I downloaded the do not pay app a week ago because I wanted to use their temporary card number feature to sign up for a free trial.
This feature automatically declines the charge when the trial finishes.
The app was free to download and I was immediately asked to enter my credit card on the onboarding flow. I was a bit annoyed but reluctantly entered it and figured I could cancel this before the trial.
Then I went to create one of these fake cards and got a notification that my actual credit card was charged $3. What? Turns out activating one of these fake cards automatically activated my free trial. I had no idea and was annoyed by this dark pattern, and even more annoyed I fell for it.
Then I tried to cancel and the only thing I could find is a chat bot that kept presenting the same options. Ironic that the article talks about bypassing a bot when they use one themselves to handle customer service.
After going through the chat of flow a few times I was able to cancel my subscription, but the chat it didn’t know how to handle my refund request. I ended up finally finding a form I could send an email to someone asking for a refund.
This app has dark patterns all over the place to trick you into paying for their products that save you money. I would not recommend it.
Since I closed my BoA account I've been using privacy.com for temporary credit card numbers. It "just works" - for me at least - and I haven't been charged a dime. They make their money from interchange fees.
It's at least fairly on the side of "only trying to avoid class actions" by having:
- "arbitrator provided by the American Arbitration Association"
- "[individuals] may elect to pursue their claims in their local small-claims court rather than through arbitration"
- arbitration care heard in your local county
- they pay for the arbitration fees
It's the same as online game store companies having binding arbitration, there are some cases where class actions would be detrimental to a company due to no fault of the company themselves.
Privacy.com can ban class actions without binding arbitration agreements, many companies already do this.
To go a step farther, waiving my right to a trial by jury and telling me I can go to a small claims court instead does not engender trust from me. That's not avoiding a class action, that's removing my ability to have a trial decided by my peers.
To go even one more step, I don't get the hate for class action lawsuits.
Class action lawsuits are one of the only really effective ways consumers have to punish companies that misstep. They're not perfect, and they often end up profiting lawyers more than consumers. But at the same time, suing companies is expensive, and companies bank on that fact. They commit small violations, counting on the fact that most consumers will realize that it's not economically feasible to file claims for a few hundred dollars.
Aggregating multiple claims into a single lawsuit (for all of its flaws), solves that problem. It's pretty much the only thing we have right now that helps solve that problem. We've seen that with Equifax, Verizon, Yahoo, etc... the class action lawsuits hurt those companies a lot more than any regulation or criminal probes or boycotts did. If high-profile mistakes like the ones these companies made anger you, there's potentially an argument there for making class-action lawsuits even more powerful, not less.
I get that our legal system in the US is messed up and expensive. I don't understand why the consequences of that have to fall specifically on consumers.
Do you have an example of a ToS that prohibits class actions, but otherwise does not contain binding arbitration? I've never seen something like that.
> They commit small violations, counting on the fact that most consumers will realize that it's not economically feasible to file claims for a few hundred dollars.
Maybe not feasible for your time in going through the hassle of filing a claim, but the point of small claims court is intended to be inexpensive. The fee should be under $100, but I understand that still might be prohibitive for low-income users.
Unreal Engine is the first one that springs to mind[0]. No class actions or jury trials, and jurisdiction is restricted to North Carolina, but also no arbitration requirement.
> You agree not to bring or participate in a class or representative action, private attorney general action, or collective arbitration related to the Licensed Technology or this Agreement. You also agree not to seek to combine any action or arbitration related to the Licensed Technology or this Agreement with any other action or arbitration without the consent of all parties to this Agreement and all other actions or arbitrations.
My bank has a feature to give my card a temporary CVV for 5 minutes which I can then use to authorize a payment. Without that, I need to manually verify the payment. So this dark pattern would not have worked on me, or they'd have committed fraud and had a 0,1% chance of succeeding. Nice try, though.
OMG yes! Second this! Privacy.com is amazing! Been using it for months and have to say it's outstanding. I didn't realize they made their money on interchange fees. I thought they were just selling my data...and the app is so good was ok with that.
Yeah seriously. Literally everything collects/uses/sells your data these days. I figured what a great way to do that by having access to the actual purchases themselves. But who knows they may sell it in the future. Still going to use it. It's great!
I wonder how much profit they make from fraudulent transactions that people don’t notice.
Question: when there’s a chargeback, does the customer|fraud victim’s bank lose out, or do they get a part of the chargeback fee that Visa/MasterCard levy into the merchant?
Chargeback fees are a profit centre for banks from what I have observed over many years.
The one who loses out is the product seller's business (i.e. the company who processed the charged-back transaction, via their their merchant account).
IME, regardless of who is at fault and who perpetrated the fraud, and regardless of merchant sending irrefutable proof to the bank, the merchant account owner always loses out.
First it pays back the bank for the missing funds.
Secondly the business loses the value of the goods they shipped
Thirdly, the bank slaps a significant fraud fee on the business as well e.g. $35 penalty applied for every chargeback, which is where the bank profits from chargebacks (by never reviewing merchant submitted evidence in chargeback claims, and simply making the merchant business pay for the fraud plus penalty fee on top of that, every single time)
Needing flash is an annoyance, I wouldn’t call it “extremely difficult” (especially on HN) though.
Luckily Citi still offers the service. It also requires flash. However the feature is worth the inconvenience. I’ll run a small windows vm for the purpose if I had to.
Except last time I tried using that feature it required something crazy... I think like either a Java applet or a Flash something or a Windows download... so I didn't get far with that.
BoA just sunsetted their "ShopSafe" virtual CCN tool last month, which had a UI that required Flash. They didn't offer any explanation (or more than about 20 days' notice...), but I had to wonder if they just didn't want to port it to something modern...
Schwab pays interest on checking balances, offers instant transfer between your brokerage and checking accounts, and waives all ATM fees. No reason to stick with BoA.
>Then I went to create one of these fake cards and got a notification that my actual credit card was charged $3. What? Turns out activating one of these fake cards automatically activated my free trial. I had no idea and was annoyed by this dark pattern, and even more annoyed I fell for it.
Were you actually charged, or was it an authorization?
That's also a terrible feature. A card declining a charge does not in any way absolve you of the debt incurred by using a service and can even be sent to collections, it's always better to cancel your trials / subscriptions properly.
I'm excited that they got investment to build an Android version - I plan to be an early customer. A couple of things, though:
>> write legal letters to scare businesses out of overcharging you
This one actually concerns me a little. A lot of businesses use legalese to scare and overwhelm you, so it's great to have something to fight back. But there are also a lot of people out there who just game the system as consumers too - I'm a little concerned for Mom & Pop shops who will just end up being the victims here instead. Ultimately I don't think there's a perfect solution to the fact that dishonest, selfish people exist.
>> they’ll think ‘this could be made public and go viral and hurt our business
This might play out in a more complicated way. I have an app that records all my calls. I stop the recording immediately if it's a personal call. If it's a business I inform them I'm recording the phone call. Much of the time, that ends the call. The business was going to record it too, but now that they know I'm going to record it, they tell me they'll have to end the call and schedule a time to call back when neither of us records it, which I refuse to do, so I take care of business in writing, often in-person instead. Instead of making my over-the-phone business more confident, it just eliminates the phone as an option.
Curious, what call recording app do you use now please, and does it properly record full duplex audio from the line (so not using speaker/headset/other workarounds)?
The last time I had this working perfectly was with a Nexus 4 and I find that call recording apps do not work on newer phones I've bought since. Any suggestions? Android or iOS, I don't care which platform as long as it works well.
I used to set the app to only record incoming calls from callers not in my address book, and on several occasions it was a huge benefit to have these to refer to later.
Companies really do not like it when you email them recordings of their employee lying to you, and will go out of their way to make things right immediately when that happens.
I use ACR and it worked wonderfully for a long time. I had some big problems with it on Android 9 when I upgraded to a Pixel 3 - there was a note about Android removing the required APIs for privacy reasons, and the ticket didn't look very hopeful. But now on 10 it seems to work pretty well. Don't know what changed - haven't look into it much because I haven't been having problems with big companies lately.
I did this once with Chase and didn't get anywhere. Had a CFPB case opened and they refused to budge.
I had called multiple times and was told that their QuickPay was irreversible and that it was fine to use it for commercial transactions. I accepted it for a transaction, the transaction got reversed and money taken out of my account and I was charged overdraft fees. Submitting the audio recording did not make a difference.
That's a shame, what was their explanation? Did they say it's OK for Chase employees to lie to customers, or did they dispute the authenticity of your recording?
There's probably something in the fine print of your contract with them that lets them get away with whatever happened, but always escalate matters as it's pretty effective. Press them on social media, if there's arbitration try it or small claims court, and involve any local media or politicians that you can get on your side.
Basically, just be a huge pain in the ass and do not give up or go away until they back down. This can take a while and you must document everything, every interaction.
Not intending to advertise but this is relevant because of the difficulty in capturing calls automatically on mobile phones, even for personal productivity purposes.
We'll be rolling out https://productive.app for cell phoe calls shortly, which has call recording and transcription built in.
Other than the ownership and convenience of searching through your own conversations, accountability is another focus (phone calls shouldn't be an enabling medium for shady businesses practices compared to non-ephemeral channels like texts and emails).
I tried to subscribe for updates but it required me to "prove that I am a human". I could not see any captcha or any other similar thing and it would not allow me to submit the form. I'm using Firefox focus on Android
BTW, there is nothing wrong with intending to advertise. Op (and I) are looking for a call recording app, and you know if one that you can (hopefully) recommend. The fact that you profit if we use it doesn't make your suggestion that much worse
What app works well for recording without hurting audio quality or lag? I'm happy to pay for something that just works; the free ones I've tried suffer from quality/lag/glitchy issues.
https://productive.app will work with no need to dial a separate recording number or "merge calls", which is especially hard to do for unplanned incoming calls.
> If it's a business I inform them I'm recording the phone call. Much of the time, that ends the call. The business was going to record it too, but now that they know I'm going to record it, they tell me they'll have to end the call and schedule a time to call back when neither of us records it
Why go out of the way to inform them? Whenever I hear “this call may be monitored or recorded,” I figure I’m being given clear consent to record the call in a two-party consent State.
I have wondered about this also. The employee has given consent for their employer to record them, but does that automatically mean they've consented to being recorded by the caller? I don't know that this is true, and it could depend by state.
Regardless, I can't imagine a jury ever finding anyone guilty of breaking the law for doing this (if a company had the nerve to press charges). More relevantly, I would think that judges would be generous in allowing the recording as evidence in a civil suit, where there is discretion. And I'd imagine that in most states there would be room for judicial interpretation, since it's unlikely that a state has a specific law or appellate case that addresses this issue.
My take on it is actually that the phrasing they all use, "this call may be recorded" never specifies ONLY BY THEM. It's very reasonable to interpret that as "you may (also) record this". Like them, I'm also recording it for "quality assurance purposes" - to assure that they provide me quality, honest service. But see my other comment for why I bother telling them sometimes anyway...
> The employee has given consent for their employer to record them, but does that automatically mean they've consented to being recorded by the caller?
The message played at you doesn’t say anything about employer or employee. It simply says “this call may be recorded” so, great, then I can record it!
Well I don't always, actually - I actually had an argument with someone on HN one time who was suggesting that if I didn't tell them I was violating two-party consent even if they said the words "this call may be recorded". But I digress...
When I do tell them, it's because I'm trying to achieve what is said in the article: I'm trying to disincentivize the bad behavior from happening in the first place. I want to cut the bullshit out immediately, not just be well-armed to shame them or take them to court later.
This company has consistently come out with some amazing products, really refreshing to see a tech company that seems to just purely be fighting to solve annoying problems that haven't been touched before. Also founded by a solid entrepreneur who is the son of Bill Browder who has done incredible work throughout the world advocating for legislation that will help eliminate corruption and who wrote a fascinating book (Red Notice) on his time as an investor in Russia. I won't spoil it but it reads like a thriller despite being nonfiction and is well worth a read.
I use a Chase Liquid card that’s associated with my Chase checking account [0]. The balance I keep on it is always 0.01 (it used to be 0.00, but Chase closed my last Liquid account because it was not used, so I’m hoping keeping one cent on it keeps it active). The Chase Liquid card is a prepaid Visa debit card, so the merchant cannot pull more than what is on the card (they are denied), and the card is accepted wherever Visa is accepted. Some merchants can detect whether or not the card is a debit card, but this occurrence has been very rare in my personal experience (definitely once, maybe twice, I can’t remember the specific merchants).
I use my Chase Liquid card as the default card for any merchant that wants a card to automatically charge per month, or for any merchant that offers a discount for having autopay setup (one example of the latter case is T-Mobile where I get $5.00 off my bill Per month for just having a card on file for autopay). Merchants have gotten better at notifying me when my payment is due before actually charging me, so I actually perform one-time payments in these cases using my normal credit card that offers cash back.
Yes, this approach does not provide any additional privacy beyond keeping my intended payment method to myself. For anything more, I only know of privacy.com . However, this approach is sufficient for practically all of my needs.
Seems similar, I think I remember a podcast about DoNotPay though and part of the vision was that they would put a bunch of these services into the single app to make it more useful/used more frequently I assume. Maybe that's the core differentiator but not sure
Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the entire automated phone system? An agent time is precious the automation is there for simple tasks that doesn't require any intervention. If everyone starts requesting an agent it'll clog up the system for everyone.
Automated phone systems are completely useless after the advent of the internet and the smartphone. Anything on any company's IVR is more accessible on the app or the website. There's no way I'd call my bank from the bank's app to have my damn statement and balance read out to while I'm looking at it. If we call someone these days, it's to talk to a human.
They became useless when they became, for the caller (or at least for me), an exercise in double-and sometimes-triple entry of "validating" information as you move across queues because I guess no one has figured out how to store the 29 buttons I have to press for an account number from one queue to the next and and refusing to take DTMF tones (looking at you ComEd Energy) as inputs and in general, being as user hostile as possible to callers before getting even placed into queue.
USAA gets this right, to your point.
I can't tell you how many times I've opened the App, started doing something in their "support menu" and been told "You need to call support for this, press this button", the phone starts ringing and even if I have to wait a few minutes, the person who picks up the phone already knows who I am, why I'm calling based on inputs from the Mobile App. They authenticate by sending a security code to the app. Hands down my favorite experience calling support is whenever I need to call USAA for something.
(Plus, despite being retired from the services for 12 years now, it is nice sometimes hearing "Good Morning Sergeant Torres". Takes me back to my days on the flight line in a strange way, heh)
Automated phone systems solve the business's problem, not my problem. Maybe they should hire more agents or figure out what's causing such a great call volume that they can't handle it.
The better solution for businesses is to figure out potential future net income of a caller based on their caller ID, and then place them in the queue accordingly.
This already happens via rewards programs that route you to quicker or better support agents if you're in a higher rewards tier, implying that you're worth more to the business.
Perhaps one can even obtain income or credit information, or glean it from the caller's address based on median income or home price history.
This only works well if they staff/build infrastructure for a reasonably short wait time for everyone, because too many disgruntled users will cost you also.
I personally think companies purposefully cut costs on customer service, especially if they're monopolies like Comcast who don't have to care about the customer that much.
This helps.
The recording is the better feature IMHO. My iPhone was jailbroken before I updated to the 11 Pro and the audio recording tweak was one of my favorite tweaks. I thought of spinning up a service that did this just using Twilio but wasn't sure if people would be willing to pay (I think $1-3/mo would cover costs).
I just used a recording the other day when Spectrum (shitty internet provider, formally Time Warner) tried to lie to me and I was able to re-listen to my previous conversation with them to catch them in the lie.
inb4: I live in a 1 party state and even so I rarely talk to a "real" person on my phone, it's only businesses and if they are going to have a recording then so will I.
How do they get you to the right department? If you call the wrong dept at Comcast, for example, they transfer you into the queue for the proper department, which would take just as long as calling in on your own.
I think DoNotPay's first use case was disputing parking tickets. Basically the founder made it as a teen after getting a ton of his own parking tickets and the app helped dispute and overturn something like 160,000+ parking tickets for users in the US and UK.
I have tried this a few times and always been spooked by being asked up front to enter too much information including passwords(!!!????) for some products
This feature automatically declines the charge when the trial finishes.
The app was free to download and I was immediately asked to enter my credit card on the onboarding flow. I was a bit annoyed but reluctantly entered it and figured I could cancel this before the trial.
Then I went to create one of these fake cards and got a notification that my actual credit card was charged $3. What? Turns out activating one of these fake cards automatically activated my free trial. I had no idea and was annoyed by this dark pattern, and even more annoyed I fell for it.
Then I tried to cancel and the only thing I could find is a chat bot that kept presenting the same options. Ironic that the article talks about bypassing a bot when they use one themselves to handle customer service.
After going through the chat of flow a few times I was able to cancel my subscription, but the chat it didn’t know how to handle my refund request. I ended up finally finding a form I could send an email to someone asking for a refund.
This app has dark patterns all over the place to trick you into paying for their products that save you money. I would not recommend it.