That headline sums up the European startup scene (I say this having worked for a shady German startup myself, that has owed me and other former employees money for ages)
... 10 minutes later...
10 minutes time!
... 50 minutes later...
10 minutes time!
...10 minutes later...
Pavel has declined your order/ride, looking for a new rider/driver/CEO.
<contact support> Hey! Fuck off in this endless menu!
If innovation is crap customer service, these guys are the most innovative companies in the world.
It's a good thing actually, reverting a SEPA debit takes two clicks. But indeed, cancelling payments is definitely not a way to get out of a contract.
If you don't pay your electricity or water bill then that's a different story because utilities are not allowed to just stop service for things people's lives depend on. But utilities are more heavily regulated than normal subscriptions. For the most part, if a company tries to keep you from terminating a subscription and you say, "well, I'm not paying anymore. Do you still want to keep providing the service for free?" it's an effective way to get them to terminate service.
There are things called debt collection agencies. They are widely used by service providers.
Pretty dumb on their part if you ask me considering now I'm telling everyone not to use them because of their screwup and the fact that they would sell it to a collections agency over 1 months worth of payments.
Unless the company values their public image and return customers more than a small payment, which thankfully is the case for many. I just wouldn't count on it, ever.
I assure you that an insurance or telco will send unpaid bills to collection agencies. Especially if we are talking about one or two years of service.
Edit: obviously only if the company is geared that way. They could just end the subscription too, but wouldn't count on it.
Unsubscribe?
Step 1: Ok, click here.
Step 2: Ok, just to make sure, you want to cancel your service?
* NO, TAKE ME BACK
* cancel
Step 3 + 4 +5: Ok, we don't want anyone except you (even though you're logged in) accidentally cancelling your service for you by accident. We will send you a confirmation email, click on the link there, and then confirm on the confirmation page.
Me and two other chaps formed a start up in 2000 - bog standard IT services/consultancy. Still trundling along, we won't set the world on fire but doing OK.
One of our employees is Polish, in Poland. We pay him the same as everyone else. OK he's actually now self-employed for tax purposes and Brexit but his rate is the same as our other techies. He was working remote six months before anyone had heard of SARS-CoV-2.
When we started out our first two employees were enticed away with twice their previous pay. lol. Travel shops don't pay much here in the UK. They stayed for 10 and 15 years.
One month in 20 years we had a cash flow problem. We like to keep a decent float in the bank rather than drive fast cars. I do like to sleep at night. The Directors didn't get paid that month but all staff were paid. The next few months we caught up OK. Anyone who's run a small business will know that's not bad going for cash flow. I should point out that we have never, ever had an overdraft. We do have a mortgage but that costs less than the rent we used to pay for less than half the size of building.
I could go on (sorry). Not all startups strive for the stars. A famous French bloke once memorably described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers (ie boring as fuck): I take that as a compliment.
Afaik, flixbus was founded by former BCG consultants, sounds unusual for a Startup.
Your only way to get justice was to take them to court, which would cost you more than the fees and since Germany doesn't have a class action lawsuits framework, each member would have to sue the gym separately.
On the weird and semi-related flip side, our gym voluntarily cancelled ours (I planned to keep it going because it's a family business and I wasn't suffering financially) because it was cheaper for them to cancel their SaaS that they had used to track & bill members.
Start-ups across ~50 countries? Always doing the same thing? I think you may be generalising quite a bit... It's not like an SV company would ever shift blame on the customer, right? :-)