[HN Gopher] Offboarding: Saying Goodbye with Grace
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Offboarding: Saying Goodbye with Grace
Author : ar2808
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-10-07 11:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (uxdesign.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (uxdesign.cc)
| pid-1 wrote:
| Seriously, how do I close my Amazon account?
| klyrs wrote:
| I did this last week, it was pretty easy to find in account
| settings. They allowed me to delete my whole account, and
| required an email confirmation. On the other hand, I hadn't
| used it for much, and I live in Canada, so I can't speak to
| what others will see.
| superjan wrote:
| Amazon prime you mean? Came her to complain about that. In the
| prime app, there is a button that disconnects your device from
| the account, but it just logs you out. You need to go to the
| website to manage your subscription, and after a few screens
| and then there is a button you need to keep pressed down for
| several seconds before it works. Keep reading the button labels
| because the default button will keep you subscribed. Whoever
| built/ordered that knew it was immoral.
| theparanoid wrote:
| Send a death certificate.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| There's no automated way to do it. You have to send a message
| to customer service asking to have your account closed.
|
| You may need to be persistent. It's been a while, so maybe this
| has improved, but they hassled me a lot in the process when I
| did it.
| ufmace wrote:
| It's kind of like a tax on the entire industry. I've had so many
| experiences with subscriptions being excessively tough to cancel
| that I'm very reluctant to start a subscription to anything.
| Unfortunately, it isn't in many people's interest to make it
| smoother.
| marban wrote:
| I hate to put in a good word for Paypal but being able to
| cancel paid subscriptions on your own is a godsend when signing
| up for services that take it as payment processor.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I am the same. If I am not sure even about something free just
| asking me for an email address I may very well just walk away
| because I have no idea the amount of abuse they might put me
| through and how hard it will be to cancel it. The bad actors in
| the industry are ruining everyone's confidence in potentially
| new interests and products.
|
| It might have been manageable if the entire review industry had
| not put itself on sale and is largely just affiliate farming to
| make money. I would pay for a good review site but I got burnt
| by Which lying about having reviewed a product and then making
| cancellation hard. Honestly the way most companies behave is
| shockingly bad so I tend not to sign up to much new now, until
| the GDPR breaching companies and all these dark pattern sites
| are cleaned up by regulation there isn't a way to safely do it
| and not have an email account end up getting spammed.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I recently had to cancel Which? as well and was disappointed
| and surprised considering the organisation's mission. My
| original idea was to re-subscribe when I need the service
| again but that's now off the table.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I just did that this morning.
|
| I probably should have been an easy conversion. I went
| directly looking for a certain kind of thing. I was in a
| state of feeling frustrated about _not_ having that thing. I
| found a company that seemed initially promising. But, as soon
| as I found out that I would have to give them my email
| address in order to find our more about their service, I just
| closed the browser tab without a second thought.
|
| I didn't have a conscious reason for doing so at the time,
| but, in retrospect, it's probably because I strongly
| associate that kind of aggressive conversion funnel with a
| poor - oftentimes even emotionally abusive - offboarding
| experience.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| It became a bit of a pattern recommendation on Hacker news
| to do this and I think its ultimately wrong. Make it easy
| to minimally sign up but it has to come along with some
| reassurances too and if there isn't enough information up
| front about what the thing is and what will happen to that
| email address it turns into an anti pattern and a big
| warning sign.
| ufmace wrote:
| I agree that there's a really annoying trend where
| seemingly every website constantly spams popups to try and
| get your email address. Or browser notifications now. No,
| there's zero chance I want your news site or blog to
| constantly spam my email or notifications with updates. If
| you can't be bothered to put a website up saying what your
| site or service is about, I definitely don't want to get
| email about it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I can't even believe 99% of these sites get any real
| sales / draw from their spam regardless.
|
| I'm convinced it is all "monkey see, monkey do", they
| read some reddit post, and it mentioned marketing 101 aka
| email emails!!, and so they need to spam.
| tartoran wrote:
| I feel the same too and this could easily be solved by using
| a junk email address for that. I still don't bother though,
| the amount of deception has permanently switched my behaviour
| to simply ignore any such service that asks for email address
| before I even know what it does.
| krisrm wrote:
| I actually can't stand the "we'll save your preferences and
| deactivate everything for you!" pattern as well. No, I want my
| account deleted, gone. Forget you ever saw me, please.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I wish more companies did things like this. I had a really
| horrible experience trying to cancel my ADT security subscription
| and they simply wouldn't take no for an answer after being on the
| phone for an hour. It ended badly with me throwing a tantrum and
| shouting and banging. I will never use that company again nor
| recommend their services because of their obtuse off boarding
| process. Had they handled their offboarding better I might still
| be a potential customer in the future.
|
| I think it's similar with quitting your job and "not burning
| bridges". You never know what may happen in the future.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Nothing guarantees never returning to a company like making
| leaving hard or impossible. Because you know if you sign up
| again the leaving process will be painful. It instantly goes on
| the bad company list.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've mentioned this several times, but people must think it ruins
| your credit rating or something. Whatever. Their loss.
|
| Go to privacy.com, and you can set up a temporary credit card
| with preset limits on spending. You want to cancel some service,
| just close the card. Now you're in control. The sticky company
| will figure out for itself that you're done with them, believe
| me.
|
| They also notify you whenever someone uses the card, so you can't
| forget about your subscriptions.
|
| They will say "yes" to whatever name & address they're given, so
| you don't even need to provide your real name & address when you
| subscribe. Obviously you could have a fake email address, too.
|
| Privacy? _That_ costs $10 /month. I don't have it, and the real
| transactions do appear on my bank statement. But it's free. If
| you buy the privacy option, then they make up fake names for the
| vendors.
| marban wrote:
| Just about any challenger bank like Revolut will give you free
| virtual cards to spin up/down, incl. limit definitions.
| novok wrote:
| I think even some big old banks do things like this.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Good to know. Will they verify your (fake) name & address,
| too?
|
| Anyhow, it's time to fight back against these roach motel
| subscription companies. Just shut off the money.
| novok wrote:
| I think all of these alternative number cards use your
| name and address as the billing address, it just prevents
| unauthorized charges.
| marban wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion that the older the company, the
| shadier the cancellation process usually is. Last week I had to
| spend an entire hour in a chat window to cancel my Economist
| subscription, talking to a sales rep who, after ~10 Are you sure?
| questions, 'pulled all strings' looking what he can do for me to
| find the right button in his SAP backend -- you know, that one
| cancellation button that should usually be right there on my
| account page...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Not sure who, but I almost thought of subscribing to a paper.
|
| Then I recalled the horror stories for papers, so looked for
| how to unsubscribe, and these clowns actually required a phone
| call to cancel. WTF?!
|
| So ended all thoughts of subscribing. Idiots.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-10-09 23:02 UTC)