Scott On Money

It is clear that companies are making it very hard to cancel. From AOL to cell phones, gym memberships to online subscriptions many companies have made canceling subscription excessively difficult.

MSN Money has an article giving some tips on canceling service you o longer want or need.

The tips range from waiting patiently on hold to dieing. Yes, they said dieing and yes I it seemed a bit excessive to me too.

One tip that they didn’t mention is to use your credit card as leverage. On some occasions where I encountered unhelpful customer service I politely let them no that they are no longer authorized to charge my account. I let them know I’ll be following up with a letter and that if they charge the card again I’ll report it to the credit card’s security department. I’ve never had to pursue the issue any further once I expressed this.

I don’t know how the credit card company would actually react. I do know that on a few occasions when I’ve seen charges that I didn’t remember making the credit card companies have been very concerned with the charges being legitimate.

Companies should realize that this may give them some small, short lived benefit but in the long run making cancellations excessively difficult alienates customers and drives away business.