Making it difficult for me to cancel is not helping your reputation
I recently signed up for a 14-day free trial of a financial service called Mvelopes. I won't get into the details of what the service does because that's not what I want to talk about in this blog post.
Instead, I want to talk about what happened when I decided not to continue with the service after the free trial. In other words, when I went to cancel the service.
It took a bit of digging on the web site, but I eventually found this under the Support option:
In order to cancel your free trial or to change your subscription plan you need to contact us via live chat and request the desired change at least one day prior to your billing date. If this is not done, the charge incurred is a non-refundable charge, regardless of whether or not you choose to use the service. Your billing date and how much you will be charged is communicated in your order confirmation e-mail.
Red alert! Red alert!
When I read this, noobie alarms were sounding everywhere. The only way to cancel is to use the web site's built-in live chat feature? What happened to being able to pick up the telephone? And how many noobies out there are technical (or courageous) enough to actually use live chat?
This bothers me because I actually really liked the Mvelopes service. The only reason I was canceling is because it was too much of a time commitment to keep up with it. At least more of a time commitment than I was willing to give.
But now I have a sour taste in my mouth with Mvelopes because I feel they intentionally made it difficult to cancel their service.
I never understand this because I probably would have recommended this service to dozens of people. But now that recommendation will come with a disclaimer. "It's a great service but be warned they don't make it easy to cancel."
How do you think that's going to go over with my clients?
2 comments for this blog post so far...
October 20, 2009 at 9:02 am
phyllis ostrofsky
I had the same experience ... and found it more than upsetting when I had to sit in front of my
monitor for over 5 minutes waiting for a live chat person to appear and concerned one might
never appear.
Once the online chat process began, it went smoothly, And, the next day I received an email
confirming the cancellation.
What I’ve learned is to be more cautious. I will NEVER again involve myself with any internet
business that doesn’t have a real mailing address and real phone number to call. I don’t
trust any one or any business who “hides” behind the anonymity of the internet.
October 20, 2009 at 11:29 am
Patric Welch
@Phyllis - I hear you. More and more Internet companies don’t post a phone number anywhere on their site. I know it’s for cost reasons but there has to be a middle ground. I challenge someone to find a phone number for Yahoo.
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