It's called customer retention.I subscribe to Washington Post. In previous years, I received an email prior to the renewal date stating renewal is coming up. I would go and clicked cancel, they would offer me a discounted price, and I would accept. This year there was no such warning. Yesterday I received an alert from my credit card stating that there was a $120 charge from Washington Post. I logged on and see that renewal date was indeed yesterday. Since Washington Post is not worth $120 to me, I was going to cancel and hope to get a prorated refund. Upon searching on the web, I realized that there is no prorated refund and the subscription would end in a year. Since I was upset about it, I went in to the account and clicked cancel. Then they gave me the offer that if I do not cancel, I will get at $70 refund. So the net cost would be $50, which is a price that I am willing to pay. So I accepted the offer. (I was hoping for under $40.)
My question is why would they offer the refund. I could only think of 2 possibilities.
1) They are thinking long term and do not want to lose a customer.
2) There is a law stating that a subscription can be cancelled within x number of days. I thought about https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/cooling-off_rule but it does not apply to sale that are made entirely online.
What do you think?. This is actionable as I would like to learn more about this for future subscription renewal.
Edit: I should check my state to see whether any state law applies.
You can do this with your cell phone, internet, cable tv, etc. etc.
They all want to keep your monthly payment coming in and will throw their best deal at you to do it.
Statistics: Posted by retireIn2020 — Thu Jun 27, 2024 12:35 am — Replies 7 — Views 752