Hvassing.com

I like to think that 37Signals are a couple of guys who've understood the essence of how to do business and how to make stuff that just works. These guys practically (and literally) wrote the book on how to make a product and service user-centric and customer-centric. They even wrote a book on how they had achieved what they have, so that others could follow their lead. I know of a company that should read that book - and one chapter in particular.

In chapter 12, "Easy On, Easy Off", in their book "Getting Real" one can read the following:

Make signup and cancellation a painless process
Make it as easy as possible to get in -- and get out -- of your app.

[...]

You never want to "trap" people inside your product. While we're sorry when people decide to cancel their Basecamp account, we never make that process intimidating or confusing. "Cancel my account" is a link that's clear as day on a person's account page. There shouldn't be any email to send, special form to fill out, or questions to answer. ¹

In short; if the customer wants to cancel his or her subscription for whatever reason, they should be able to do so without any hassle. Sounds pretty fair and square to me. How come there are some people who then who apparently thinks it's a good idea to trap their customers in the big company spider web, making it difficult to cancel a subscription.

Back in 2005 I bought a domain and a web service from B-One, a well-known and cheap web host. The plan was to use the domain for a student driven newsletter, powered by a WordPress blog to make it easy to publish news on the fly. Initially, we wanted a different content management system which B-One wasn't capable of powering, but that's a different story. Due to a whole variety of circumstances, the newsletter was closed after a year; we no longer needed the domain or the web service provided by B-One.

Come summer of 2006, I got an invoice from B-One for the domain and hosting plan. I wrote an e-mail (in Norwegian) explaining how we no longer needed the domain and hosting service as the project had ended and I no longer had anything to do with the school. The following day, they reply (in Danish):

If you wish to cancel your service with us, you are requested to send us a confirmation, in writing, 45 days in advance of termination (if you fail to do so, you'll have to pay for a full year). Cancellation can only be done in writing and should contain the following information: domain name, order number, name and address, as well as the owners signature.²

Needless to say, but I was quite baffled by this reply, not quite understanding what the problem was. I no longer needed nor wanted the service I bought a year ago and wanted to cancel my subscription so that I wouldn't have to pay for yet another year. Long story short; I ended up paying for yet another year of total inactivity.

Ever since, I've been thinking about getting around to write a short statement canceling my subscription, signing it and fax it to B-One (who has a fax anyway?). Mid February I finally got around doing it. However, it turns out that the fax-number that's posted on their homepage doesn't work. I tried three-four times. No dice. So I go on a treasure-hunt in my apartment to find my old flat bed scanner; I search high and low on the internet after a Mac OS X-driver for it, which turns out to be a Mac OS 9 plugin for Adobe Photoshop - but it works; I scan a neatly written document with the aforementioned information and my signature; save it as a PDF and uploads it to One.com's (former B-One) contact form with a short text stating that I would like to cancel my subscription with them.

This is what happened next:

1. Submit cancellation at One.com
2. I receive an e-mail with a confirmation link in
3. Fill in e-mail and password (which I had to dig up from an old e-mail)
4. Receive confirmation that my cancellation has been recorded

Finally! I thought, but no...

We have received your notice of cancellation of your web space for
domain istezine.com.

Your web space will be terminated on 8/16/07.³

The web space won't be terminated for yet another six months, but this time I'm just happy it'll happen.

Now, I wonder; what's so difficult with making my web space disappear that it'll take six months? Why make your customers go through all this hassle only to cancel their subscription?

¹37 Signals. "Easy On, Easy Off." Getting Real. 25 Oct 2006. 37 Signals, 22 Mar 2007 <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch12_Easy_On_Easy_Off.php>.

²My translation, the reply is shortened from its original form.

³Again my translation and shortened from its original form.