Just Cancel the @#%$* Account! 483
An anonymous reader writes "PC World Senior Editor Tom Spring signed up for 32 online accounts. Then tried to cancel all of them. The most difficult to cancel: NetZero. The easiest to cancel: Consumer Reports Online and The New York Times TimesSelect. His experience was rated on a number of criteria, and highlights the hoops that commercial enterprises put in place to keep their 'customers'. From the article: 'I had a hard time canceling my $5 monthly Gold Classmates.com account, too. I couldn't find any information on how to cancel until I entered the word cancel In the site's search engine. Classmates.com spokesperson John Uppendahl confirmed that there is no other way to find cancellation information. But that was only the first hoop I had to jump through to cancel my membership. Classmates.com also forced me to click through several Web pages reminding me of the benefits I'd lose. Finally my clicking ended at a generic Member Support e-mail contact page containing a blank 'Your Question' field. Though the form said nothing about cancellations, I used it to request that the service cancel my subscription. The next day I received an e-mail message confirming that the service had accepted my request.'"
Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is precisely why I use virtual CC numbers. My bank (MBNA, now bought by B of A) allows me to set a limit on the amount of money that can be used, and the expiration date is usually two months in the future. A few companies (most recently Time Magazine) have tried the old trick "Submit a new card number to ensure uninterrupted service", but the truth is, they know that as long as they have a valid CC number they are in a much stronger position.
On a different thread, I personally found Paypal to be the hardest to cancel. The link is buried deep in the Options menu, good luck finding it, aunt Mary.
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just went to Paypal.com, logged into my account, and clicked on the "Profile" link. At the bottom of the "Account Information" window there is a link for "Close Account". From there it asked for the checking/credit card numbers linked to my account for verification. I didn't actually go through that process, because I don't want to cancel my account, but I'm assuming that will do it. Doesn't seem that hard at all if someone has basic skills of how to navigate a website. I wouldn't be suprised if it has been changed since Paypal has become a lot more user friendly as of late (which might not be saying much - but they have improved).
Consumer Reports (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, true.com sounds like the worst offender (Score:3, Interesting)
.Mac & iTunes (Score:3, Interesting)
iTunes is the more entertaining one. When I set up my iTunes account, it filled in my
(This is why I laugh whenever some MacHead tells me about how they "buy" their music rather than "rent" it. Cancel your iTunes account and see what happens to those songs you "bought".)
Re:Consumer Reports (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
Order a free copy of your credit report from the Big Three (you can do it easily from http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ [annualcreditreport.com]). When you receive the three reports, dispute the debt on each of them following the procedures outlined in the credit report.
The company reporting the negative information is then required to submit supporting documentation, which often doesn't happen.
Sounds like you may have already tried this, but if not, it's not too time-consuming.
Re:Vonage (Score:2, Interesting)
I still have it.
Cancelling Woes (Score:2, Interesting)
Pay for someone else's AOL and get stuck forever (Score:1, Interesting)
ServerPronto and Cancellations (Score:2, Interesting)
He hung up on me, I called back, and ended up speaking with a generic operator who told me no one with his name worked at the company. Needless to say, I did receive my money back from ServerPronto, and got a nice apology letter in the mail.
Almost forgot to mention that a check on their company in the BBB archives at that time revealed that their mailing address was for an office front only; their real operation is hidden away at a remote site.
Re:Cost of cancelling (Score:2, Interesting)
I had just moved back home from another state and wasn't sure how long I'd be here, so I specifically asked the salesperson about cancellation, I was told that it'd just be a $100 cancellation fee (even that is too much, but seemed reasonable at the time for some reason.) 6 months later, I tried to cancel only to find out that I have to show proof that I am moving more than X miles from any Gold's location, etc... They kept charging dues over the 3 months it took to cancel.
Then the 4th month rolled around and guess what? There was a glitch in their system and I was still billed for another month. Only after yelling && cussing out the phone for over 2 hours was I able to get a refund for that, and it took 6 weeks to arrive.
And this is exactly what a previous poster was talking about- not only will I never go back there- I will discourage everybody that I know is considering going there from signing up for their service. Crappy customer service, but they spend more on advertising than I do, so they'll probably win in the end. Fuck.
Handling credit card offers: NOT return to sender (Score:3, Interesting)
With regard to credit card offers, you can tell the US credit rating companies that you don't want any more credit card offers. There's a phone number you can phone, and they ask you, "Do you mean stop sending credit card offers for 5 years, or permanently?"
At first I hesitated at permanently --what if I can't get more credit cards in the future even if I want to?-- but then I realized that I had successfully applied for one particular credit card without any solicitation. A friend told me about the good features --photo ID and signature printed on the card, 5% rebate on groceries and gasoline, 1% rebate on all else-- so I phoned and got approved. There was absolutely no downside to me being the one to take the initiative to contact them. In fact, only after I had gotten the card did I start getting offers from *that same bank* for all sorts of other cards. (Stupid bank, I just *got* a card from you! --why do I need more? Anyway, now that junk mail is blocked.)
If you sign up for "permanently", you have to send them something in writing. I did that, and my mailbox has been mercifully free of credit card offers for the past year or so. I'm too lazy to Google for it right now, so whoever wants to do it can probably get his/her post modded up.
As for the rest of the junk mail, I tried to ask my mailwoman to stop delivering them ("I just throw it away anyway," I told her) but apparently legally she is obligated to deliver it. There is a way to stop it, though; my wife tried it at her old address and apparently it worked.
It does like this: by law, you may order advertisers not to send you unsolicited mail if it is sexually provocative. But what is sexually provocative? The Supreme Court has upheld a decision that only YOU can determine whether something is sexually provocative to YOU. So, suppose you decide that the SuperSaver Coupons logo in your junk mail is sexually provocative to you. Who's to say it isn't? Your post office has no authority to decide that it isn't, so if you say it is, they must stop delivering that mail.
So, you can get this form from the post office that declares that you don't want the junk mail from that one particular source. You also need to bring a sample of the junk mail. My wife found it all on the web, so it's there, but again I'm too lazy to Google for it.
Hope that helps!
Ebay and ISPs (Score:2, Interesting)
After I cleared up the amazing time travelling junk listings, they admitted their dumb mistake but still wouldn't unlock the account. The only response was "We can't unlock the account because if we do then potential scammers will be able to optimize their scamming techniques. eBay works in mysterious ways" (Security though obscurity?)
Even though there was no money involved since I didn't actually list anything, I was pissed because of course I had given them all my personal info, as is necessary with eBay. They gave me the option of giving them even more ID to reactivate (then close) the account, or else boycott eBay forever.
A funny cancelling experience was when I tried to quit a UK ISP and the support guy asked me my password for a joke because it was about 60 random printable ASCII characters, and he wanted to see if I could recite it. I wasn't amused and asked why they didn't hash user passwords. Nice security guys.
Re:Starz (Score:2, Interesting)
MySpace won't cancel mine. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wanted to cancel, and the confirmation email never came.
Tried changing my email address (to something without a plus) and the confirmation email never came.
Wrote to privacy@myspace.com like MySpace says to in this situation... it's been 2-3 months and the account is still there.
For a couple of those months the account's name has been the uncensored version of "F*** MySpace" and its profile has been a description of how broken MySpace is in this regard. This hasn't gotten it canceled either.
Once I manage to move the account's few friends somewhere else, I think I'll have to update its publicly-visible goodness with some choice commentary on "Tom," Rupert Murdoch, barnyard animals, drugs, Al-Qaeda, minors, and whatever else, to see if that helps.
That's nothing. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did I want it cancelled? Fraud. Obvious out-and-out fraud that I wasn't the victim of, but saw happening, and when it was brought to their attention the silence was deafening. Ebay's utter lack of even basic business honesty really offends me. Microsoft looks like a shining paragon of righteousness standing next to them. Even thinking of it now, more than a year later, a pit of anger is forming in my gut.
I can only think of one reason why they make it so difficult to delete accounts: that it inflates the user base fraudulently. Inactive accounts count as "members" and they make it that difficult to cancel hoping that the user just gives up, which is probably what happens most of the time. It really was insane how much effort I had to put into getting an empty account nuked.
Ebay, as a result, is on my list as "Not Recommended"
--
BMO
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not a bad outcome (assuming you're in the right and don't owe the debt). As soon as it goes to the collection agency, you can send them a letter asking for any and all evidence the collection agency has to back up their claim they have a valid debt so that you can begin your lawsuit against them. Once you do that, they are legally obligated to furnish you with the information within 30 days, and they are not allowed to touch your credit report until after the lawsuit is finished. Unless it's some huge debt, they'd waste more money trying to prove it then it's worth to them, and so they'll fail to respond within 30 days and you're all done, credit report intact.
I've done this on several occasions after companies tried to bully my into paying a fraudulent debt. Works like a charm. They only annoying part is that it's the innocent collection agency who loses here, as they've already paid the original company for the debt. But I guess that's a buyer beware situation for them.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually reported my card lost and had it replaced in order to get rid of an Earthlink DSL account a couple of years ago. Even though I (or anyone else) hadn't lived at the DSL location for 6 mos, and the phone line asociated w/ the acount had been disconnected for the same amount of time, they would not cancel the acount, so I did what I had to do.
I Worked At A Company (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, in the past year two relatives called and asked me why are the reports $39.95 when it's supposed to be free ("freecreditreport" was burned into their brains). I had to point out the blue on blue text that looks like legalese on the left side. They totally missed it.
Can't blame Experian for trying to hijack the process, but it's scummy enough where folks like us just need to spread the "correct" link.
Re:Irritating as hell (Score:3, Interesting)
There used to be a saying along the lines of 'a happy customer will tell five people, an unhappy one will tell fifty.' In the age of the Internet, that number is a lot more; I've written articles about bad customer service that have had several thousand unique readers.
If I cancel a service, it can be for any number of reasons. It might, for example, be that I am moving house, or going away for a while and will want a similar service when I get back. If it's hard for me to cancel, then when I want a similar service then I will go elsewhere. If a friend asks me for advice about what service, my opinion will be biased by how easy cancelling it was. When I moved to broadband, for example, I cancelled by dial-up account not because I was unhappy with the service, but because I no longer had a use for it. Other people, however, still asked me to recommend a dial-up provider.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:2, Interesting)
I actually cancelled the card. They kept sending me bills for AOL anyway. When I called the credit card company to complain, they said "We can't cancel that. They're providing you with a service." I said, "No they're not. That's the point."
They finally turned it into a conference call with a guy from AOL on the phone. After insisting with a slightly raised voice that I really wanted both the credit card and the AOL account cancelled, they did it.
I would have kept the card except that their "customer service" people made it clear that they had made some deal with AOL at my expense.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:4, Interesting)
One other thing. People here keep trotting out that VISA Terms and Conditions which says the merchant is not allowed to bind you to XYZ terms (e.g., they can't penalize you for using virtual cc numbers) But if you contractually agree to the penalty, I wonder if the Visa T&C will be a valid defense? After all, just because they've breached their contract with VISA doesn't mean you (necessarily) get to breach your contract with the merchant. Presumably your defense would be fraudulent inducement? Any case law on this?
Re:credit card merchant agreements (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally speaking, there was a 50 cent charge for every credit card we swiped. Buy a $1.50 drink with a credit card and 33% of the price is that credit card charge. There was a 25 cent charge for invalid cards (account expired, was canceled, someone swiped a card type that we didn't accept, etc). Discover charged the merchants the 50 cent fee plus 3% of the purchase price (again, that $1.50 drink = 50 cent charge + 4.5 cents). American Express was 3% for a personal card and 5% for a business card. We were also charged a $1 service fee every time we ran a statement of how much credit we had been credited (so instead of pulling a credit receipt every time a drawer was counted, it was pulled once a day). There's also the added headache of having to keep signed receipts stored for a period of time just in case they were disputed.
Short story, we took a loss on every credit card transaction under $10 or so. On very large purchases the rewards credit cards took a still pretty good chunk for themselves ($400 party paid for by a corporate AmEx card took $20.50 just for swiping that card). Someone has to pay for the cost the merchants incur for accepting cards and ultimately, it is the patrons who pay. Taking a 5% loss on every transaction and losing money on all transactions until $10 will put most businesses under if they didn't raise prices to compensate... and unfortunately, that means raising prices for cash payers as well (especially on lower end goods that you might by just one of like a 20 ounce Coke).
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:3, Interesting)
This happened to me. I tried to open a checking account at my hometown bank, where I had previously had a savings and checking account. When they tried to open it they found through Chex Systems [consumerdebit.com], which is some sort of credit-like reporting agency that someone else had been using my social security number. I even had my SSN card on me, but they couldn't open an account for me. I tried to contact Chex Systems, but it was almost impossible to get through to them, to this day I don't know if it was ever cleared up with them.
I also got my credit reports from the three agencies, and they all had a past due account for $100 something from American Express, and an address in the Bronx (I've never lived close to NYC). The account was opened before I was 18 and before I had ever signed up for a credit card. I also had a credit card account in good standing from American Express for a while before I found this info on my credit report and they had never contacted me about owing them money.
I submitted requests to remove this info from my account, added a flag to my report, and added a statement to the account. One of the credit reporting agencies said they wouldn't take the info off because AMEX told them not to. According to the law, the agencies have to give you names and numbers of people contacted during the investigation, so naturally I asked for this info so that I could talk to whoever they talked to at AMEX, but I just got the run-around. Going through the normal channels at AMEX was no help either. Some of the agencies removed the info but then it just reappeared a few months later when AMEX reported the past due account again.
It's one of the most frustrating experiences I've gone through/still going through. Whenever I apply for a loan, open a bank account, or apply for a job, I'm always wondering if they're going to see this information and I'll be denied. Just writing about it now and thinking about it gets me so angry because it's not even like someone stole my wallet, or I was careless with my info, but I still have to deal with all this crap because the credit reporting agencies are setup in the most anti-consumer way possible. Someone probably just picked a random SSN to use to open an account and it just happened to be mine... how they were able to open an account so easily with my info, while it's been so difficult for me is insane.
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:3, Interesting)
As a sidenote on the 13-year-old thing, it amuses me that Xbox fans will accuse Nintendo of catering only to children when it is their system that is played primarily by young Halo-loving teenagers while Nintendo caters to the mainstream adult crowd through their Touch Generation products and the Wii. I just find it funny.
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Virtual Credit Card Anybody? (Score:3, Interesting)
They send you CDs through the post then bill you unless you send them back. Fair enough.. try cancelling.
Wrote. No response. Phoned. Said they'd cancelled... CDs kept coming. Wrote again. No response. Got a solicitor to send them a vaguely threatening letter (also mentioning that any further CDs would be treated as unsolicited mail). They stopped! Woohoo.
*18 months later* CDs started coming through the post every couple of days. Phoned.. no record of my account. Wrote. No response. Kept phoning and writing.. nothing. The simultaneously denied ever sending them and also sent threatening letters demanding payment.... At one point I had a stack of 50 of them unopened.
The thing that finally worked? Sent the whole lot back with 'deceased' written on them. Wierd but true...
Re:OMG that is annoying (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking of Sprint, I do remember getting a bill for them when I canceled. I tried to login to my account on their website to contact customer support and let them know they were wrong, but my account was deactivated because I had canceled my account. When I tried to call them to discuss that problem with them, their automated phone system would not allow me to speak to a customer service rep because, you guessed it, my Sprint PCS Phone Number was invalid. So I wrote a letter explaining it all to them, stuffed it in their pre-paid envelope, and sent it back. 3-6 months later, their outsourced collections lawyers responded.