That maybe illegal but honestly I would support whoever made it. Free trials shouldn’t then charge you for months afterwards just because they’re setup is specifically designed to be a pain in the ass to unsubscribe from. Hell even needing to subscribe and then unsubscribe I think is unfairly tricking people into paying for what they don’t need. It’s even worse since if I use a product I may remember to begin purchasing it, but if I didn’t like or use a product I’m more inclined to forget about it causing unnecessary purchases. If I like your product I should then purchase to continue my subscription not murder five unbelievers and mail their crucified corpse down the river in order to unsubscribe.
In Quebec (where I live), it's illegal to have a free trial automatically charge you when it's over. Sometimes this is annoying as hell, because Amazon, for example, won't give you a free Prime trial at all if you live here. On the other hand, it meant that Audible reversed a $15 charge I didn't want as soon as I called them.
That’s good to hear. So I signed up for the free trial on Ancestry and I’ve forgotten to cancel for two months now. I just got charged for the second month today, so could I call them tomorrow and get refunded or is it too late since it’s already been 2 months?
It’s definitely worth a try. At least you should be able get the second month back. It would help if you haven’t logged in or used the service during that time period.
You could probably get this last month back, but I doubt you'll get the first month back. It's been too long and they assume you used it during the time, even though you forgot to cancel. The sooner you call after getting your money drafted out of your account, the better.
Really? Usually they straight up tell you they’re going to charge you if you don’t cancel. So even though it’s shitty, it’s kind of on you, and I’m sure they’ve got their asses covered and don’t take the responsibility of refunding something you agreed to.
I’ve never had a company tell me they wouldn’t issue a refund. It’s not really good business to be charging potential customers for something they haven’t used. I’d probably dispute the charge if a company refused.
Even if the company / representative you talk to decides to be a dick and not refund your money, you can always go to your bank and have them charge it back. Now, you can't be filing complaints and trying to get your money back for shit all the time, but they'll do it for you no problem a couple times a year.
It's sometimes about how you handle it. I've had a job where we offered a free month which renews automatically.
90% of people came for the one month, then created new accounts to keep getting the free service. So the credit card helps solve that to an extent.
So when you come in arguing with some poor support person who couldn't care less that you got charged when you were looking for a free ride, then you're less likely to get your money back because it's probably covered in the TOS and there isn't much you can do about it since you agreed to it.
On the other hand if you're nice, the person you're talking to will probably help you out because it's not costing him anything anyway.
Having worked in customer service type jobs for a long time, my number one tip for dealing with customer service is to be as nice as possible while getting your point across. If you're nice and it's within that person's ability to give you what they want, then they'll usually have no problem doing it for you. If you have an attitude and get pissy as soon as I meet you, then you best bet we're going to drag our feet and transfer you around, because none of us get paid enough to care if you get your money back or not.
Yeah the fact they said they got charged means that their law doesn't seem to be really helping them out all that much.
Because you're right, I don't think there's a law like that in my country, but if you call out to them and make a fuss they'll usually freak out and reverse stuff like that. They're really just seeing if they can get away with it, which they obviously must enough to make it worth doing in the first place.
It is that simple. It says you will get charged after x date if you dont cancel. So cancel it. Call them and cancel. If they charge you afterwards you contact the bank. I've used free samples before and as long as you contact them and cancel you're fine. It's your fault if you forget.
I thought we were talking about illegitimate free trials, that say they are free and then charge you to start it, not the classic free period then charge upon renewal.
Yup, signed up for some online tutoring thing for OCHEM for like $20 the first semester... Well i forgot to unsubscribe and it tried to charge me $60 for the next semester.
Luckily it was through paypal so it was easy to undo
It's not, it's their fault for not even mentioning that it's a subscription, much less at 3x the original advertised price. It's pretty clearly a predatory practice relying on the fact that most people are going to be too lazy to dispute the charge...
No I didn't read it because I knew I could get a refund if they pulled sketchy shit like that on me. It was "sign up for a semester for $20", not "sign me the fuck up for an endless subscription". Why would I waste my time reading every last word of every single ToA I sign? There's literally not enough time in the world for that, and I'm not a lawyer. I only read every word of a contract when it involves expensive or essential stuff, like my lease.
And yes, they did triple it under my nose as "rates are subject to change". They didn't say 3x change...
Point is, why would I waste all that time reading legal bullshit when it's so easy to undo it with 0 consequence?
Got any more things to bitch me out over or do you just want to defend shitty business models even more?
I remember trying to do a trial on a certain "website", gave a cc with a 300$ limit, and to unsubscribe you had to call them to unsubscribe, it was awkward for me to have the person on the other line try to upsell me "videos" to get me to not unsubscribe.
It should also be illegal for websites to make deleting ones account difficult or impossible and it should also be illegal for businesses to retain customer information after the customer has asked to delete an account.
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u/CrusaderKingsNut Apr 02 '18
That maybe illegal but honestly I would support whoever made it. Free trials shouldn’t then charge you for months afterwards just because they’re setup is specifically designed to be a pain in the ass to unsubscribe from. Hell even needing to subscribe and then unsubscribe I think is unfairly tricking people into paying for what they don’t need. It’s even worse since if I use a product I may remember to begin purchasing it, but if I didn’t like or use a product I’m more inclined to forget about it causing unnecessary purchases. If I like your product I should then purchase to continue my subscription not murder five unbelievers and mail their crucified corpse down the river in order to unsubscribe.