- cross-posted to:
- fucksubscriptions@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fucksubscriptions@lemmy.world
Rossman is on form. A delightful rant about his experiences with gyms. And his promotion of privacy.com and their virtual credit card numbers that he can cancel remotely.
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I’ve used privacy for a while now. I became devoted when a card I used at an independant business started being used to pay phone bills in new jersey; privacy auto blocked it. Since then, i’ve used it to kill subscriptions I don’t want by changing to a privacy card and setting the limit to zero. Its good stuff.
The old short term profits vs long term reputation play. I appreciate streaming services that easily let me cancel or pause my subscription, it makes me much more likely to remain loyal in the sense that I will come back to them in the future.
I haven’t seen it but what I often do is that I create a virtual credit card with only the amount needed - my bank makes that possible - and then they just can’t get any more money and more often than not just give up. I try to cancel but sometimes it’s impossible.
I like this idea too, but in some countries if you don’t pay something, the company can add you to a nationwide “blacklist” that will give you a lot of headaches later. For instance, trying to get a loan from a bank, or insurance for something. There’s a good chance those will be denied if you are on that list.
I had a subscription with special pricing to my local paper. After the introductory period was over, they raised the price from like $5 a month to $22. I didn’t want to pay that much so I went to cancel but they do one of those, sorry, you can only cancel by calling us and listening to us plead with you to keep your subscription. I ended up just changing my card to a virtual one with a penny on it and after a thousand phone calls and mailers and a few months they finally auto cancelled my subscription. In this scenario, you’d still be pegged with a negative remark where you’re from?
Well i’m from Germany. You can’t just stop paying and they can’t force you to listen to their pleas.
A simple informal email is enough to cancel most anything.
You can always get back money that was withdrawn from your bank account (probably a SEPA thing) and as long as payments are in dispute (you have to disagree with wrong invoices in writing) they can’t charge you extra.
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I’ve tried to do that a few times but it’s a royal pain in the ass. If you don’t mind, which banks/credit cards make that easy?
I use privacy. It works and is easy enough to use. I didn’t know banks supported it though, mine doesn’t.
It’s not super easy, but at least possible in my Swedish https://www.varbergssparbank.se/
This exactly yes
Idk, I’d assume if I just delete the credit card and they can’t charge it, they’ll just keep sending me bills with increasingly insane late fees, effectively putting me in huge debt over time
In my experience this is exactly what happens. I had a subscription on a checking account at a local credit union. When I moved, I closed all my bank accounts there. Eventually I had late notices forwarded to my new address in another state. Companies should close the subscription when this happens. They apparently aren’t required to.
I wonder if he is aware of the long history of using a black cat logo for similar kinds of direct action? Seems almost too much of a coincidence with the way his “Clinton the cat” logo looks like.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=XdQHuLHBP6g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
I loved Privacy .com . Used it for all my online purchases before I got a credit card, and they had my back when I submitted a chargeback against a merchant that turned out to be fraudulent.
I stopped using it 2 months ago, as I got hit with KYC and now need to submit my SSN to them to unpause my account. I asked them why, letting them know that I’ve never caused them any trouble, using it only for things like streaming subscriptions and movie ticket purchases. This is what they had to say:
Due to changes in our compliance obligations, we’ve had to add SSN to our list of required information necessary to use our service. As with the rest of your signup info, none of this is shared with the merchants and services you use Privacy Cards for.
The change isn’t driven by anything specific to your account but an across-the-board policy change to ensure we’re keeping up with best industry practices.
The information is fully encrypted and not visible on your Privacy profile. In the unlikely event that an unknown party accesses your Privacy Account or our system, they won’t be able to obtain it.
My credit card has a similar virtual credit card (VCC) service, so I switched to using that. Giving them my SSN is unavoidable, so I might as well use their service and earn some points.
Since we’re on !privacy@lemmy.ml, thought it would also be a good heads-up letting everyone know that they use Plaid for linking your bank account to your Privacy account. Plaid settled for $58 million in a suit that alleged they (1) obtained more financial data than was needed by a user’s app, and (2) obtained log-in credentials (username and password) through its user interface, known as “Plaid Link,” which had the look and feel of the user’s own bank account login screen, when users were actually providing their login credentials directly to Plaid.
I got $35 from it.
My non-professional opinion: I don’t see anything wrong with them. I like their service, I just don’t want to give my SSN to yet another company, if I can avoid it.
Interestingly, I can’t get to privacy.com while on Proton VPN.
If you use cash, crypto or goldbacks (goldbacks are not popular however) each payment is one time. Another reason why cash, crypto and the goldback are based.
