A not-so-online universe, a not-so-digital subscription
Yes, I am just some gen-whatever mumbling about meaningless stuff, and this is just a passive-agressive rant. But I still can smell bits of unfairness, terrible user experience, or unmeasured douchbagness in these two cases you’re about to read. Anyway, here we go.
For years — more than 10, I’m afraid – I subscribed to two services whose nature was primarily online, digital. One was Universo Online, the biggest Brazilian digital content portals. It’s in the top 5 of Alexa ranking for Brazil, together with Google, Facebook and YouTube – being the only truly Brazilian company among them. I used to pay to have access to protected contents, available only for subscribers. The other one was a subscription to the Wall Street Journal called “Digital WSJ.” Like the first one, it allowed me to read content available only for subscribers.
If you haven’t noticed yet, one service has online in its name, the other one has digital. When I decided to subscribe to both of them I followed a smooth and seamless sequence of clicks, filled in my credit card information and… voilà, I had access to tons of contents that only subscribers could read.
That was a piece of cake. With the internet and other technologies from the last century it was easy to subscribe to these services any day of the week, any time.
Unsubscribe: Nineteenth-Century Technology (for security purposes, obviously)
Recently, because of reasons, I decided I didn’t want to read these contents anymore. It was time to cancel these subscriptions. I accessed my accounts and, after going every possible menu, I couldn’t find any link or button like “cancel my account.” After examining every possible screen, I decided to email their support. And so I did.
Then I got surprised. Twice. Both replies were bascially saying that I had to call to a landline to cancel the subscription. In a free translation (from Brazilian Portuguese) that is what Universo Online told me:
If you want to cancel your subscription we kindly ask you to call to our Costumer Support central using the phone numbers below. Our working hours are from Monday to Saturday, from 9:00am to 9:30pm.
And that was what I got from Dow Jones, the company behind the other subscription:
For security purposes, please call 1–800-JOURNAL to cancel your account by phone. Our hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 7 am — 10 PM ET; Saturday 7 am — 3 PM ET.
I even wasted my time trying to argue with Dow Jones:
— Do I have to call to a landline to cancel a digital subscription?
— We are unable to process cancellations via email, per the subscriber agreement. For security purposes, please call…
I might be too naïve, but I ended up imagining what kind of security one has in mind when you can start giving them money with a few clicks, but you are required to make a formal phone call in order to stop giving them money. Anyway…
Negotiation
I already wanted to cancel those subscriptions, and I started to want it so bad once I realized that I needed to call to telephone central to accomplish that. So I went to the old-fashion style to do it — probably the way my grandpa unsubscribed to printed newspaper a couple of decades ago. I made a telephone call to them.
In both cases they asked why I was canceling the subscription, to what I promptly replied: “Beacause I think it is ridiculous to be asked to call to a landline to cancel a online digital service, one I subscribed with a few clicks.”
Maybe that argument wasn’t in the protocol of the people taking my call. They vacillated to reply for a while. But sooner or later Universo Online and Dow Jones tried to pet me: “You’ve been with us for such a long time, we value you as a costumer, so what about a big discount in the subscription for the next few months or years?”
I reinforced firmly: “The only way you can convice me to stay is putting a simple link ‘Cancel my subscription’ in my account page — can you do that?” Surely the answer was a veiled “no” — to what I added: “So stop wasting your time, and my time, and please cancel this subscription I have with this archaic company.” And so they did.
Unfairness, Terrible User Experience… or Douchbagness?
Ok, so why did I say that I could smell bits of unfairness there? Because, obviously, the process seems to be designed to be a trap — and traps are not designed to be fair: it’s extremely easy to fall into the trap (just a few clicks, any day, any time), but there are layers of difficult added when you try to get rid of the trap (phone call, specific days, specific hours, negotiate with the salesperson on the line). Consequently, if it’s a trap, it’s a terrible user experience.
But what about douchbagness? Of course I’m not naïve to the point of believing that this was an accident. The strategy underneath this policy is clear:
- If you make it difficult for costumers to cancel the subscription, it’s reasonable to believe that less costumers would cancel the subscription.
- If even though they try to cancel, and if then you force them to talk to a salesperson who is trained to try to keep them (trained and empowerd to offer discounts, perks etc.); it’s reasonable to believe that less costumers would actually cancel the subscription.
If you can sell your stuff cheaper, just do it. If you don’t, and if you employ this policy, it’s just a matter of time: costumers will start to use your police strategically to get discounts (for instance, in Brazil it’s common to see people calling to cable and internet providers asking to cancel their servcies only to get special offers). At the end of the day you might have more clients, but your reputation resembles a Dick Dastardly, with whom your costumers have to play tricks to get what they want.
If you’re interested in knowing why your costumers are leaving you, ask them. This is simple. Ask. And, surely, listem too them. Don’t prevent them from leaving. Show them they are free to come and go at anytime, but you are still interested in their opinion. If that’s the case offer them something they want once they left and they might come back, but surely your reputation doesn’t resemble Dick Dastardly anymore. (For instance, a couple of days after deleting my Songkick account — with a few clicks — I received a nice email asking why I was leaving them, and then I had a good chat with someone from their team.)
At the core of the problem is the fact that those experience are skewed towards the corporation side. They are not user-cantered, they are shamelessly profit-cantered and shamelessly looking at costumers as a herd of impotent imbeciles. And that, in the twenty-first-century, is a typical trace of douchbagness.
A version of my Universo-Online-subscription-cancellation tale was published in 2012, in Brazilian Portuguese with a bit more of details and sarcasm.
As you probably noticed by yourself, I’m not a native English speaker. So, I’m really sorry for all the little crimes I may have committed with your beloved language. I’d be really glad if you could point them out, so I can fix, learn and try to avoid them next time.