Not the post you were expecting. Not if you follow my Facebook profile, anyway. But it's time again. Time for a little exchange of blows with an American software manufacturer. Can't be bothered to look it up. Suppose they're Americans. Stereotypical.
The back story is quickly told. A year ago, I bought a bundle of software for my blog from Smash Balloon. As I was no longer using the software, I cancelled the subscription. Or so I thought. Now I've been proved wrong. The following message landed somewhat unexpectedly in my digital mailbox.
Patrick Ruppelt,
Your Smash Balloon subscription renewal payment for Custom Facebook Feed WordPress Plugin Personal failed to process. This means that you are unfortunately no longer receiving critical plugin updates that protect you against future social media platform changes, or able to receive technical support.
You can update your payment details and renew your subscription by visiting the "Auto-Renewal Subscriptions" section of your Smash Balloon account.
If you have any questions or issues at all, just reply to this email and we can help!
John Brackett
Founder, Smash Balloon
Oh well. It takes less than an hour and the next message follows.
Hi there,
We're having trouble processing your most recent payment. Would you mind taking a second to update the card we have on file?
Here's a link to update your billing info:
Update Your Card NowThanks!
John
Smash Balloon
I already feel a bit penetrated. But it doesn't help. So I go to see what went wrong with my cancellation. Nothing. But... As it turns out, Smash Balloon allows you to conveniently subscribe to many products as a one-click bundle, but you have to cancel each individual product separately. Otherwise you can continue to pay for the individual products and they cost more individually than they all cost together. A clear case of being ripped off.
The cancellation procedure is so absurdly misleading and cumbersome that one wonders where consumer protection is. Well, probably not responsible. International trade and all that.
Because it's so incredibly stupid that it's funny again, I'm going to take you through the most ridiculous cancellation process I've ever seen. Maybe something like this has happened to you before and you've doubted yourself. I'm certainly not the only one who gets on your nerves or ovaries or whatever.
The registration
I love self-promotion. Today, when I took the screenshot, it is (unfortunately) unusually quiet. Last time I was overwhelmed by "Win a MacBook" and didn't see it. I didn't even get to the password field.
Push away self-promotion
Rejoiced too soon. There's the shit.
Find out subscriptions
Well, after clicking away all the rubbish, you can actually see straight away that both subscriptions have expired and are no longer active. Understand what the problem is.
Find out subscriptions, attempt 2
That's how I remembered it on the homepage. Interestingly, the payment page says something different. Very nice to see how a single product set was billed, but two individual products have to be cancelled separately.
Cancellation
I won't comment much because there's not much to say. You wind your way through a labyrinth of intimidation, threats and self-promotion, sometimes clicking on the wrong "Next" button because it is sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right and changes colour. I would say that in Germany this is called misleading.
Fun fact: If you do manage to cancel, you can do so automatically and retroactively at no cost. The manufacturer obviously knows full well that it won't get away with this scam in any court in the world. It's sad when software providers have to resort to such methods.
