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Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

The worst are the ones that I remember when they bill me, then when I go to look into cancelling they are somehow unable to manage a cancellation process which does not require either calling, faxing, or mailing a certified letter somewhere.

Meanwhile their signup process takes 5 seconds online.

The FTC has proposed a rule to require "Click to Cancel" for services that have "Click to signup". I hope it or something like it gets applied.

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I really hope the FTC does act on this. In the meantime, I use privacy.com to create virtual cards for each service I sign up. Canceling is then as easy as turning the card off.

Ryan Hamilton has some really funny standup about attempting to cancel a gym membership.[2]

[1] Yes, I get the irony of yet another monthly service, but it's worth it [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKJiixfa00

Seconded RE: the virtual cards -- such a game changer.

You can call you credit card company and have them cancel the payment

This doesn't work and can get you into legal or financial trouble. If you invalidate your payment method but don't actually cancel the service on their end, you still owe them money: your account is in arrears and could go to collections and then debt collectors, and wreck your credit rating.

You instruct the debt collector that the debt is disputed, the credit rating is not affected.

> You instruct the debt collector that the debt is disputed, the credit rating is not affected.

The debt collector couldn't care less if the debt is disputed. You instruct the rating agency, and then hope they see things your way. If they don't, your credit score will be affected.

I'm surprised at how often people say "just block payment and dispute the charges". Do people really believe getting out of a debt is as simple as saying "trust me bro, I don't owe them anything"?

For Americans with otherwise good credit, it often is!

You don't know what you're talking about. If you dispute the debt, unless they verify it, they are not allowed to report it to the rating agency.

I do actually, because I've been through the process of disputing a debt before. All the creditor has to do to verify the debt is to show their records to the reporting agency, i.e., their justification for charging you. It's not like the agency has a team of detectives that are going to stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the issue. If it looks legit, then for their purposes it is.

I've had a completely illegitimate debt "verified" simply because they were able to show a paper trail saying I owed it according to their own internal rules, none of which were written in anything I signed or agreed to. It probably didn't help that it was a government office (DoD), but their idiotic "that's just how it is" justification was good enough for the reporting agency. Years later after an audit they admitted their mistake and refunded me, although they never refunded the late fees they charged me for a debt that they now acknowledge I never owed in the first place.

If you pull the braindead maneuver of not cancelling a service before cutting off payment, they're going to have no problem coming up with the records they need. Is it fucked up that they can deliberately make it difficult to cancel? Yes. But that doesn't mean it won't cost you points on your credit score. That's why there's a demand for a "click to cancel" law.

My CC company has been happy to handle this for me. A gym in a country I no longer reside in ignored all attempts to reach them to cancel a renewing, but non-contract, gym membership. The CC did a charge back and stopped future charges. Took a few minutes on the phone.

Additionally, I've taken to using my providers throwaway card generator to make site-specific ones that I can then one-click disable whenever I feel like it.

Granted, they only have this exposed through a fairly buggy browser extension, you can't just "do it" easily on the website, so I won't bother giving them the free marketing of mentioning them.

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