The Five Stages of Free-Trial-Cancellation Grief
Or, how to process an unsatisfied customer
So you’ve tried to cancel your free trial of our online service. A month ago, you gave us your credit card information, but now—against our hopes, plans and dreams—you remembered to come back and nix it.
We work hard for your loyalty, or at least your money, when you inevitably, accidentally forget that you’ve paid us, so this sudden change has obviously taken us by surprise. You gamed the system — you knew you were never going to commit to a full year; you just wanted the free month. We are grieving the loss of you and, more importantly, your credit card security code.
Now, like the all other companies—solidarity—that follow this scam, we now must begin the five stages of free-trial-cancellation grief.
#1: Denial
You think you want to cancel your free trial, but you really don’t. Come on—we had only one month together! Fill out this quick questionnaire before you go, and we’ll be sure to change your mind. Then fill out another questionnaire. Then another. Then try—just try—to find the link to cancel. Hint: it’s in white font against a white background at the bottom of the page.
We don’t plaster our site with promises of a free month just to be turned down on month 2 by a shithead like you.
You could also attempt to call the customer-service line, but it’s been disconnected. If you persevere long enough, you’ll learn that you need to fill out the invisible form and wait 72 hours and/or days before hearing back from us. You’re not going anywhere, sucker. Expect to be automatically renewed for the whole year.
#2: Anger
We don’t plaster our site with promises of a free month just to be turned down on month 2 by a shithead like you. And it was an especially long month. You know, a lot of services cap one month at 30 days, but not us. Not us. We’re not like other services. We gave you 31 days. We’re one day better. And $8,990 more expensive.
You knew what you were doing. You knew you were taking advantage of us. Seriously, what kind of unreasonable standards do you have for your free services? Our venture capitalists didn’t give us $2 million in funding because we were made by white male Stanford dropouts just to watch you walk away the moment we crashed your hard drive for the third time. I bet you’re going to come running back with a new email address, but joke’s on you — our black-ops team will detect that! Eh, at least they say they will.
Come on—we were good together. You used me 3 out of 31 days. That’s a slightly above-average rate.
#3: Bargaining
OK, OK. Would you change your mind if we gave you another free month? Maybe you’ll forget to cancel next time. Or would it help if some random number of points were added to your account? Or if we have flowers delivered to your house (for an additional $30 per minute—read the fine print)?
Come on—we were good together. You used me 3 out of 31 days. That’s a slightly above-average rate. Terry used us for only two days, and he still thought it was worth it to sign on for the whole year after we altered our terms and conditions so that he was forced to. We can be whatever you want us to be. Seriously. We’re considering pivoting to an entirely different type of service, maybe dog walking. Or vegan yogurt. Would that work for you? Please, babe. Please stay. We’ll do literally anything short of making this service remotely affordable or useful.
#4: Depression
What hurts the most is that you didn’t even give us a reason. You clicked out of the page before you could tell us why. You could have just given a bullshit reason like “other,” but no, you just ghosted, like 89 percent of other patrons. So now we’ll assume the reason is that you hate us because of who we are, deep down, at the core of our processor.
Or was it another service this whole time? Facebook will never love you like I do. They’re selling your data. I mean, we would too if we had enough customers to have valuable data, but we don’t, and that’s what matters. Not even knowing that after all these steps, you’ll still pay for the whole year because of a loophole in our terms and conditions can ease this loneliness.
#5: Acceptance
I understand. Google does provide this service for free.
Bonus Stage: Revenge
You canceled past midnight Eastern time on the 8th of the month, so we had to charge you for the whole year. Don’t worry—it’s only $9,600.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Hunter Walk, investor and former head of product at YouTube. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
