Monday, September 5, 2016

My Beef for Labor Day

I don't use Skype although I have nothing against it. I had to use it once in August for a client and somehow set up a monthly recurring charge... so I paid in August, then got the notice that I was charged in September and wanted to put a stop to it. I had just read in Money how much people lose a year by having recurring payments for stuff they don't use. I'm pretty good at it, even though I did have to pay a second monthly charge of $6.95 this time for Skype.

So I go to Skype to cancel the subscription/recurring payment and it's like finding a needle in a haystack. I've had this problem before on other sites. Somehow, years ago, I had an electronic sub to the Wall St Journal and then when I went to cancel, you couldn't unless you did it in WRITING VIA SMAIL MAIL.

I hunt and hunt, and finally figure out that I have to go to Paypal to cancel (since that's how I was paying)... another big hunt, but I finally did it. What should have taken me 90 seconds ended up ... really... I'd say 20 minutes. Pisses me off. I honestly believe that they want you to just give up which I was tempted to do -- told myself I could come back later and figure it out, but I'm glad I stuck it out.

2 comments:

Barbara said...

It may originally have been in PayPal that you inadvertently set up a recurring payment without realizing it. For certain non-ebay things, I think when you pay with PayPal a box shows up by default checked for recurring payment, and you have to realize that and UNcheck it before you click to pay. This happened to me a while ago with a web subscription that I was shocked that it automatically renewed after 1 year. I was able to get them to give me a refund, but then another 1 year later it happened again -- and only then did I realize that it was not them taking the money, it was PayPal paying them automatically and the only way to stop it was to cancel it in PayPal.

Pat said...

You (I) really have to watch the fine print. I did get an email from PayPal confirming the canellation. I think, honestly, these things are purposely set up to get money out of us.