Yesterday I tried to cancel my WoW account again and I'm reminded why it took me a long time to reactive it, because when you cancel you got to fill out a mandatory questionaire before you can even cancel. Like last time I don't remember what options I actually choose and I had to go through 2 screens before I actually cancel. Now I'm sure this is hardly the most obnoxious canceling process out there. I remembr hearing AOL for example runs you through a lot of loops when you try to cancel their subscription. But I'm curious if these policy actually help the company question. I'm pretty sure part of the strategy is to make the tedium enough that people might end up subscribing for a few more months because it takes a while. Sure if I'm starting no-name company I might be just interested in keeping people annoyed while raking in some money, since I don't have much of a reputation to worry about. But we're also talking about some stuff that definitely will stick around for a while. I don't think I'll just activate my WoW account again without a good reason just because it's annoying to cancel it. I'm sure people who canceled from AOL through all the loops aren't likely to subscribe to it again anytime soon.
Even stranger still is that you have these annoying canceling policy on stuff where payment is not negotiable, like a MMORPG. If I called up Blizzard to cancel WoW and they say 'but wait, we'll let you play WoW for 1 year for $50' I might change my mind. But there's no such thing in a MMORPG system as far as I'm aware of. If I ever do change my mind it's not exactly rocket science to resubscribe, and they have your email address, so you'd think they can just send something like 'in case you ever change your mind here's what's so great about us!' mail to your email address. If I was actually going to be convinced by that I'll look at it after I cancel and then resubscribe, and if I'm not going to be convinced it'd save my time.
In the end I just don't see how having these policies can possibly be beneficial to a large, well-known entity because it seems like people who remember how much it annoyed them will easily cost you more than whatever small gain you make from people not being able to cancel on time.
Even stranger still is that you have these annoying canceling policy on stuff where payment is not negotiable, like a MMORPG. If I called up Blizzard to cancel WoW and they say 'but wait, we'll let you play WoW for 1 year for $50' I might change my mind. But there's no such thing in a MMORPG system as far as I'm aware of. If I ever do change my mind it's not exactly rocket science to resubscribe, and they have your email address, so you'd think they can just send something like 'in case you ever change your mind here's what's so great about us!' mail to your email address. If I was actually going to be convinced by that I'll look at it after I cancel and then resubscribe, and if I'm not going to be convinced it'd save my time.
In the end I just don't see how having these policies can possibly be beneficial to a large, well-known entity because it seems like people who remember how much it annoyed them will easily cost you more than whatever small gain you make from people not being able to cancel on time.
