Ok, so this is probably going to read as really unfair and harsh, but the following story seems to me to be a simple case of 2 things, financial mismanagement and probably having far too much money that one can’t be bothered to notice the same monthly payment going out for years:
I mean, come on! Who the blazes never bothers to check their credit card statements for pities sakes!
I know exactly the state of my own finances at all times. This story is just absurd. I agree entirely with the company involved that it is a customer responsibility to check their financial commitments. Sad thing is though, you just know that there are probably 1000’s who just don’t look at their finances and then when it all goes up poo creek, it isn’t their fault, it’s some other beggers!
I check my credit card statements thoroughly, and their apps probably too regularly, however, it also means I always know the exact state of my finances.
Some expect banks and apps to do everything for them though
Eh, I don’t agree with subscriptions having a decade mandate to charge you unless you get hard looking at statement designs. Israel actually has good policy on this, subscriptions can go up to a year, but resubscribing for an extra year requires affirmation you want to continue the subscription. None? Auto cancellation. Yes, to an extent a customer should be liable, but there should be some form of consumer protection if people aren’t using subscriptions at all. They could be spending that money elsewhere.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. This is literally entirely on the customer. I don’t buy the carp they didn’t know they were signing up to a subscription service. I subscribe to a well known VPN and that makes it perfectly clear it’s on auto renew at the end of two years. After paying for the service, I immediately go back into the account and cancel auto renew, it isn’t difficult.
Sadly, far too many people bleating and moaning over something they were entirely responsible for. Not checking your credit card statements is downright pathetic and then blaming and shaming the company you signed up to, is just poor and a deflection from their own financial ineptitude.
it’s on the customer the business made money for doing nothing, that doesn’t mean the business is right to take the money. everything is a subscription these days and rarely anything is “let me top-up for a month” or some other fixed subscription.
the fact it’s like this means someone will end up letting it slip through. you say it isn’t difficult, but you also grew up in the easiest age of modern history (after the children working in factories, before rent became 50% of net income), with finance largely being limited to what you had in cash in your wallet (when you were young). not everyone has the same experiences in life and lambasting someone for that is pointless. consumer protection laws exist for a reason and lifetime payment intents/autorenewing contracts (for consumers, not businesses) were and are a retarded concept.
Interesting that you think lambasting someone for financial ineptitude when they apparently had the wherewithal to apply for and were obviously accepted for a credit card in the first place. Then, for reasons known entirely unto themselves, they apparently, neglected to check their credit card statements for almost 7 years!
You then go on to blame folks of my generation, whatever you think that is, for the failures of today’s generation and any associated financial ineptitude that they may have heaped upon themselves.
I’d like to point out, that as a child born in the late 1960’s and growing up in the 1970’s, it was truly a bloody dark period in history. Incompetent Governments (much like today), horrific interest rates, mass unemployment, the 3 day week and to top it off, I had to go to school with lard on my sandwiches. I left school when there was still mass unemployment but I got on my bike and got a job and remained employed for over 40 years.
So you’ll forgive me if I truly believe that folks today have it much better than I did growing up and starting out
Looking at the wrong parts of your life. Your school days, undoubtedly tough. Earliest parts of your career. But, the 80s/90s? My grandmother and grandfather are(/were, respectively) also 60s children. Their first house cost in the single thousands, they could afford to go to America twice a year in a single income household.
We have it better? People can’t survive. The situation is so bad 25% of young people are looking at leaving the country and 50% have considered it, iirc. To even have a chance of a job that pays decently you need a degree, which iirc was free until we were growing up, although it wasn’t needed when you were young to find a decent job.
People always look at it from the perspective of their childhood, rather than their outcomes. You will have a pension funded by working people, while the population shrinks (so we won’t get a pension, unless we’re very lucky), spending the money we could use to save on supporting your right to not work.
Well you’ve now completely and conveniently deflected the topic of discussion to effectively attack me and those like me by claiming I’ve had it easy. Seriously, you know nothing about the struggle I personally had. I had to move hundreds of miles from my family and from where I grew up just to be able to afford to get on the housing ladder at the start of this century. Back in the 20th century, I couldn’t even get anywhere near being able to afford to buy property.
But back to the topic, you can blame companies all you like regarding the dark side of subscription practices but ultimately it’s down to the customer to realise just what it is they’re signing up to. The individual in this case needs to accept that they should own their personal financial failure.
The sad fact is, people sign up for stuff, that includes mortgages, insurance, subscriptions and goodness knows what else, and they don’t read anything and then when it goes wrong, it isn’t their fault. I have zero sympathy in this case.
I couldn’t find a place to move to that I could do that (part of my motivation for leaving the UK). Jobs in my industry are all concentrated in the South (excl Mancs and Birmingham maybe) but I don’t have anyone I could stay with, like most people, for the amount of time I’d need to think about buying a house (esp outside of my hometown).
For the record, it wasn’t meant to be an attack, you went into your life circumstances so I had to mention them. Nevertheless, it felt like one reading after the fact and I’m sorry about that.
The fact you use that it’s a dark practice indicates that it needs fixing. You could argue the same with the GDPR, it’s actually our responsibility to read contracts in entirety to see who is being sold our data, but the government recognised actually that the reality sucks and needs changing. Payment intents around subscriptions being forever are similar in nature.
We can fix it. Israel has. Mortgages are different, in that you have an associated asset with the loan secured against it, that needs to last until repaid. Your general one year subscription? It could just die. Insurances too, to be honest. One email asking if you’d like to reconfirm to please login to your account seems normal.
Is it their fault? Yes. Is it entirely their fault? No, the company is partly to blame from allowing it to happen and the government is partly to blame for not stealing good policy from elsewhere.
