

Your Cancellation Process is Bullshit and it Hurts Your Company Image - gortok
http://georgestocker.com/2014/08/04/your-cancellation-process-is-bullshit-and-it-hurts-your-company-image/

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Someone1234
This is a huge pet peeve of mine. However it seems hugely common with American
companies in particular and everyone just seems to accept it as the norm.

Here's the thing that a lot of MBAs cannot wrap their head around: If you make
it harder to cancel you make it MUCH Less likely I'll ever come back once I
do.

Let that sink in for a second. You've not only put a roadblock between your
clients and them leaving you, but you have also put a roadblock between your
clients and repeat business.

To give two positive examples Amazon's Audible and Netflix, they both make it
extremely trivial to both start and stop a subscription, so if I wish to take
breaks I can, at no "cost." Therefore they both get a lot of short term repeat
business (e.g. 1 month here, 1 month there) that they otherwise wouldn't.

However as a counter example LogMeIn has a "call us to cancel" and therefore
if I need something for just 1 month I'll find another solution that might be
less ideal (e.g. VNC) but is less of a hassle to me in general.

The only company that can really get away with this are those with lock-in
(e.g. Microsoft's XBox Live subscriptions, Cable companies, et al). I don't
really understand how gyms are able to get away with it as I'd imagine repeat
business is important, but I guess they have enough potential clients to make
it work.

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Glyptodon
Practices like this were a significant part of why I left a previous employer
(they had me make a cancellation progress progressively more complex while
monitoring the effect of each progressive increase in complexity on the number
of cancelations and chargebacks). That plus a couple other issues made me feel
like a scumbag and within a few months I was working elsewhere.

Treating people badly doesn't just hurt company image, it hurts company
culture and ability to retain good employees.

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lazyant
there should be a law that you should be able to cancel in the same way and
convenience that you can sign up

