In Europe, we have debit cards and some banks allow you to create them on the go. I’ve stopped bothering canceling stuff, I just create a new card for each recurrent payment and I cancel it when I don’t want to use the service any longer.
What Service do you use? I’d like to do the same, because it’s not always clear by the charge on my statement who I’m paying. I would imaging having named CCs, like email aliases, would help me keep an eye on things.
I use the Revolut free tier. And I only wire on my revolut account the amounts I want to be paying (my usual bank has free instant wire tranfers) so I don’t have any bad surprise.
They also offer single-use/disposable virtual cards, which I’ve used on websites that I didn’t trust fully (Steam keys grey market), these are automatically cancelled after one use.
I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising this brand though: they’ve been a pain during the registration process (I’ve had to take selfies and videos of myself), they seem to be a shitty employer and to have bad customer support service, see the wikipedia page for more details.
It should be as implement any “recurrent payment” as a banking procedure. Viewable in their apps or in the office. And being able to just cancel them at any time with your bank.
App or website? They’re talking about rolling their own code to interface with the public API of whatever service is being talked about. That’s a boatload of effort to fix something that shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
I mentioned rolling my own code because we weren’t yet discussing the average user. Iff the time has come to make it easy for the average user, then I’d want to create an app or website instead.
Which would in turn require revenue for hosting and development. Meaning either ads, or monthly payments.
I’d rather not pay you for a service which shouldn’t need to exist. And it could be done away with by requiring an easy “cancel subscription” button which requires no hoops to go through.
All subscriptions should automatically cancel if you stop paying.
That’s a bit circular though because they just keep billing your credit card.
In Europe, we have debit cards and some banks allow you to create them on the go. I’ve stopped bothering canceling stuff, I just create a new card for each recurrent payment and I cancel it when I don’t want to use the service any longer.
What Service do you use? I’d like to do the same, because it’s not always clear by the charge on my statement who I’m paying. I would imaging having named CCs, like email aliases, would help me keep an eye on things.
I use the Revolut free tier. And I only wire on my revolut account the amounts I want to be paying (my usual bank has free instant wire tranfers) so I don’t have any bad surprise.
They also offer single-use/disposable virtual cards, which I’ve used on websites that I didn’t trust fully (Steam keys grey market), these are automatically cancelled after one use.
I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising this brand though: they’ve been a pain during the registration process (I’ve had to take selfies and videos of myself), they seem to be a shitty employer and to have bad customer support service, see the wikipedia page for more details.
i user privacy.com. it hits my account with unique names per card. so easy to line up.
That sucks. I’d rather just pay it manually every month, or with a script running on my end.
That sounds fun and convenient to manage for the average person…
/s
our fanatical obsession with convenience (and corporations exploiting that) is what created this mess.
Autopay is so expected now that many subscriptions simply don’t offer options to pay per month.
It should be as implement any “recurrent payment” as a banking procedure. Viewable in their apps or in the office. And being able to just cancel them at any time with your bank.
“Having to use this app or website is too hard. It would be more fun and convenient to jump through whatever hoops the gym decides.”
App or website? They’re talking about rolling their own code to interface with the public API of whatever service is being talked about. That’s a boatload of effort to fix something that shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
I mentioned rolling my own code because we weren’t yet discussing the average user. Iff the time has come to make it easy for the average user, then I’d want to create an app or website instead.
Which would in turn require revenue for hosting and development. Meaning either ads, or monthly payments.
I’d rather not pay you for a service which shouldn’t need to exist. And it could be done away with by requiring an easy “cancel subscription” button which requires no hoops to go through.