anyway; may as well save my car trips for actually interesting trips.
I don't trust Subscribe & Save because of Amazon's dynamic pricing. The discount doesn't matter if the base piece tripled because of Amazon pricing shenanigans.
It makes sense, it could look really bad for Chewy. Say your cat got eaten by a pit bull, and then a week later you're reminded what happened by a box of cat food they automatically shipped to your door.
> Some of them will make you literally call them up to cancel.
In France, a new law was just passed to fight against unsubscribing hell, called "3-click unsubscribe". It is due to come in effect at the beginning of 2023.
It basically says that if the business offers an "easy online subscription", then it has to offer an "easy online unsubscription" option. This doesn't apply to companies who only take subscriptions by some other means. However, it does apply to a subscription taken by other means if it's also possible to subscribe online.
Yeah, a few months ago I subscribed to Le Figaro (French newspaper). I hadn't heard anything about cancelling the subscription for this particular newspaper, but I had heard horror stories about Le Monde (yup, the famous one).
Just to be extra sure, I subscribed through Apple. The "cancel subscription" always worked and I never had to send any letter or spend any amount of time on the phone.
If I hadn't been aware of the Apple loophole, they wouldn't have gained my as a subscriber.
I'm not sure of the status of any current rulemaking, though. The current chair of the FTC has made it clear she is willing to take on "dark pattern" practices such as this.
The Blink Fitness example is telling in so many ways. It's not just that it's evil in the sense of mischievous, it reveals a sense of entitlement. I think this sense of entitlement to customer money underlies many problems in contemporary commerce.
Gyms are notorious for this. I won’t sign up for a gym membership unless they accept checks or cash. Most accept checks, I’ve found. Could also try a virtual credit card I suppose. Citi offers those with their Visa card.
I always hear horror stories about gym memberships, but have never had a bad experience there.
Many years ago I was a YMCA gym member, and I canceled without any fuss. More recently I was a member of the boxing gym around the corner, and I needed to cancel due to an injury (not sustained at the gym!), and they even waived their policy of requiring 30 days notice to cancel. (I also just realized I wasn't going often enough to justify the membership, and could save money by just paying the drop-in fee whenever I wanted to go.)
I do wonder if COVID has made this a bit less bad; my partner was a member of a different gym for a while, and they were good about keeping her membership paused, even after they reopened for in-person classes, and then weren't sketchy about her eventually canceling.
I would never sign up for anything that's a recurring charge (including utilities and such) without using a virtual credit card. It makes any shenanigans the company might pull impossible.
I've gotten around the bank account requirements by simply filling in bogus numbers for the account number and routing info, then asking them to bill my credit card first.
If you signed a contract for a year with a clause that you could cancel before then if you move to an area without one of their gyms then this seems reasonable.
I've had my own experiences with gyms being hard to cancel. But in principle if I want an easy cancellation then I'll go month to month. If I have a 12 month contract I'm not going to cry if they resist when I want to cancel early...
Many gym’s business models don’t work without subscriptions. Should they simply cease to exist or is it maybe a decent thing that customers subsidize each other?
This makes a ton of sense for B2C contexts, but my gut reaction is that the conversational approach might be too high friction in B2B contexts. To be clear, the friction I'm thinking of is this constant cadence of stealing/borrowing attention.
Perhaps this needs to be thought of as part of a larger communications strategy - who here is part of a SaaS that sends regular 'marketing' emails to existing customers? :)
Maybe the defaults (boiled down, the provided examples appear to be "opt-in" if you're not in, and "opt-out" if you are in) are designed to streamline the process so conversations are ignorable so that's okay?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something! I definitely want to hear stories of this model working in the B2B space.
I got this email for a charge of $50 on K-Mart, 20 years ago! Incredible. There actually still are K-Marts, but the closest one to me is 60 miles away.
Anyhow, they said "it's too late for us to garnish or do anything else with this, but here's how you can clear it up." So no threats.
First of all, I was pretty sure I didn't have a $50 charge with K-Mart 20 years ago, and in any case... 20 years!! They didn't offer any data on what it was. So I sent them all to the Spam folder.
Amazingly, they sent one every day for two months. When I finally looked in the Spam folder, there they all were. They just wouldn't give up.
Finally, I figured out that they were assuming I was someone else with a similar name. I answered the email and said "I'm not him." The emails stopped.
When I was a grad student, my roommate had a name which didn't sound super common, but there were actually at least three grad students with the same first and last name at the same time; and two in the same department (let's call it Underwater Basket Weaving). My roommate (let's call him John A. Smith) kept getting in trouble because of this other person (let's call him John T. Smith). Once was when John T. Smith helped make an Onion-style parody paper that included sexual innuendo from a bunch of professors (including one on my roommate's thesis panel). Another was when John T. Smith ran up some sort of debt and didn't pay it, and the collections agency managed to find my roommate's information. He had a hard time convincing them that yes, there were indeed two John Smiths getting their PhD in Underwater Basket Weaving at the same time, and he was the wrong John Smith.
It’s also possible to… “move” to California for long enough that a “Cancel” button magically appears in your account setting a page. This was true for WSJ who otherwise wanted a phone call with hold times.
The blink fitness example has to be the result of a bad business model.
How long can gyms, cable companies, cell providers etc keep customers hostage with cancellation policies like this? I mean it has been forever but c'mon!
If your business doesn't provide value to your customers then you should not milk them like this... you should start providing value or cut your losses and treat them well so they will still hopefully recommend you to a friend that actually needs whatever you are selling.
Readit News
Now when you "subscribe" to WhizBang online, go to Privacy and create a special credit card just for WhizBang. Give WhizBang a fake name and address as well, and don't use your "regular" email. Create some spares on ProtonMail or some other low-friction service.
When WhizBang goes to verify your credit card, your fake name & address are not checked. You can give them whatever you want.
Your purchase will appear on your regular credit card records. If you want Privacy to use a fake seller, you have to pay for that.
When you want to cancel WhizBang, you just close their credit card. They will get a Decline when they go to charge it, and they'll eventually cancel you. You can go through their official cancellation process, if you want to.
This works. It's what I do.
Yes, in many jurisdictions, including the US, canceling your credit card does not change your obligation to pay. (Imagine buying a $10,000 physical product and the seller forgets to charge until the day after delivery, and you've canceled the card. You're not getting out of that.)
However, there is substantial friction in the American legal system. Of course, if they can find you, they will send a threatening form letter from a lawyer. If you're not experienced with the legal system, this seems scary. But: big whoop.
It costs $5k-20k to fully pursue a contractual claim. Nobody does this for small consumer purchases. (They will send you to collections, if they know your identity, though. But if they don't have good ID, they can't even attach to your credit score.)
Nobody is going to send a subpoena for your $15/mo subscription on a dead credit card.
These concerns are all frivolous and irrelevant for 99% of consumer purchases that charge in the tens of dollars per month.
In the American legal system, it is important to distinguish between what is possible versus what is practical. And exploit that difference whenever you can.
no thank you. I'd rather live in a world where we try to make it better not race to the bottom
Also, this sounds like a great opportunity for privacy.com to have a lucrative side business of bulk-selling the real customer data to collections agencies - or maybe just open up a collections agency themselves. How much do you trust them?
Works great and you can set a date for it to lock itself after to block charges, they even suggest it as a use case for stopping trials from charging you, etc. It generates a card per website and you can replace it as many times as you want all for free.
Anyone else using this awesome service?
I will continue to do this for businesses that wanna try evil subscription cancellations.
However, they make good care to know the real identity of they buyer, so you'll (mostly) be aware you're getting into that hot water.
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I can’t classify this one. Kinda sounds like an IRC wire fraud joke that some kid actually tried.
I stopped pirating stuff as soon as they would sell it to me, but it was because downloading music was a full-time job and I had stuff to do
I am curious if the card #s I can get directly from Citi might work but haven't tested it out. Those are a pain to generate compared to privacy.com though.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_7812
I know they can detect that you're on a VPN; at least, one of the popular ones. I'm not sure about obscure VPN services.
Would you know if it works with credit cards not from the US?
How does it deal with transactions in other currencies?
I get pet food on subscription. Chewy sends me a notice my order is about to ship. I can skip or cancel if I want.
Shopify on the other hand is hostile. I have a small store there I've deprioritized. They have a $9 / mo inactive plan, where they keep your stuff but customers can't buy. If you want to stop paying, they delete all of your stuff & domain: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/pause-deacti...
You get an email and you remember you wanted to add something, and you go ahead and buy it.
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That and we have a subscription box from Meowbox for them as well. We used to get treats, but they didn't like the majority of them so it's just toys now.
Personally, I'd like to see them move to a model where it's completely free until you have 100 sales, then you have to upgrade or something. That would encourage more people to use/try it, plus give them a chance to actually see success and start their small business, rather than fail because they're running out of money for their business.
It’s a fine line.
I use it for toiletries and other routine consumables at home. Amazon trucks are going to be on the road anyway; may as well save my car trips for actually interesting trips.
In France, a new law was just passed to fight against unsubscribing hell, called "3-click unsubscribe". It is due to come in effect at the beginning of 2023.
It basically says that if the business offers an "easy online subscription", then it has to offer an "easy online unsubscription" option. This doesn't apply to companies who only take subscriptions by some other means. However, it does apply to a subscription taken by other means if it's also possible to subscribe online.
Google Translate source: https://www-tf1info-fr.translate.goog/economie/abonnements-e...
It’s absurd that this is a feature, but alas.
Just to be extra sure, I subscribed through Apple. The "cancel subscription" always worked and I never had to send any letter or spend any amount of time on the phone.
If I hadn't been aware of the Apple loophole, they wouldn't have gained my as a subscriber.
I'm not sure of the status of any current rulemaking, though. The current chair of the FTC has made it clear she is willing to take on "dark pattern" practices such as this.
The equipment will be old and the clientele mostly giant men, but they'll spot you and what is lifting weights but some metal? Does it need to be new?
Many years ago I was a YMCA gym member, and I canceled without any fuss. More recently I was a member of the boxing gym around the corner, and I needed to cancel due to an injury (not sustained at the gym!), and they even waived their policy of requiring 30 days notice to cancel. (I also just realized I wasn't going often enough to justify the membership, and could save money by just paying the drop-in fee whenever I wanted to go.)
I do wonder if COVID has made this a bit less bad; my partner was a member of a different gym for a while, and they were good about keeping her membership paused, even after they reopened for in-person classes, and then weren't sketchy about her eventually canceling.
You had to send a certified letter to headquarters.
I've had my own experiences with gyms being hard to cancel. But in principle if I want an easy cancellation then I'll go month to month. If I have a 12 month contract I'm not going to cry if they resist when I want to cancel early...
Don’t ever move to Europe. This is standard practice across the board there. One thing North America does well in comparison is customer service.
Perhaps this needs to be thought of as part of a larger communications strategy - who here is part of a SaaS that sends regular 'marketing' emails to existing customers? :)
Maybe the defaults (boiled down, the provided examples appear to be "opt-in" if you're not in, and "opt-out" if you are in) are designed to streamline the process so conversations are ignorable so that's okay?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something! I definitely want to hear stories of this model working in the B2B space.
I got this email for a charge of $50 on K-Mart, 20 years ago! Incredible. There actually still are K-Marts, but the closest one to me is 60 miles away.
Anyhow, they said "it's too late for us to garnish or do anything else with this, but here's how you can clear it up." So no threats.
First of all, I was pretty sure I didn't have a $50 charge with K-Mart 20 years ago, and in any case... 20 years!! They didn't offer any data on what it was. So I sent them all to the Spam folder.
Amazingly, they sent one every day for two months. When I finally looked in the Spam folder, there they all were. They just wouldn't give up.
Finally, I figured out that they were assuming I was someone else with a similar name. I answered the email and said "I'm not him." The emails stopped.
This should be illegal. If you can easily sign up online, it should be possible to cancel online just as easily.
How long can gyms, cable companies, cell providers etc keep customers hostage with cancellation policies like this? I mean it has been forever but c'mon!
If your business doesn't provide value to your customers then you should not milk them like this... you should start providing value or cut your losses and treat them well so they will still hopefully recommend you to a friend that actually needs whatever you are selling.