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Comment by zja | Hacker News Reader

Not to excuse companies that make you jump through hoops to unsubscribe, but is there any reason you can't just call your credit card/bank and cut off transactions to a company that's giving you a hard time? I've heard horror stories about people trying to cancel gym memberships, and wondered why they don't just stop paying, and let the gym figure it out.

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That stops the payment from happening. But it does not stop your contractual obligation to pay.

So it really depends on the business and how much information they have about you, and if they are dirty enough to send you to collections for it.

A gym is likely going to send you to collections. An online SaaS is more likely to just cut you off and cancel the account.

> But it does not stop your contractual obligation to pay.

Can't you Americans just send a certified letter informing a business of your intent to cancel and asking them to send you a final bill (if any) to settle payments within a specified time limit? That should cover you legally?

The problem is generally in the contract you sign when agreeing to the membership in the first place. There’s a lot of fine print stipulating how cancellation will work exactly.

Can’t you just strike that from the contract, initial it, sign the contract and return it? If they refuse the/any edit, can’t you say they negotiate in bad faith and void the entire contract?

If the contract is void from the beginning, how do you ever plan to use the gym? Aren't you just in the same position you were before you contacted the gym in the first place?

If you don’t agree to all provisions in the contract, then you can’t become a member. Nobody’s negotiating a custom contract for every customer who walks through the door.

That was kinda my point. If they aren’t willing to negotiate with any/all customers, it’s not really a fair contract. And I’m pretty sure they do custom contracts for the owners family/friends and sales. So it’s not unreasonable to ask for changes.

If you have already signed up for a fixed period (such as an year), then your that would remain your minimum obligation. Sleazy business will allow you to break the obligation at a hefty fine.

Lol. In america, you are not "covered legally" if the other party has more money.

I had to do exactly this to stop a company from delivering heating oil to my house. This increases the amount of time required to cancel by at least an order of magnitude.

Presumably this friction is built into the price of the service and disclosed. The known friction should stop you from signing up knowing the cost of cancelling (if it's too much).

Expecting the customer to be all-knowing is not realistic.

Or are you always reading all the terms and conditions print on all the software you install?

Wonder if you'd be able to subtract a fee of your own from their amount, to cover your costs and time?

If so... that could make it worthwhile. :)

Even if, that's an awful lot of work - cancelling should be just as easy as signing up.

I don't think it's as common in 2022, but in the early 2000s to probably 2015, health club memberships were generally a 1 year contract meaning you were on the hook for a year. You can't just cancel. There were always month-to-month plans but they are usually a few more dollars ($10-$20) a month, but people are bozos and sign on the dotted line.

they can only send you to collections if they have your ssn though right?

never sign up for a gym that needs your ssn. red flag.

The American personal banking experience feels so shady and insecure. Afaict companies often have the ability to pull money out of my bank account or credit card, that's just the way subscriptions work here. I just have to trust they don't abuse it.

In my home country we've had a national system for electronic invoices for ~10 years which allows you to receive invoices to your bank account. You can remove any such entry at any point in time. You also see all scheduled payments ahead of time and need to sign them before the due date, using a 2fa system that isn't tied to the bank itself. It's not perfect, and even feels a little aged today, but it's so much better than here in the US.

Same here in my country. It feels so weird that the service provider has the ability to just charge a card in the US if you enter the three things printed on the card. That would cause a lot of frauds if it happened here. Fortunately, the central bank has strict regulations here and we need to authorize a payment by using a password or an OTP.

Rather than having strict regulations to require password or OTP, the US has strict regulations that require banks to reimburse consumers for any credit card fraud.

I’ve had it happen a couple of times. It’s a minor inconvenience to switch over any subscriptions to a new card, but it has never cost me a penny.

It causes a lot of fraud in the US, too!

As far as I know, this generally doesn't work. A few years ago I attempted to cancel a gym membership, and after 15 minutes on hold on the phone I hung up and tried looking into banning a certain transaction or vendor from making another transaction. As best I could tell with my bank at the time (Bank of America), there is absolutely no mechanism to do this. The only similar thing they provide is contesting transactions, but that's only appropriate in the event of fraudulent transactions (which a recurring gym membership arguably is not).

I was able to get out of a similar situation by threatening to contest the transaction. Basically told them “alright, have fun duking it out with my credit card company” and they immediately backed down.

I'm not sure how it works with all processors, but at least many of the ones I'm familiar with have a flat fee that's assessed for each chargeback. Stripe, for example, charges a $15 dispute fee (https://stripe.com/docs/disputes). For many companies, incurring disputes is something to be avoided, and threat of one is enough to warrant bypassing many normal process that exist to stop cancellations / keep people committed.

In the US this is implemented on a per card issuer basis (i.e. Citi, Chase) and it's up to the issuer to provide the service, which most of them don't.

The only way to do it is as a chargeback but chargebacks are after the charge and come with a whole mess of pre-requirements as well as if you do it too often your provider will kick you off.

In addition, gyms in particular often make you give them your bank account instead of a credit card.

I end up paying a year in advance, cash, to avoid giving gyms anything to work with

Because then they send you to collections and your credit score suffers.

One local gym chain in my area doesn't accept credit card for monthly membership. You have to give them direct access to your bank account

EDIT: Fit4Less is southern Ontario

And does anyone give them bank account access?

I opened a new bank account just for my gym subscription. Took me about 30 seconds to do with my existing bank’s app.

I paid for 1 year membership up front 2ish years ago (this lets you lay by CC) but I'm not gonna do it again

LOL. I called my bank once to dispute a transaction and they terminated my account as it was easier to them than dealing with the support issue.

Objective failed successfully.

Once upon a time, in lands of lore, the consequent loss of prestige and credibility would have shattered that business.

Sweet were the times, when they "tried", and when customers were not forgiving.

Whilst asking your bank/CC company to block a merchant is possible, it's not a reliable way of ensuring you aren't charged by the same company again — they could make use of a different payment processor (e.g. going from Stripe to BrainTree) or merchant account, and from the bank's perspective, a different entity made a charge and the ban would not be respected.

That's not to say that asking your bank to block Merchant X isn't useful, but the bank can't guarantee that the merchant won't be able charge you again via a different payment processor/etc., and is why some banks are hesitant to offer this functionality.

That is not guaranteed to terminate your obligation to pay a vendor.

Why should it? If you have an obligation to pay for a gym membership, does the gym not deserve fair payments?

I don't disagree with you. You should argue with the comment I replied to.

I remember seeing a website here that let you create prepaid cards that you could use for things like this. I'm not sure if you were able to refill the balance on them though, but it would be convenient to be able to just let them attempt to charge an empty debit card.

https://privacy.com - I don't use them as often as I should, but they do a great job.

I use virtual cards from privacy.com for just about everything I buy online. It allows you to set limits, cancel with a click, and be anonymous by giving the vendor any name and address you want. It is a good service, but I wonder if any competing services exist.

The issue still comes in with obligation to pay. If the gym has enough info on you, they can send you to collections as some others have pointed out.

Yes, but if a social security number wasn't provided then the collection agency can't do more than call and send some letters; it won't impact a credit score or anything.

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