I’m heading off on a Discount Safari

This morning I checked when my annual zoom pro subscription was due to renew.

It’s was renewing at the end of august for $149 a year.

For some inexplicable reason, I clicked cancel … just to see what would happen.

What happened was a offer to renew (for another year) at 40% off.

For $89.

Free money!

I don’t normally offer cost saving tips, and …
you might get different mileage, and …
Zoom isn’t the only business that offers big discounts when you click cancel, so …
why not go exploring.

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great to know.

I was facing the opposite end of the experience. I tried to cancel subscription on Mylio.com but it would not let me, turned out that I am not the only one

we probably should have a post/discussion on services from companies, developers, etc. How professional, responsive, etc

OK, here’s one: To cancel a subscription to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal you have to call them on the phone.

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yes, I hate that companies make it difficult to cancel the subscription or services.

However, I do not want to hijack the great point raised by @Clarke_Ching . If there are more discussions on services, I may start a separate post.

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As a business owner, I get it. It’s always less expensive to keep an existing customer than to find a new one.

As a consumer though, this makes me angry. Like, if I could be paying $89/year, why was I paying $149?! It makes me feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

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Thanks for the reminder to do this! Got 2 free months of Creative Cloud. Feels good.

Edit: I also saved 5% off Zoom for the next 6 months. This is great!

Edit edit: to my knowledge, this doesn’t seem to work for 1Password. I also didn’t try it for any of my servers or anything else other folks might rely on.

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On this topic, it might be worth to check out the subscriptions on the App-Store!
Often there are different subscriptions listed for the same on what you get, but with different prices. I tried to just click on the lower priced subscriptions, and get that in all cases I tried, incl. a refund for the higher price on the remaining on the open runtime of the current subscription!

It’s the same with The Times in the UK - blatant anti-churn chicanery.

There is a tip to avoid it, though: if you subscribe to the digital via the App Store, you can cancel your subscription in the same was as any Apple subscription, by clicking a butto. Much less frustrating.

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I canceled Evernote about a month ago, and I believe I saw a big discount thrown at me while I was on the way out. As I was very intentionally canceling after a several months long journey of migrating out of the platform, I didn’t pay any attention to what the discount was.

Same with xfinity. Their website gives the appearance that you can change your plan, but always errors. I personally think it’s extra friction to derail you from reducing service. Similar to insurance companies that introduce friction in the hopes you’ll give up and let them keep more money.

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I have a Sirius-XM subscription and every year we do the same dance.

I get a renewal notice that is at full price. This year it was US $ 250 for a year. I call, “I want to keep my current rate”. They answer, “ok, let me set that up for you.” End result, US $ 90 for the year. I don’t even have to threaten to cancel.

A 15 minute phone call saves me over ten dollars a minute. Not bad.

Still annoying though.

I rode that same train for a while (and it was the subscription with the crosswords, which I enjoyed), but then called one time to do the usual and they said “oh, you want to cancel? No problem. Done.” And that was the end of that :cry:. I know I could redo it but now just do NYT through my library if I need it.

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Just a reminder in case some of you did not know… if you live in California every service that allows you to sign up via their website must also allow you to stop the subscription on their website.

Obviously this would not apply to everything (like maybe xfinity) but works well with news (like New York Times and Wall Street Journal mentioned above). Simply change your billing address to one in California – 1 Infinite Loop works – and a cancel or unsubscribe button normally appears. This even worked for me to unsubscribe from a UK newspaper online subscription.

Saves you from those horrible retention phone calls.
Hope it helps.

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BTW: The same applies (now) to Europe.

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Charter/Spectrum won’t even let you look at new services online as an existing customer. You have to call. Total BS.

I cancelled Evernote. I got a bunch of emails saying the missed me, wanted me back, and offering me discounts. I ignored them all.
They continued billing me as if I never cancelled. Nice business model.