My business partner and I have started an additional business. It’s a sort of line extension onto what we already do. Because this new venture is a pretty simple formation, and we’re never going to market or sell anything under this name, we did it ourselves through an online company.

But here’s the thing. When we signed up for this LLC formation, the online service defaults you to an annual package that’s an additional $279. We don’t want this extra business/compliance package and don’t need it — we have attorneys and a CPA firm, and are quite used to running a business, thank you — but there was no way I could find not to buy it. So, in buying the services that we did need, we wound up opting in against our wishes for the “free trial” secured by my credit card.

They then emailed me to say that we have just 30 days to cancel, after which if we don’t, they will automatically bill us (ongoing) for that annual subscription.

So I calendared it to cancel it.

Tonight, I logged into the service to cancel the subscription that we don’t want and don’t need, and followed the instructions to cancel. When I hit the cancel button, I got a popup that says cancelation must be by phone.

So I called the number. The number tells me that I have to call during normal business hours.

Think this is on purpose? I do. How many more roadblocks can they set up?

And I’m sure when I call they will try everything to keep me from canceling.

This sort of thing should be ILLEGAL. It’s right up there with calling elderly people and duping them into “charitable” donations they don’t understand and can’t afford.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2014 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.