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.
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You can always get back money that was withdrawn from your bank account (probably a SEPA thing) and as long as payments are in dispute (you have to disagree with wrong invoices in writing) they can’t charge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.
While that’s certainly a solution that’ll work against these abusive companies, that’s technically still fraud. If they bother to come after you after not paying, you can get into trouble. I would reserve withholding payment only for companies that don’t let you cancel your subscription according to local law just in case they do take you to small claims court.
You don’t want to find out about a debt that’s been resold to various debt traders and collections agencies ten years down the line, especially once every party thst tries to claim the debt has added their own fees on top.
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
I’ve seen this in banking too. I have my health savings account with a provider that charges a percentage of your holdings as the admin fee. That can add up. My old one is a flat rate per month. I have been transferring the money every year to the flat rate provider and the process is completely arcane.
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Find the document on their site. The correct document isn’t named clearly like the document you use to pull other providers into your account.
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You have to print it and write by hand (not an editable PDF)
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Assuming you’ve done this correctly you must mail them the document, like he said, with a stamp like a fucking caveman.
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Behind the scenes the process is even more arcane, because again they claim they PHYSICALLY MAIL A CHECK to the new provider like fucking cavemen.
It’s really clear that this is in bad faith. Banking “innovation” is a joke in the US. I know that everyone hates crypto up in this bitch (I get it), but a little self custody would go a long way in situations like this.
Those HSA accounts are thinly veiled state legalized theft for political cronies. At least they are in my state.
Money goes in. Administrator determines if money goes out. Money (by law) does not roll-over from one year to the next and the administrator keeps the balance.
Just don’t use them.
Anecdote: A coworker of mine secretly had cancer. He was putting tens of thousands of dollars each year into his HSA. They denied him use for his chemo or whatever and it rolled his funds into the wood chipper. Tens of thousands of dollars.
You’re thinking of FSA
HSA is a health savings account. It doesn’t go away unless you’re using some unheard of vulture one. I had one from an old employer that I stacked up thousands in and it took me 5 years after I left to use it all
There are deposit restrictions, like you need to be on a high deductible plan
FSAs, Flexible Spending Accounts don’t have those same deposit restrictions. But you lose it after a year minus a usual $500 carryover
I find it hard to believe they denied actual chemotherapy treatments, though. They’re annoying to deal with but I’ve never once had a claim denied other than trying to buy an ankle brace at Walgreens
Even an electric toothbrush at the dentist was covered
The other commenter is comparing FSA to HSA which is right I think. I think FSAs work for some people (I never understood who though) but there’s literally no downside to an HSA. It basically can end up as another tax sheltered investment account, if you have enough money/luck to be able to pay off your healthcare costs out of pocket.
Like everything in the US, it’s amazing for people with money. Less useful for those that don’t. But at the very least it provides a buffer for the insane deductibles that US persons need to pay to keep living.
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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.
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 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.
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.
