Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

https://www.useloom.com/share/8d148b2be54444909e8408398ab07f83

by riboflavin • 7 years ago

597 399 7 years ago

useloom.com

mmmeff• 7 years ago

Eeeeeesh. Let's continue this tradition - companies need to be shamed for pulling this crap.

Nice work, OP.

PanoramaRegex• 7 years ago

Very funny indeed. :)

graedus• 7 years ago

Ha, not as hard as I expected but still like 4-5 steps with a bunch of dark patterns (highlighting the buttons that don't downgrade, etc). The screen that's like "OK, you want to downgrade, but tell us why" gave me flashbacks to that nightmare Comcast cancellation call[0].

[0] https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service

james_s_tayler2• 7 years ago

That is legendarily bad.

I think I'd just be obnoxious and say cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel cancel...

I barely obey the social contract as it is.

Simon_says2• 7 years ago

I'd like to sometimes, too, but I have a feeling they're free to just hang up on abusive customers.

NamTaf• 7 years ago

I'm so glad I have never encountered anything this bad in my life. This is truly awful.

Asooka• 7 years ago

tell us why

This is where you copy-paste the timecube website and tell them you don't want to do business with a company that cannot understand 4-corner time.

nightcracker• 7 years ago

At what point can you just state something like the following?

I am recording this phone call. I am terminating our service contract, and have communicated this by mail as well as verbally as we speak. Any further attempts to charge me for this service I have cancelled shall be disputed and reported to the police for attempted fraud. Good day.

tgsovlerkhgsel7• 7 years ago

Possibly at the point where you actually bothered to print, sign, and mail a physical letter (by registered mail so you can prove it).

At that point, there's no need to state it, go straight for the chargeback and attach a copy of the cancellation letter and registered mail receipt.

sxates2• 7 years ago

Also difficult - deleting all the files in your account. It took me days to do it through their web UI, as the delete operation would repeatedly fail after some amount of time. Very poor feedback on what was happening, how long it would take, etc.

mooman219• 7 years ago

This looked a bit like someone being overly picky, but the the number of times Dropbox presented a deceptive ui got more and more funny. 3 different confirmation pages in a row, and a weak confirmation that you actually cancelled the subscription.

I wouldn't put is as "very hard", but they could probably drop the last confirmation page since any value you get by having these pages dramatically falls off after the first.

mrspeaker• 7 years ago

If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it.

I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the phone number of someone to call to cancel (remember phone calls?!). They put the hard sell to stay.

My plans changed, I stayed in the country. I really loved my NYTimes subscription (I miss my crosswords) - but ain't no way I'm signing up again until they make it equally easy to leave as it is to join. I apply that to every company I deal with now.

WrtCdEvrydy• 7 years ago

privacy.com is probably what you want.

You're making it a pain in the butt to cancel? That card is no longer valid.

faitswulff2• 7 years ago

So how easy is it to cancel privacy.com?

cschneid2• 7 years ago

Remember that this is not cancelling, and some companies can and will sell your bad debt to collection agencies.

You don't get out of contracts just by ghosting on them.

rzzzt2• 7 years ago

How is this working? Don't they send the unpaid part to collections?

manigandham4• 7 years ago

This is very bad advice. Do not just cancel your payment and expect things to be ok. You might end up with additional late fees, increased risk scores, notices on your credit report, and collection agencies.

Cancel the service properly and always have proof.

pgustafs2• 7 years ago

Amen. Same problem with Blue Apron and every other meal kit delivery startup.

berberous• 7 years ago

They make you subscribe (vs purchasing just a single meal), which is very annoying and the reason I don't use them, but I've found them very easy to cancel. You just click a button online. And even better, they then send you a $60 coupon to rejoin a month later.

chrisseaton2• 7 years ago

What are credit card deets?

scblock• 7 years ago

Deets is just a shorthand for details.

sxates2• 7 years ago

How do you determine how easy it is to leave before you actually need to do it? Before even signing up?

tedunangst4• 7 years ago

Reading about the experiences of others. Or asking around.

objektif• 7 years ago

Here at HN.

r3bl• 7 years ago

This tool is highly useful: https://backgroundchecks.org/justdeleteme/

It ranks hundreds of websites from "easy" to "impossible".

georgeott2• 7 years ago

I do a search for canceling that business, before I sign up. If I see a bunch of horror stories, then it's time to walk away.

kuschku2• 7 years ago

If it’s harder to leave than to join, then it’s also illegal in the EU.

You have to be able to cancel through the same medium through which you can subscribe (so if you can subscribe through email, then unsubscribing only through snail mailing a letter is illegal), and it can’t be an unreasonable effort.

I’m very interested what the consumer protection agencies in the EU have to say about this.

distances• 7 years ago

This is definitely not the case in Germany, unless there has been a very recent change in legislation. There are lots of scummy companies in Germany that make you fax/email copies of official ID to unsubscribe, even if joining was possible with a click of a button.

cge2• 7 years ago

As of July 1, 2018, California also has a law requiring that services you've subscribed to online allow you to cancel online (from SB-313). This should apply to any US company doing business with a California resident.

pintxo• 7 years ago

Could you point to the actual regulation? I have not heard about this yet.

svv• 7 years ago

I've cancelled by NYTimes subscription just a few months ago. Didn't have to do any phone calls-- just answered a few questions in the chat, right there on their website.

_bxg12• 7 years ago

They "generously" let you use an IM chat now, yes. But there's no excuse for it not being a simple button. The only reason is so they can raise the effort barrier just a bit more.

jonahx• 7 years ago

just answered a few questions in the chat

there is no "just" about that...

bennylope• 7 years ago

The NYT at least lets you use PayPal. When I wanted to cancel I couldn't even get through to a rep, so I just switched my payment method to PayPal and then deauthorized the recurring payment from PayPal.

towelr34dy3• 7 years ago

So much this. I LOVE paypal as a user because of it. All my subscriptions go through it and if it isn't offered via paypal, I'll reconsider.

I love to see a list of all my subscriptions with the ability to unilaterally cancel my subscription at any time via PayPal... I never even contact the companies I 'unsubscribe' from... I simply remove their access to my paypal.

mooreds4• 7 years ago

This is the same reason I pay bills via my bank bill pay rather than giving EFT access to the folks who send me bills. One point of control, and the bank is invented to help me with payment issues rather than throw up roadblocks.

thisisweirdok2• 7 years ago

Yeah this is why I'm quick to use paypal. If I can't cancel it online I'm just going to deauthorize that shit.

warent2• 7 years ago

This reminds me of a service I signed up for once years ago, can't even remember what it was, but I had no idea how to cancel it and it was direct to my card instead of PayPal.

What ended up happening was I went to the "Edit payment info" page and just entered my card number as 4242 4242 4242 4242, which is a Visa testing card number.

It authorized it as valid and I never dealt with the company again.

aurea• 7 years ago

The daily Washington Post crosswords are a nice free alternative.

bookofjoe2• 7 years ago

I'm an online Washington Post subscriber; IMHO it's well worth $9.99/month.

jwr• 7 years ago

It seems to be a dark pattern in the news/media industry. Even the otherwise enlightened Economist makes you CALL in order to cancel/change your subscription.

Going from a quick, precise and inexpensive communications channel to a slow, synchronous, error-prone and costly one is something that really annoys me.

Klover• 7 years ago

I just sent them an email in order to cancel but maybe that’s different in the EU.

Spooky232• 7 years ago

I don’t get why NY Times gets so much grief. They are fast and friendly on the phone and usually offer to halve the bill if it’s a price thing.

Dropbox is annoying to me because I have a service that I’m overpaying for, lack basic features like search, up sell with every interaction, and make leaving tough too.

icelancer2• 7 years ago

on the phone

This should be an option, not the only way to cancel.

Kankuro• 7 years ago

I wanted to subscribed to Mediapart, one of the very very few independent news site in France. Everything is online (subscription, article) but the unsubscription with requires register mail! That's crazy, they are financed only by subscriptions (paywall, no ads) and not backed by any major media group/tycoon/the state, but they still rely on this dishonest practice. I read that you can unsubscribe by email, but if it's not written in the terms and conditions I'm not going to trust them on that. What a pity.

bduerst2• 7 years ago

Fascinating. This retention tactic is usually pitched as a successful last-ditch attempt to retain subscription customers, but it comes at a hidden cost to the brand - and losing repeat buyers like yourself.

Comcast, Blue Apron, credit cards, etc. do it but I didn't think publishers were getting to this point.

caconym_• 7 years ago

This happened to me too with NYT. 20 minutes on the phone with some poor woman whose compensation I'm sure depended in part on convincing me not to cancel.

I was really surprised because they generally have a good reputation as an organization. I'll never let them get their hands on my payment details again.

ianai8• 7 years ago

There should be a way to cancel this sort of thing with your bank. On a recurring basis.

jammygit6• 7 years ago

Thanks for sharing, I will avoid them for sure. I periodically get tempted.

I found canceling MIT tech and the Atlantic to be painless btw

brewdad2• 7 years ago

When I cancelled NYTimes last year, I gave an explanation of my reason for doing so. Once the hard sell came, I simply repeated "cancel" every 5 seconds until she gave up. It saved us both a lot of time, but I still probably had to say it 6 or more times before she gave up.

astura5• 7 years ago

If they try to ask me any questions about cancellation I just say "that's none of your business." It almost always gets the questioning to stop.

ohiovr• 7 years ago

You can sometimes find a merchant’s direct line for billing in common personal banking sites. There is usually a toll free number you can call concerning on going payments like subscriptions next to a transaction. They got to cooperate or they could run afoul of the bank so I have found the numbers useful.

digikata• 7 years ago

On that note, I was really impressed with how easy it was to end an xmradio trial subscription just recently. I had gone over a few days into their regular monthly service. I was anticipating something unpleasant, but it was very easy to cancel, and they refunded the new month pro-rata without prompting.

api• 7 years ago

If I have to call to cancel I usually just make a fraud complaint. It causes more pain to the company in exchange for hassling me this way. I will also never ever EVER use you again if you do this, and I will provide a terrible review of your product to anyone who asks.

Pretty much any kind of slimy "roach motel" sales or customer retention tactic get your company instantly placed in the bottom circle of hell in my mind.

emiliobumachar2• 7 years ago

They deserve it, but, does the law have your back on this, or are you accepting some risk of being charged with false accusation?

rootusrootus2• 7 years ago

Happened to me too. Guy actually laughed at me when I refused a six-months-for-free-if-you-stay option. In that instant I committed to never giving the NYT another dime of my money.

Another one is the ACLU. Easy to start, damn near impossible to stop without just canceling your card. All I wanted to do is change to a different card, but they ignore me. Great way to ruin your reputation.

dguo• 7 years ago

If you'd like to donate to the ACLU in a way that lets you easily change/cancel your donations, I recommend using Sublime Fund (https://sublimefund.org/). Disclaimer that I am a founder. We deduct the cost of credit card processing, but we don't charge any sort of platform fee.

Donating should be easy, but canceling should be just as easy. You can do it through our website anytime without speaking to anyone.

mikeash• 7 years ago

I made a one-time donation to the ACLU, and they subsequently spent it all on mailing me crap asking for more.

scarcely• 7 years ago

Lmao my NYT guy actually switched into a stereotypical Chinese accent when I didn't catch sth he said and asked him could he repeat (my surname is Chinese)

astura5• 7 years ago

I've changed my ACLU monthly donation amount and credit card many times without any issues, it's a pretty simple online form.

megaman82• 7 years ago

Yup, I'm making a note of this, and will never sign up for a DropBox Pro account now.

1123581321• 7 years ago

How likely were you to sign up beforehand?

rkagerer• 7 years ago

For services like that it might be easier just to get a new credit card ;-)

lurquer• 7 years ago

Be careful with this. I had a monthly charge from several vendors. Despite phone calls, letters, etc. cancelling the service, they would keep charging. So, I said, 'screw it' and got a new card.

The next month -- on my new card -- the charges appeared.

Turns out that Visa will honor a recurring charge even if the old card number has been cancelled. Insane. You will need to move to an entirely different type of card. Don't know if this is true for the others (Amex, discover, etc) but I was shocked that this was Visa's policy.

cstejerean• 7 years ago

For this reason I only subscribe via AppStore subscriptions or PayPal whenever possible (and unless I have no choice I won’t subscribe otherwise).

shereadsthenews• 7 years ago

I recently canceled NYT by email in one round.

pbhjpbhj6• 7 years ago

Perhaps if they know they can retain you by being awkward then they'll try; if they know you won't succumb then they're better saving their "breath".

paulie_a• 7 years ago

There was one instance of a subscription that seemed impossible to cancel. I spent enough effort trying. I called the credit card company and explained the steps I had taken and told them I want any future charges to be considered fraudulent. That company got the hint really quickly.

On the flip side I subscribed to cigar afficiando for a year decade ago. Every year I get a renewal notice, every year I get new issues. I definitely have not paid for it since the first year. I don't know if it is to keep subscription stats up or they make enough on the ad revenue. But I'll receive multiple notices each year to renew and they just keep coming for free.

NIL8• 7 years ago

Exactly the way I feel. I'm willing to lose big just to make this point to every company I deal with, nowadays. 'Too many Mutha'uckas...'

neya• 7 years ago

This is a dark pattern usually dying companies like to follow. Why? Because, if you are confident of the value you provide to your customer, you don't need to be so aggressive about not letting them go. Yes, retention is an important KPI, but trust and transparency are even more important than anything else, so companies that offer little value and can't keep up with competition usually do this because they know they are dying.

A little while ago, I noticed the dark pattern that dropbox uses and showed it to my friend while talking about dark patterns. Turns out he was in charge of his university for selecting a good vendor for file storage. He saw it and immediately said 'fuck that' and went for another vendor instead. You see, this is how dark patterns shoot you in the foot - the cost of trust and transparency is even higher. In this case, dropbox lost significant money that they could have otherwise won.

Besides, In this day and age, there is literally no value that dropbox offers to its users. Their competitors offer way more value for similar price points and the experience with dropbox isn't even that good. All they have is their brand name, which will also be gone soon after they've tortured their customers with these dark patterns.

millisecond• 7 years ago

The insidious thing about this from their side is that retained revenue from dark patterns shows up in a report someone can use to justify a promotion but your friend’s situation will forever remain anecdotal (in their reporting). Growth teams run amok.

elcomet• 7 years ago

In France, on of the biggest journals, Le Monde, is also a hassle to unsubscribe. Subscribing is very easy, just enter credit card online. But for unsubscribing, you have to send a registered letter with recorded delivery. This is a hassle, you have to go to the post station, and is also pretty expensive (around 5-10 euros), which is almost the price for 1 month subscription to the journal. I find this unbelievable that you can't unsubscribe online (even for the online edition).

tgsovlerkhgsel7• 7 years ago

Many legal systems recognize a fax (with delivery receipt) as equivalent to a letter with recorded delivery.

Setting up something that lets you send those is a hassle the first time, but after that, sending a fax is about as easy as sending an e-mail.

tmalsburg2• 7 years ago

NYT is a great example for mindless optimization of short-term metrics. Canceling my subscription during the 2016 presidential race was such a humiluating experience that I would never again subscribe even though I miss reading the NYT. They lost me forever.

daveheq• 7 years ago

I tried to cancel SoFi Money online (after not using it because of terms I didn't like that they didn't mention til after signing up), and they told me I had to call to cancel... this after everything else on their site that I use is online-only.

I told them if I had to call, I would call my lawyer first, who would be calling them... and then they wrote back that they canceled.

So, these companies don't need to make you call, and even if it's inconvenient, difficult, or impossible to call to cancel, some won't budge. This should be illegal; if I sign up online, I should be able to cancel online. Making these artificial steps hampers business, my work time, my personal time... sitting on a phone waiting or slogging through steps or upsells is not a good way to do business and interferes with everything else.

It hasn't bothered the politicians enough, who are corporate shills anyway, so they haven't made it so companies have to be reasonable with this, like they did with CANSPAM.

axaxs• 7 years ago

If you by chance see this, would you mind expanding on terms you didn't agree with, either here or privately(email in profile)? It sounds like a sweet deal, and I'm considering moving ahead with them.

js22• 7 years ago

I just canceled my NYT subscription based on this comment. I was able to do so by logging into my account, following the "Cancel" link, then choosing the online chat option. It wasn't as easy as an automatic cancellation, but it wasn't terrible. Here's the transcript:

Isaiah: Hello Jay and thank you for contacting The New York Times! My name is Isaiah and I will be able to make any changes to your account today! One moment while I pull up your account.

Isaiah: I have located your digital account and I would like to personally thank you for being a Basic digital subscriber with the account number (XXXXXXXX)

Isaiah: If you don't mind me asking, what led you to cancel? I would love to gain your insight and see if there are any potential issues that I may resolve for you.

Jay: Please cancel my subscription.

Isaiah: May I ask why you wish to cancel?

Jay: I decline to answer that. Please cancel my subscription.

Isaiah: please note that leaving will put you back at 5 free articles per month and you will no longer have unlimited access to our content. Any saved Cooking recipes will stay saved but you will not be able to view them until you subscribe again.

Jay: I understand. Please cancel my subscription.

Isaiah: I understand your concerns. Because your readership is important to us, I'd like to extend a special offer for $2 per week for 1 year.

Jay: No thank you. Please cancel my subscription.

Isaiah: You will continue to enjoy all your subscription benefits for the rest of your billing cycle, which ends on February 07, 2019. Unfortunately we cannot issue any credits or refunds for the remainder of this billing cycle.

tgsovlerkhgsel7• 7 years ago

You're saying it's not terrible, but you had to state "Please cancel my subscription" four times and respond to their questions/suggestions, all of this after you already expressed that you want to cancel just to get there.

What happens when you try to cancel outside business hours? Do they have 24/7 support, do they just let you cancel, or do they tell you to try again the next day?

dhimes2• 7 years ago

pbs did this to me (wgbh). Pissed me off.

noworld• 7 years ago

How do you know how difficult it will be to leave before you sign up?

cameldrv• 7 years ago

It took four clicks.

strictnein• 7 years ago

Yeah, that's the point. Not the dark patterns where there were 4 options presented way down a page to the user and only one would allow them to continue to something they had already indicated they would like to do.

FVIIIvWF• 7 years ago

The process is quite convoluted, but at least they didn’t offer 50% discount when you tried to cancel.

the_watcher2• 7 years ago

Hulu used to do this, but they'd give a free month. All I had to do was remember to find the cancellation flow once a month and I got it for free for almost a year.

callinyouin• 7 years ago

That looks super annoying (seems like a really good way to get zero return customers), but does anyone remember how difficult it was for people to quit AOL in the (early?) 2000's? Just search for "cancel AOL" on youtube and you will find some pretty incredible accounts of people being straight up harassed by AOL reps to keep their accounts. For some people it took hours arguing with a rep over the phone before they would agree to cancel.

fitzroy• 7 years ago

Exactly. If you're able to document your cancellation process using only screen recording software, you're still in the top 10% of convenient cancellation experiences.

kevsim• 7 years ago

Agree. I remember Xbox Gold was a pig to cancel back in the day as well.

barking• 7 years ago

As a counter example I recently cancelled a subscription to premiersports in the UK, iirc it was a two click process.

grav• 7 years ago

I was expecting a 500 server error.

numbers• 7 years ago

That's what happens when you have a huge growth team.

Thanks for posting this.

I've never signed up for Dropbox Pro but this is off-putting because their product seems pretty well rounded in most cases.

post_break2• 7 years ago

It's annoying as hell. Dropbox deleted 50,000 files on our dropbox business account once. I had to go in an manually undelete each folder. There were hundreds of folders. Poof, suddenly gone. After that we were done, had to go through these hoops to cancel.

Zecar• 7 years ago

Dropbox deleted my honeymoon photos on my wife's account. They also deleted my account a few months later. I wouldn't trust Dropbox with a swap file.

toomuchtodo2• 7 years ago

I suddenly have the urge to backup my ~800GB of data in Dropbox somewhere else.

rrdharan• 7 years ago

They have an undeletion button (and they send you a notice about bulk deletions). They also retain and let you recover accidentally deleted files for 30 days. Without more detail it's hard to find these claims credible.

GordonS3• 7 years ago

I used to use Dropbox for syncing between machines, and had to do the same thing a few years ago. Utterly insane that you still have to manually undelete folders one-by-one. Also insane was the crap customer support (not sure if it's better for business accounts?) - it was all forum based, and you were lucky to get a response. In this case I did get a response, saying that one of the machines hooked up to the account must have deleted the files due to a conflict (it most certainly did not, and I'd said as much in my original post).

Aside from this I had 2 other problems with Dropbox:

1. On startup, it would render my machine unusable for over 1 hour. Now, it was syncing from 5400 RPM spinning rust, but still - there are good solutions that don't require hashing every file on the drive with the crappest and slowest possible hash implementation (USN change journal, file system minifilters).

2. Despite only syncing between 2 machines, there were frequent, unexplained 'sync conflicts' that resulted in duplicate copies of file (or sometimes data loss). These conflicts were not even discoverable in the Dropbox UI - you'd only see them if you looked in the folder and say the extra 'conflict' files

Oh, and they sent me a ridiculous number of emails after cancelling my Pro account. I cancelled in March 2016, and they regularly spammed me until October 2018. Only some of the emails I received over that time included an 'unsubscribe' link, and despite using those I did get, they didn't stop the emails - pretty scummy behaviour.

So, poor product, poor customer service, and scummy tactics. Not their biggest fan...

Nowadays I use Seafile, hosted in a Docker container on a low-powered Azure VM, backed by Azure Bloc Storage. Works flawlessly, and I highly recommend it. I understand this isn't a solution for the general population, but if you're technically minded (this is HN; you are), it's really easy to setup. You can use VM-mounted disks or AWS API-compatible block storage (Azure Blob Storage isn't, but I have another container running Minio, which acts as a proxy between the Azure API and Azure Blob Storage - it was plug-and-play, just working OOTB)

beezischillin• 7 years ago

I know it's not as big of a problem to have as them deleting all your files but to my knowledge you still can't use the Web-based UI on a Mac and make it sort folder-first. I mean how non-sensical is that? It works fine if you load it on a Windows-based browser!

It's such a major annoyance that I ended up paying for another cloud file host instead.

copperx• 7 years ago

Did you contact them to have them do the work, instead of doing it yourself? I mean, that's why you pay, to have support.

post_break2• 7 years ago

I needed the files back instantly. These were files for work, on a Dropbox business account.

sand500• 7 years ago

I think the real solution is to use a one time use credit card number which you can deactivate if its too hard to cancel a free trial.

sambucini3• 7 years ago

Retain with pain..

The other day I tried to delete my udacity account. No button in settings, I mailed support, they asked my to mail legal (apparently they don't fwd mail..). From legal I received the following response:

Hello,

We are in receipt of your request to delete your account. We are sorry you want to leave the Udacity family; you will be missed.

Before we can proceed with fully processing your request, we need to verify your information. We take these steps to minimize risk to the security of your information and of fraudulent information and removal requests. Specifically, we ask that you provide the following pieces of information:

- Username and email address associated with your Udacity User Account (if different from the one you provided in your initial request);

- Online Courses currently or previously enrolled in;

- Approximate date of User Account registration;

- Country of residence; and

- A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account.

If, after you have provided the above information, we are unable to verify your identity and/or authority to issue the request, we may reach out to you for further verification information.

As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion. Please also keep in mind that all removals of such information are subject to requirements to maintain certain data in our archives for legal or legitimate business purposes.

If you have any questions about this request please see our Privacy Policy or let us know.

Thanks for your understanding.

Udacity Legal Team

saghm3• 7 years ago

A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account

That strikes me as really extreme. If I had an Udacity account and someone tried to delete it, I would be annoyed, but I wouldn't seek to press criminal charges against them.

fencepost3• 7 years ago

Their concern is probably someone deleting somebody else's account, along with all record of courses completed, etc. Is it possible to have an Udacity account if you're not actually paying them? If so, "account removed" and "unpaid account" are very different things and the transition between them is one-way.

jonas21• 7 years ago

If I had a nanodegree and was listing it on my resume or mentioning it in job interviews, I'd be pretty upset if someone came in and deleted all proof that I had completed it.

stickfigure• 7 years ago

Is that even plausible? Not being government, I can't just declare "Anyone who lies to me is committing perjury, nyah nyah!"

eiurafhlfie• 7 years ago

I'll remember to never sign up for that service. Thank you.

jrootabega• 7 years ago

Almost sounds like they're about to say GuyWhoWantsToKeepHisAccountSaysWhat

duxup4• 7 years ago

Is there an option to simply not pay anymore?

That sounds like a complex process to avoid deleting the wrong things, but maybe not the same for stopping a subscription?

sambucini3• 7 years ago

I wasn't actually paying. The account basically dormant and from back when they started and courses were free. I am just trying to minimize my digital footprint by deleting accounts I don't actually use (I'm happy with value for money at coursera).

GordonS3• 7 years ago

This is unacceptable - if an authenticated login is good enough to change account details and sign-in info, why isn't it good enough to close an account?

I'm not an Udacity customer, and after reading your account I never will be - I loathe these scummy tactics.

Dylan168073• 7 years ago

What's 'scummy' about being unable to delete an account?

cde-v• 7 years ago

Wow, thank you so much for bringing this to light. Our org is literally in the process of signing up for their enterprise product but I can not in good conscience allow it to proceed after seeing that, it is unprofessional on so many levels. I would expect this kind of contractual bullshit from an NY landlord, not from an education platform.

I know they wont miss our 220ish users, but I hope enough individuals see your post to put a dent in their numbers.

ascar5• 7 years ago

Protecting completed educational certificates for their users free of cost seems reasonable. It's not like they force you to keep paying, they are just not easily deleting your educational history on their platform.

Dylan168073• 7 years ago

contractual bullshit

You read the post wrong.

ccmonnett• 7 years ago

It's worth mentioning that people are completing courses, nanodegrees, and even Master's degrees through Georgia Tech on Udacity. These are significant life events for people trying to change/shift their careers, get that next promotion, etc. Having all records of your Master's degree deleted by a 'griefer' is a terrible thing to have to recover from.

I have no affiliation with Udacity but I feel that yours is an extreme response to a company that holds records of work that is very dear to some people and their careers.

yayadarsh• 7 years ago

Thanks for this. Just opened a support case to delete my account.

sambucini3• 7 years ago

fyi - given it's annoying to collect all that information, I felt udacity might actually be able to help me with that. So I filed a subject access request under GDPR and asked them to provide me with all the data they have in relation to me..

mkbkn• 7 years ago

These days if I want to "delete" an account, I'll just change my email address and password associated with that account. I take help of temporary email providers. Also, I write gibberish in place of my profile data.

lowercased• 7 years ago

As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion.

Didn't windows 95 popularize the idea of the trashcan - temporary deletion - 20+ years ago? Don't many db tools support the idea of "soft deletes"?

"Hey - once we do this, you can't get anything back, ever, immediately, it's all gone. For good. But we're going to keep stuff forever that you can never see, and we won't tell you what it is. But you can't have your stuff back, ever. It's gone."

Even my "offline" university had the idea of "not paid", "suspended", "active", etc. Keep me on file, and I'll pay again in 12 months when I take more classes, etc.

Tomte3• 7 years ago

Amazon is the same. I just cancelled Prime yesterday. It took me four or five confirmations that yes, I want to lose the benefits.

The buttons were jumping around. Sometimes the left one was for cancelling, sometimes the right one, sometimes it was a few centimeters lower.

I love my Kindle, but without that my Amazon account itself would be in real danger.

cheschire• 7 years ago

just wait till you get closer to the end date of your sub. They will start harassing you on every page load of every product you look at.

Tomte3• 7 years ago

Their page header "you saved XXX Euros last year from YYY orders with free priority shipping" was very effective.

Not because I was thinking "wow, I've saved so much money".

But because I was thinking "wow, I'm buying too much stuff".

iscrewyou• 7 years ago

Yupp. And they’ll have dark patterns for purchases after you cancel prime.

Those pesky engineers tried to charge me on my first post-prime purchase by giving me a $5.99 shipping charge. I was shocked! I knew the item said free shipping available. I checked other options (which were hidden behind a button), and lo and behold there was a free shipping option.

dorgo3• 7 years ago

I removed a lot of useless parts and ads from amazon by using stylus-addon.

.scheduled-ad { display: none !important; } .nav-a.nav-hasImage.nav-right { display: none !important; } .nav-fullWidthSubnavFlyout.nav-flyout { display: none !important; } .a-section.a-spacing-none.uilm-section { display: none !important; } .acsUxWidget { display: none !important; } .cr-vote-buttons.cr-vote-component { display: none; } span[data-action="cr-popup"] { display: none; } #regularprice_savings { display: none; } #cbcc_content_container{ display: none !important; } .super-tcg, .dv-product-offer, #nav-swmslot, #ape_Detail_dp-ads-center-promo_Desktop_placement, #heroQuickPromo_feature_div,.iss-ad-row, #amsDetailRight_feature_div,#ape_Detail_customer-reviews-top_Glance_placement,#cm_cr-rvw_summary-ads{ display: none !important; } #nav-upnav{ display:none !important; } .nav-prime-try{ display:none; } .dv-dp-top-banner{ display:none; } .acs-private-brands-container-background{ display:none !important; } .maple-banner{ display:none !important; }

jenscow• 7 years ago

Thanks for reminding me!

rolleiflex• 7 years ago

Oh, heads up, you're in for a treat. Amazon will try to tack on a Prime subscription on every order you try to make from now on. They do this with a permanent full-page interstitial (not a pop-up) for ex-Prime users before the order confirmation page whose big green 'continue' button automatically one-click charges your account for a full year of Prime. You have to read down and click the tiny 'no, I don't want these benefits' blue text link in 8px font size to file your order without Prime.

I no longer shop from Amazon. The more we accept these kind of indignities, the more they will be forced on us. Let them starve, that's the most powerful message one can send.

Edit / More data points:

- One more trick up their sleeve: they will default to two-day paid shipping even when you have free shipping available, just so that you'll feel the pain (i.e. the 'worth') of Prime every time you have to pay attention in the last page, and check the right 'free shipping' radio box for every shipment in your order.

- For me, the last thing that broke the camel's back was that they were specifically sending shipments to arrive on the last day of the shipment window. As a real example, I ordered a display on Jan 7 to arrive between Jan 14 and Jan 18. They shipped it Jan 17. This is what made me notice this, and it made me look at my past orders. Turns out, they have been doing this consistently, for a while.

The purpose of a shipping window is to allow for some slack in the case shipment gets delayed, it is for shipment. If they shipped it a few days before the window, that would be fine. If they shipped it right at the beginning of the window, that would still (arguably) be fine. If you ship in a way that is aiming for as late as possible delivery, that's pretty obvious what you're trying to do.

If you're not a Prime customer, your orders might arrive as late as they can make it. They are likely doing this on purpose.

aeharding2• 7 years ago

Pro-tip: Sometimes you can get lucrative deals on Prime during checkout if you don't have prime.

For example, I've gotten multiple 1 month free trials, and also the '1 week for 1.99' which you can immediately cancel after placing your order for a $1 refund (if you immediately cancel, not at end of the week).

I don't shop at Amazon often, but I've gotten many (read: > 10) Prime shipments over the last year, probably paying a grand total of $3 or so.

If I don't have any good Prime offers upon checkout, I'll go to Ebay, find the product, soft by lowest price, and it's usually the same price, or within a dollar or so, and ships a LOT faster than Amazon.com's standard shipping (usually ends up coming from Amazon anyways proxied by the Ebay seller with Prime).

I've gone through the Amazon cancellation pages many times. They always keep tweaking it and expanding the process.

jammygit6• 7 years ago

Amazon restarted my prime subscription without my consent. I definitely cancelled it and left it canceled for months. I think they auto renewed it when I bought something? No idea. Very dishonest

lightx• 7 years ago

Is there nothing we can do about these scummy tactics? Can they be reported to some government entity?

daveFNbuck2• 7 years ago

It doesn't get much better if you're a prime customer. I don't think I've ever received an item I ordered with 1-day shipping. It seems their only mode is 2-day.

troydavis• 7 years ago

I've received this interstitial and it's one of the darkest dark patterns I've ever seen. It would fit right in with an adware, pharmacy, or porn site's checkout flow.

Here's screenshots over time:

2017: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/819409073590308864

2016: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/765560428663443456 <- the worst

2013: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/394173352199196674

All of these activate a recurring subscription fee. You can see the fee go from barely mentioned (2013) to as little disclosure as possible (2016, 2017). The 2016 version is so intentionally deceptive that it inspired a discussion among friends whether, if we were asked to implement something like this by an employer or client, we'd quit instead of doing it. The easy consensus was yes, both because it's beneath our ethics and because it destroys long-term value for the employer.

I'd love to hear how this came to be within Amazon, let alone how it got approved, kept, and made worse. Somewhere inside Amazon, there's a two-pizza team of developers implementing this value destruction.

yread2• 7 years ago

I've signed up for amazon prime uk and after some time I've canceled it. But somehow my amazon.com prime was still going and it took 6 months before i noticed. After quite some discussions with support they told me they only return last 3 months and that i should chargeback the rest. So I'm one of the few people who chargedback amazon and lived to tell the tale

Ayesh• 7 years ago

True, Amazon Prime is full of dark patterns when you want to cancel.

I got the first two months free (Amazon.de), and at the end of the trial, when I wanted to cancel, they added a month for free, and I accepted the free month. My card was charged regardless and I had to email them to cancel it finally with no option to cancel at the end of this extended trial.

robotmachine• 7 years ago

This was very similar to my experience when cancelling my Amazon Prime account a week ago. It was at least five pages of trying to talk me out of it and the 'continue cancelling' was similarly the more obscure/non-obvious button.

It makes it feel like a very shady process without being outright deceptive.

heavymark• 7 years ago

Anytime I can cancel online, in under a minute I'd consider that easy. Yes, ideally they wouldn't put all those hoops in the way, but far better than most companies that require you to call a phone number during a certain time where you have to spend forever talking to a person who has to read from a script and may get aggressive with you or have to transfer you, or call drops or they say they have cancelled but didn't go through. Like MyFico, Sirius and other big names. Hopefully Dropbox improves but I assume their pages get enough people not to cancel, than the amount of people so angered by it that they decide to never come back that it makes sense for them.

dependsontheq2• 7 years ago

I have been working as a ux consultant for 15 years now, there are two things that are serious problems: 1. Forcing your users into actions they don’t want to take (dark patterns) 2. Having users delete their accounts and data because you didn’t install enough hurdles on their way to the delete button

I am actually not very sure what we see here, is it a dark pattern? It could be, but at the size of Dropbox I could easily imagine the problems haveing a way of cancelling to easily could cause. Especially if we are talking about a file space.

justinclift• 7 years ago

I have been working as a ux consultant for 15 years now
...
I am actually not very sure what we see here, is it a dark pattern?

It sounds like you've been in the grey/black side of the UX industry for too long, and have become a bit institutionalised.

eg You're not see things clearly.

If possible, maybe take a break from the UX space for a year or so, and do something else? Might help to regain your sense of things. :)

henriquemaia• 7 years ago

I'm not an UX consultant and what justinclift said makes sense. Maybe the downgrading process could be a bit more streamlined, but, since you're dealing with data, erring on the side of caution does not seem too bad of a strategy.

dependsontheq2• 7 years ago

I’m not defending Dropbox, some parts of this are definitely dark patterns, but I worked for one startup that had decorated their hallways with messages from people who had erroneously deleted their own accounts and data. To do that they had to click 3 times. In the beginning you just had to click “yes” 3 times, we changed it to delete and did the same thing as Dropbox using the other UX color so people would not just click but read and think. Dropbox is used in situations where I could easily imagine scores of user keeping valuable data on it and forgetting about his data, forcing them through a process seems prudent.

shortj• 7 years ago

I actually went through exactly this with Dropbox a couple weeks ago. It took me two tries, the first time I mis-read / fell into one of the dark patterns. I'd made up my mind long before I ever went to the website to cancel and all this did was make me grumpy and justify my decision even more. Clearly it adds to their retention numbers somewhere or it would be dropped, however I will not use dropbox again in the face of such blatant disrespect. It was a great service, but with so many other options out there I have no need to use one that thinks I need to be tricked in to staying.

mrhappyunhappy2• 7 years ago

What are you looking to use next? I've thought about a raid NAS but have not brought myself to going through with it.

ezrast• 7 years ago

Syncthing is designed for decentralized syncing, but I've forced it into a hub-and-spoke model by running one instance on a cheap VPS, with my client machines configured to connect to only that with all the discovery/relay features turned off. It's been painless to administer so far - the "server" has been running without restart since I set it up 18 months ago and I've had to fiddle with "client" settings maybe once or twice in that time. Then again, I don't put it under much stress - mostly documents and source code, no multimedia.

eafkuor• 7 years ago

I'm not a power user, but sync.com works quite well for me and is relatively cheap

znpy• 7 years ago

Just disable automatic payments from your paypal account and/or bank or card issuer and they'll cancel it for you! EASY! /s

er0k• 7 years ago

This is one of the reasons I try to pay for most things with prepaid credit cards. Not only does it mitigate the risk of me having to change credit cards when their data is stolen, but it makes it very easy to cancel services, simply because there is no money left on the card for them to take.

wlll• 7 years ago

Years ago I needed to cancel a fax service. They refused to allow me to cancel unless I called them up, which I wouldn't do.

In the end I just changed all my details to some variation of the phrase "cancel account" except the billing details (which I couldn't change) then did a chargeback every time they charged me.

It took them a couple of months to finally get round to cancelling my account (I think it was actually the bank who intervened). It was more effort than just calling the fac company, but I sure as hell wasn't playing their game.

redler• 7 years ago

Finally the killer application for Google Duplex.

xster• 7 years ago

I think it costs them a transaction fee from the credit card company each time too and affects their future ability to use the merchant network when they get too many chargebacks.

PerfectElement• 7 years ago

With Stripe, it's $15 for each dispute.

munk-a• 7 years ago

Unfortunately it can also really seriously effect your credit rating, but then again anything can do that and credit ratings are silly.

harryh• 7 years ago

Pro tip in this situation:

Send them an email saying that you are deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time I've tried it.

sfoley• 7 years ago

This is brilliant.

gbrown• 7 years ago

They wont quit pestering me to upgrade. I've never uploaded a single file, but collaborators have shared folders with me. Apparently that means my drive is full and I need to upgrade...

jordanbeiber• 7 years ago

Yeah, I actually by accident retained my account by not clicking the last of several ”are you sure” type buttons.

I had a yearly plan and had moved everything off to my own NAS in the last month before subscription renewal.

Was very surprised to see an additional year billed to my account!

Well annoying, and quite ugly.

crysin• 7 years ago

Annoying sure. "Very" hard? No, not in the slightest and is disingenuous to title it that way. Sure their confirmation buttons were the primary action color, and they really drag the process but it was straight forward, just involved reading to make sure the button you were clicking was the right one. It's a bad process definitely, but not very hard or even moderately hard.

Semaphor• 7 years ago

A bit off topic, but as we usually have [pdf] in the title for pdf submissions, can we get [autoplaying fucking video] for autoplaying videos?

pixelbath• 7 years ago

Since they solved the problem of "what if file sharing didn't suck?" they now need to solve the problem of "what if cancelling a subscription didn't suck?"

_bxg12• 7 years ago

This one wins points for comedy, but I've seen worse. NY Times forced me to open an IM chat window with "customer service" and request my cancellation interpersonally through them.

mrhappyunhappy2• 7 years ago

This is infuriating!!! I wasn't planning on cancelling, but seeing this shit now makes me want to cancel. Thanks for giving me a reason.

bittermang• 7 years ago

The ONE good thing about Bank of America, and it was only available on their credit cards but not debit cards, and I don't even know if they still offer it: You could generate new credit card numbers on demand, and set a hard spending limit on them, and their expiration date could be set by you.

This was pitched by their marketing as a way to make online shopping safer, because even if they did get the card and the expiry date and everything, they couldn't spend more than the limit which you likely already hit when you bought your item. But the hidden feature was it made cancelling difficult services a breeze, because you could just log in to your banking portal and kill the temporary card you made for that service.

kevindong• 7 years ago

The three big banks that offer virtual credit card numbers are: Bank of America, Capital One, and Citi.

grafporno• 7 years ago

This is an ad for useloom.

arendtio3• 7 years ago

In fact, I found their service quite interesting, but for me, it doesn't work without a Firefox version of their extension...

the_watcher2• 7 years ago

That's definitely over the top (particularly the second "please look at this list of things you're losing" after what looks like a feedback collection page), but it's orders of magnitude easier than cancelling a typical cable/phone/internet subscription or gym membership.

My concern is that companies like Dropbox will eventually learn that the reason the companies that are famously hard to end a relationship with are that way is because, in the end, you make more money that way.

rzzzt2• 7 years ago

There might be some value in a service where you pay someone else to sit through all the phone calls and jump through all the hoops when canceling another service.

woolvalley• 7 years ago

To add to the ancedata pile, cancelling spotify was refreshingly easy and nice. A+ would resubscribe again, once they have homepod support.

turdnagel• 7 years ago

As bad as this is, I'm OK if I don't have to call or fill out a form.

Walkman• 7 years ago

Stupid shit like this is the reason I moved everything to my own Nextcloud instance. It's completely free, open source and surprisingly have a BETTER user interface than Dropbox. Rclone can sync to the WebDav interface.

https://nextcloud.org/

https://rclone.org/webdav/#nextcloud

arendtio3• 7 years ago

By the way, for those who don't want to use one of the existing providers [1] and don't want to operate their own server either: Hetzner started their Nextcloud as a service recently:

https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud

I haven't tested it yet, as I am running my Nextcloud on my own server, but I found their offer quite compelling.

[1] https://nextcloud.com/signup/

bubblethink• 7 years ago

Interesting. Makes sense at the low end I guess. The more expensive ones are quite similar to their dedicated servers, which gets you compute as well. So you'd be better off rolling it yourself.

GordonS3• 7 years ago

Similarly, I switched from Dropbox to Seafile and have never looked back.

It supports disks, AWS API-compatible blob storage and Ceph and OpenStack Swift as storage backends.

You can also mount Seafile folders as drives using Webdav or a FUSE extension.

I highly recommend it!

Disclaimer: no affiliation, just a Dropbox refugee that's been very happy with Seafile for ~3 years

joshfraser• 7 years ago

I'll take that flow any day over a company that makes you call or email to cancel.

Recently had a horrible experience with Full Contact. You can sign up with a couple clicks, but you need to email them to cancel. Then they'll sit on your request so you get billed for another month while they're processing it and then they'll kill your plan right away for the month you just paid for. Horrible!

briandear3• 7 years ago

Constant Contact — same thing.

juddlyon• 7 years ago

We should get a list going of companies doing it right. I recall quitting Basecamp in like 3 clicks and and thank you page.

glitcher• 7 years ago

This seems like standard fare at almost any company. Cox communications offered me $10 lower per-month Internet when I was cancelling. I told them if they retroactively paid me the $10/month they were over-charging me for years I would stay. This finally ended their attempts to change my mind.

winduptoy• 7 years ago

Cox is the worst. The prices magically increase every few months and it always takes a phone call to get them back down to what you originally thought they were.

rabidrat• 7 years ago

That's a great idea, I'm going to use that.

rgrove• 7 years ago

A little over a year ago I spent days and days trying and failing to sign up for a Dropbox Business account.

The "Start free trial" button on the website literally did nothing. If I clicked it enough times, I eventually got a poorly worded error asking me to try again in 24 hours. This happened in multiple browsers. I tried many times over the course of several days with no success. I had coworkers try in case it was something specific to my machine or network. They got the same error.

I opened a support request and asked if they could help me manually open a Dropbox Business account. No, they couldn't. The best advice they were able to give me was to try clearing my browser cache and cookies (I did; it didn't help).

Finally I dug around and managed to find a link directly to a billing form, and was able to sign up by having them start billing me immediately instead of going through a free trial. I signed up for annual billing, naively assuming the per-user annual fee would be pro-rated (like Slack and most other good per-user services do) if our small company hired or lost any employees.

During the course of that year I did end up removing two users from our Dropbox Business account. Since we had already paid for the full year up front, I expected the next annual charge to reflect a pro-rated charge. But nope! The automatic renewal paid no attention to the _actual_ number of users on our account, and Dropbox charged us as if those users still existed.

Turns out the number of licenses you're billed for has to be managed manually. If you have 10 licenses and 10 users and then remove two users, that doesn't affect the license count. You have to remove two licenses manually. And if you pay up front for a year but remove two licenses halfway through the year? Too bad. No pro-rated reduced charge next year. Better be sure to predict your exact staffing numbers a year in advance next time.

Want to add a user halfway through the year when you're already at your license limit? It'll just fail with a cryptic error until you finally realize you need to first go to a different page and manually add a license. And sometimes (like literally as I type this) the Billing page you need to visit to do this is completely broken and just serves up an error that says "Oh hello. Sorry for this little hiccup."

Dropbox's core functionality works well and I have no complaints about it, but everything related to billing is so unintuitive and so frequently broken that I wonder whether they even care about it.

So yeah, I guess it doesn't surprise me that canceling is hard too.

wj• 7 years ago

Calendly also works this way. I guess I can understand it making development a bit easier (not having to tie each charge to an individual user) but they should have a warning that when you delete a user that you should also remove a license if that is your intention.

ar_lan• 7 years ago

This is how my old gym was (Crunch Fitness), at least several years ago. I moved cities and had forgotten about the subscription until I checked my bank statement - so I called them and asked to cancel. They said I needed to do so in person, or physically mail them some form (wasn't exactly clear on where I get this form from...). Even after being pretty irate and asking for a manager, I got those canned responses.

I suppose it was lucky that I was visiting that city the upcoming weekend, so I did end up cancelling in person - but my experience sounded and felt illegal.

fandango• 7 years ago

It's nothing compared to G2A:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-to-cancel-g2a-shield

rangibaby• 7 years ago

What’s a good alternative to Dropbox? I have been on pro (plus?) for a few years and was happy with it, but the constant nagging to buy a more expensive plan is really annoying

arendtio3• 7 years ago

Recently, I have noticed that I use the colorless buttons more often than those '.primary' ones. Especially when it comes to GDPR layers.

Next time it might be better if the lawmakers would ask someone to design a proper API for them and the browser vendors should care of the GUI instead of the website providers. Otherwise, we will end up again with this superb user experience where every website tries a new pattern to convince you to take their tracking cookies.

fartcannon• 7 years ago

Similarly, trying to disable google services on your account is a gigantic pain in the ass. Thank god for Lineage OS.

amingilani• 7 years ago

I use Privacy[0] for all internet subscriptions. I mentioned this on HN before but it gives me purpose-generated cards for specifics d services like Netflix and Google. When I want to cancel, if the process is even marginally difficult, I just turn the card off — which I was going to do anyways.

[0]: Referral link: https://privacy.com/join/S5U7B

ohnope• 7 years ago

I signed for Dropbox pro through their iOS app, which means canceling is super easy because the payments are handled by Apple. You can cancel your account by staying entirely inside iOS system preferences menus.

And ironically, it may lead to 1 or 2 more clicks than what was shown in the video, but at least there are no dark UI patterns.

vthallam• 7 years ago

Mealpal doesn't have a cancel subscription option on their app. You have to email them for them to cancel your subscription. Who even does that, smh.

runjake• 7 years ago

This is why I prefer to handle my app subscriptions through Apple's App Store: easy, transparent (un)subscriptions.

Plan B is to use virtual credit card numbers, such as https://privacy.com preferably with a bogus name.

Too many tech companies are shady.

macintux3• 7 years ago

I have long wished someone, ideally Apple, would successfully implement micropayments for news.

science4sail• 7 years ago

Google Contributor [1] was an attempt, but it never really seemed to have taken off.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

xj92• 7 years ago

if it takes more than 30min to cancel a service/account i just call my bank, explain the situation and reject all future transactions from that merchant.

aeharding2• 7 years ago

30 minutes? You're quite patient. If it took longer than 5 minutes on the phone I'd probably call my bank.

WilliamEdward• 7 years ago

Can you run into legal issues with this? If the company still thinks youre using the product/service but not paying? I would like to know because i want to use this strategy.

xj92• 7 years ago

merchants are always notified of chargebacks and penalized. if a certain percent of your transactions have chargebacks you can have your merchant account cancelled.

this may not work if you have a contract, but if the business doesn't make it easy enough to cancel a service agreement they have no right to my money and i'm going to make sure my response affects their bottom line so they pay attention and cancel my account.

gumby• 7 years ago

Note: this is a video; should have [Video] in title.

jdtang13• 7 years ago

ExpressVPN also has a cancel screen like this. It's particularly insidious since they make it look as if the cancellation is confirmed, even though you need to press another grayed-out button to finalize it. They've squeezed 2-3 months of extra payments from me this way.

sqldba2• 7 years ago

“Hard” is a stretch. Annoying maybe.

tyfon• 7 years ago

It's almost always harder to cancel. But even worse is if you want to delete your account.

I had a subscription that was not lapsed on NORVPN and I wanted to delete my account. Of course I had to contact customer support and after 2-3 emails confirming that yes I actually want to delete my account even if it has an active subscription that I had paid for and no there is no particular reason for it except that I don't use it they actually removed me.

It wasn't the end of the world but I would really like a button.

Funnily enough their customer service is called "Customer success team". I had to laugh out loud at that.

In any case, the worst offender here is probably facebook with their probation pattern.

augbog• 7 years ago

For someone who really wants to quit, it's annoying as hell. For someone who might want to stay, it helps retain them.

Which do you think the company cares about more?

herodotus• 7 years ago

When I tried to cancel Britbox, I went to account settings, where I saw a message that said "Please cancel your subscription using the device you used to sign up." I saw this message on my iPhone and my iMac. Who knows or cares where I signed up? I had to phone to cancel my subscription.

reconbot• 7 years ago

I'm starting to use privacy.com with all my online accounts. If I really have trouble leaving deleting the vendor locked credit card I used to sign up is an easy way to go that gets the job done.

x775• 7 years ago

I just cancelled my Dropbox Pro subscription and was, frankly, taken aback by the many steps I had to go through. It should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up.

gesman2• 7 years ago

Call your CC, claim inability to reach business to cancel and request chargeback.

This is my action plan #1 when vendor start irritating me with their support or policies.

eridius2• 7 years ago

Seems like a great way for the vendor to send you debt to collections.

dpedu• 7 years ago

I'm not familiar, but this seems unlikely to happen for something as small as a Dropbox bill. Debt collection is a 'regular' business - it's simply uneconomical for a business to pay people to pursue your $9 Dropbox debt.

gesman2• 7 years ago

What you said is more applicable to gym memberships or cell phone contracts where you actually sign in-person multi-page agreement for 1-2 years conscious slavery.

CC chargebacks works just fine for any online business that try to pull a quick one on you and making it artificially hard to cancel/unsubscribe/change services.

Most people choose to spend 1-2 hours online try to get hold of someone "who can solve your problem". You CC service dept can do it faster for you by transferring the problem to the other side.

I mean - it's always fair to try to solve problem by contracting vendor to have them to honor your legitimate request first. If that doesn't help [quickly and painlessly enough] - then there is a plan B in place.

butterfi• 7 years ago

Audible seems to do memberships right. Cancel at anytime, resume when desired. Works a treat and I frequently go back an rejoin if there's something I'm interested in.

curyous• 7 years ago

privacy.com breaks the back button in my browser. How do they do that?

blairanderson• 7 years ago

Is there any way to know about this type of thing beforehand?

I've always wanted to have a site that showed me "moral" alternatives to websites and such but this type of information is difficult to normalize :)

sandyhatches• 7 years ago

Stamps.com requires a PHONE CALL to cancel. PHONE. in 2019.

ShakataGaNai• 7 years ago

If you live in the USA, Email their support and declare that you've canceled your account with them and refuse to pay anything further. Then contact your credit card company and initiate a charge back. If your CC company wants proof, send them a copy of the email you sent.

Every chargeback a company gets costs them money, on top of the money they aren't getting from you. If a company gets a high enough charge back rate, their credit card processing vendor will revoke their services. Fraud/Chargebacks are a MAJOR issue for any company accepting credit cards.

If you've made it clear you wish to cancel and are in no other way violating a contract (ex: You signed up for a 1 year subscription billed monthly with Adobe Cloud, ya gotta pay them for the year), then you are free and clear.

makecheck• 7 years ago

Phone employees must be given drop-dead quotas or something because they really resist not being able to do their won’t-you-please-stay spiels at cancellation time, no matter what you say.

Once when cancelling an AmEx card, I TOLD the agent immediately “I am cancelling my card, and I decline in advance any offers you make to keep me on this card”; she still couldn’t seem to resist interjecting about 3 or 4 time-wasting counter-offers. It was extra annoying when she started prefacing them with “I know you said you just wanted to cancel BUT...”. (Really?!? That means you know I don’t want it and you know you are wasting my time, yet you choose to waste it anyway! Is your manager behind you or something?)

I have seen this with everything from cards to cable companies. All I can figure is that these companies simply have too much power. There just aren’t that many cable choices or card choices for example, so how exactly am I going to storm off and never return?

fnordsensei• 7 years ago

The agent is probably required to walk you through them. The people who have taken away the agent's power to actually make your customer experience a happy one will never directly encounter the consequences of their decisions.

anonymous5133• 7 years ago

This is the reason why everyone should use privacy.com.

No need to cancel anything. You just shut down the payment card that is paying for the service lol. Once they see your card getting declined they will just close the account.

macintux3• 7 years ago

Others have pointed out that services are allowed to send you to collections. You’re still a subscriber.

mdekkers• 7 years ago

in other words "while you are leaving, let us make sure you will never come back"

abhisheksp• 7 years ago

There are even worse services where there is no UI to cancel subscriptions. You have to instead email customer support and spend another week explaining why their service sucks.

Example: Willow TV

sigzero• 7 years ago

Try moving a domain off Network Solutions. 3 days to send me a computer generated code so I can transfer.

daniel_iversen• 7 years ago

I don’t mind Dropbox’ effort for trying to make users change the mind (I’m biased as an ex Dropboxer) and maybe the pattern is a little Grey but it only takes you 45 seconds to unsubscribe.. in contrast I has a much much worse experience with “I Done This” (idonethis.com) where I subscribed for me and one of my colleagues but somehow other people in my company that I didn’t know or work with (without me really knowing clearly - not sure what happened) were somehow able to become part of my “team” license and I got a big fat bill from them.. we didn’t even use the product and there was no negotiations whatsoever - not even an invoice section/download option in the product so no way I even had any kind of “receipt” for expense claims - the customer experience and cancellation process was the worst I’ve seen in a long time!! I’m pretty sure I had to email them to cancel in the end as well. Biggest issue was bill shock by new accounts being added to my subscription though. At least with Dropbox if you’ve subscribed in error or have very good reasons they’re usually not too strict on refunds - they try and go the extra mile unlike idonethis.com

wahjiwah• 7 years ago

j1vms• 7 years ago

Just thought I'd point out that a lot of the reason companies make it so hard to cancel subscriptions is that it literally is a more "brutal" change for them when it comes to accounting, and what they have to report back to investors.

Recurring income is more highly valued than one-off / extraordinary income. Most traditional companies (telecom, banks, even gyms) have been this way, backing off only when forced to by regulation. It's sad, but not surprising to see the newer breed of companies also adopt these practices.

corbpie• 7 years ago

dhouston (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863) anything to say?

scoot_718• 7 years ago

1. Cancel payments

dbg31415• 7 years ago

If you think this sucks, have a go at deleting your Facebook account.

Worse... WhatsApp. When you change phone numbers it prompts you to notify all your friends. But when you delete, it just keeps letting friends message you without letting them know you aren't there, and all you get are notifications that people on WhatsApp are trying to contact you -- but it won't tell you anything more unless you sign up again. Before I had WhatsApp, people couldn't message me through WhatsApp, but once you had it, there's apparently no way to delete it. What if I change my phone number? Is any number in the system just forever in the system. Cool, cool cool cool.

cm2187• 7 years ago

Does the cancellation involve loss of data? If so I think making it hard is fair.

nickm12• 7 years ago

It doesn't involve any loss of data, but it could degrade your data safety. If you cancel your subscription, your quota is reduced and, if you're now over quota your desktop client stops syncing. It may also prevent Camera Uploads from working on your phone. So you might delete a photo from your phone assuming it was uploaded to Dropbox but it wasn't because you were over quota.

webwew• 7 years ago

These dark patterns are not good. but this submit is good PR for Loom. At first, I thought someone who works at loom complaining about it.

simongr3dal• 7 years ago

I cancelled Dropbox for Business a few days ago and it wasn't as bad as this video.

- I went into settings

- Pressed the button to cancel the plan

- ~75 words about what would happen to the individual accounts created with the Dropbox for Business plan

- One more button saying I still wanted to cancel my account

- Three checkboxes confirming that I understand my data would be deleted from Dropbox

- Now I could finally cancel

It might sound like a lot, but I appreciate that they didn't have any "No I don't wanna be awesome anymore and have 10TB of Dropbox storage" like they did in this video.

erikb• 7 years ago

Don't use the form. Use the legal way to quit any contract in your country. For instance that means sending a paper letter to their offices with the postal service confirming that the letter was received. If your contract has a quitting period pay the 3 months or what. Then stop and ignore all the annoying emails and letters they send you. They will not sue, because they would lose.

Might cost you $5 for the special letter type, and might cost you 3 more monthly fees than you would be willing to pay otherwise. But this is 100% save in all countries with a working legal system. Of course if they come after you with baseball bats or car bombs, then you probably can't quit their "services" anyways. ;)

devdimi• 7 years ago

I don't think this is hard, it is possible online, no phone calls nor paper communication. In Germany if you want to cancel anything, you need to send personally signed letter three full months in advance. And most of the things run as two year long contacts. If you miss the the date three months before your contact ends you get another two years automatically.

ixacto• 7 years ago

Eww so they have a landing page when you want to cancel. Pretty slimy. If it’s too annoying just give them a chargeback, heck do it the next month if they don’t stop. That will fit the attention of at least their payment processor.

stefek99• 7 years ago

Dropbox is a publicly traded company: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DBX/?guccounter=1

What do you expect?

It's legal obligation to make as much money for the shareholders.

nothrows• 7 years ago

Got this email from them a couple days ago:

We’ve noticed you haven’t used your XXX@XXX.com Dropbox account in over one year and have closed your account for you. Devices connected to this account have now stopped syncing. Any remaining files in your account will be subject to deletion.

Sincerely, - The Dropbox Team

There goes my files. Fuck dropbox. Stick to google drive.

Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard

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