Disappointed NV3

Agree with you 100% dangavel. ( new one there.) The OP should have received a reminder. Full stop.morally reprehensible that he did not. Not good business practise. N3V.
Why should a reminder be sent out? The user subscribes of their own free will and it is therefore their own responsibility to decide whether to continue or not. Put a reminder a week before in the computers calendar or cancel immediately after subscribing would solve it. Surely users are old enough not to have someone hold their hand like a 5yo child.
Fair enough that would be good business practice, but how many other companies that offer subscription services do that? Take streaming services for a example, none of my subscriptions come with a reminder to subscribe when paid monthly or yearly. The only prompting I get is where I have cancelled and I get a reminder to that effect to try to keep me on board. For the record I have 8 subs running at the moment.
 
Why should a reminder be sent out? The user subscribes of their own free will and it is therefore their own responsibility to decide whether to continue or not. Put a reminder a week before in the computers calendar or cancel immediately after subscribing would solve it. Surely users are old enough not to have someone hold their hand like a 5yo child.
Fair enough that would be good business practice, but how many other companies that offer subscription services do that? Take streaming services for a example, none of my subscriptions come with a reminder to subscribe when paid monthly or yearly. The only prompting I get is where I have cancelled and I get a reminder to that effect to try to keep me on board. For the record I have 8 subs running at the moment.
What if the subscriber is ill or dies ? , in theory , the sub could go on until the card was cancelled , my mother died and even though I cancelled her phone service she kept on being charged a monthly fee for a landline telephone that Telstra had provided , we had got rid of the phone years before , but she had been paying that monthly fee for years as it was buried in her bill and her eyesight was bad , ( and she had dementia ) so no one ever noticed it, when I mentioned it online a number of people realised they too had been paying for a phone that no longer existed , in one case a person had been paying for it for 10 years ! not everyone is 100% organised or alert as they age ( I certainly fall into that category ) it would be possible for someone to go into a nursing home , the sub would continue until someone picked up the payment . A simple reminder sent by a bot should not be a problem for any responsible, ethical company , the fact that so many don't send reminders is just another example of how many businesses do not treat their customers with respect , I don't think it's a practice that is customer friendly .
 
It's pretty standard practice with most subs. The problem is that we cannot send an automated email to just annual renewals. Enabling an auto-email to all renewals means that monthly users would get an email every month. At least some of them will get annoyed, decide to unsubscribe or just ignore all emails and miss out on potentially important emails.

The simple option to avoid this happening is to cancel after signing up. You'll get a reminder email 3 days before your expiry date. Not perfect, but the ability to avoid being rebilled "accidentally" is certainly available to you.

If someone dies and is billed, I'm 100% certain we would offer a refund should a request come in to helpdesk.
 
Gerber Life, email before and after autopayment every three months

Network Solutions, email 3 months before renewal to double check ICANN info, email before renewals.

Thats just off the top of my head. So, it very much is a thing - even frequently.

"They'll miss out on potentially important emails" use different email addresses. If they decide to block the whole domain, that really is on them and you did the minimum to MANAGE CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS.
 
It's pretty standard practice with most subs. The problem is that we cannot send an automated email to just annual renewals. Enabling an auto-email to all renewals means that monthly users would get an email every month. At least some of them will get annoyed, decide to unsubscribe or just ignore all emails and miss out on potentially important emails.

The simple option to avoid this happening is to cancel after signing up. You'll get a reminder email 3 days before your expiry date. Not perfect, but the ability to avoid being rebilled "accidentally" is certainly available to you.

If someone dies and is billed, I'm 100% certain we would offer a refund should a request come in to helpdesk.

I really don't buy this as an adequate excuse . Why can't you make a separate list for yearly subs and direct your software to inform these folks that subs/ membership are due once a year? Cant see that as being a vast cost since I imagine billing is automated anyway, or is this process still undertaken by humans ?
 
I don't see what the problem is with monthly subscribers receiving a notification regarding the withdrawal from their bank account. The onus is on them to disregard the email. My automobile insurance company does that once a month to let me know that on the 27th of the month my payment is coming out of my bank account. This notification is at least 2 weeks prior which gives me plenty of time to make changes if I choose such as doubling a payment or paying off the policy for the year.
 
Ditto here. We get a notice from our cell phone provider and our internet provider every month. I don't pay it a lot of attention, but I do appreciate just knowing it is confirmed to becoming out of my account.
 
I don't see what the problem is with monthly subscribers receiving a notification regarding the withdrawal from their bank account. The onus is on them to disregard the email. My automobile insurance company does that once a month to let me know that on the 27th of the month my payment is coming out of my bank account. This notification is at least 2 weeks prior which gives me plenty of time to make changes if I choose such as doubling a payment or paying off the policy for the year.

Yep, I get an email from almost every one of my monthly payments that are direct debited , just as I get paypal statements every month. About the only subs I have are newspapers and they inform me of renewal of my sub once a year, the only one who didnt was the NYT , i know someone who subscribed, then never used the sub and only found out two years later that he was still paying them as they never informed him they were automatically renewing his subscription and the payment name on his bank records was rather obscure . Thus, he wasn't aware of the $5 or so every month was being taken out by them until he dug into who he was paying the loot too.
. I cant see what the problem is , for the sake of the consumer , it really should be mandatory.
 
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N3V is not going to develop it's own customer service software, email contact software, account software, cart software, credit card processing software, etc etc. I challange anyone to take N3V's method of operation and try to acquire all the 3rd party software it would take to run it "perfectly" and "smoothly" without compromise. Impossible. N3V is not Google. N3V is not Amazon. N3V is no Apple. They must use off the shelf softare for these things and 3rd party software will NOT fit all needs or situations perfectly.
 
N3V is not going to develop it's own customer service software, email contact software, account software, cart software, credit card processing software, etc etc. I challange anyone to take N3V's method of operation and try to acquire all the 3rd party software it would take to run it "perfectly" and "smoothly" without compromise. Impossible. N3V is not Google. N3V is not Amazon. N3V is no Apple. They must use off the shelf softare for these things and 3rd party software will NOT fit all needs or situations perfectly.

Most companies use turnkey solutions today for most things such as websites, contact software, etc.
 
While not weighing into the argument on whether or not subscribers should receive advance notice of renewals (but it does seem to be a good idea - within limitations) I do feel that some confusions need to be cleared up.

There seems to be some confusion between what is a bill (for past services) and a subscription payment (for future services).

I get many regular monthly and quarterly bills emailed to me (it saves paper and I sometimes get a discount for saving the supplier printing and postage costs) from suppliers for services used during the past 1 or 3 months. In all cases the payment is directly debited from a nominated account so I don't need to do anything and again some suppliers give me a discount for paying this way as it saves them further costs in pursuing me for non-payment.

I only have 4 subscriptions where I pay in advance for future services - 2 annual subscriptions (Trainz Gold membership is one) and 1 monthly subscription. The 4th is a club membership that lasts for 4 years (next renewal due 2026). Only the club gives me an advance notice email that a renewal is due. The monthly subscription will email me after the due date if there was insufficient funds in the account to cover the payment (it has happened only once). I have not yet had that problem with the annual subscriptions but there is a simple solution that I now use.

I know when the subscriptions are due and how much they will cost so I have arranged with my bank to automatically transfer the necessary funds to the account that I use for all online payments a day or two before the due date. The account normally only has $1.00 in available funds in case of a "hack" - unlikely but you never know these days. I must mention that the only issue that I have had with this auto-transfer of funds was for the Trainz subscription (which happened earlier this month). I forgot that the renewal was in $US not $AU so I had to quickly manually transfer additional funds to make up for what I had to "guess" was the shortfall - given currency fluctuations. It turned out that I was overgenerous.

I don't see how N3V giving me advance notice would have solved this issue because the $US currency has been "bouncing around" on a daily basis recently.

My thoughts.
 
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I dont know where anyone got the idea that NV3 should reinvent the wheel in order to remind their yearly subscribers that their bills are due. There are MANY subscription reminder services out there that don't cost a great deal to use and the setup is quite easy, setting up a reminder service to just remind yearly subscribers a short time before their bills are due is NOT an difficult or expensive task to arrange.
 
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N3V is not going to develop it's own customer service software, email contact software, account software, cart software, credit card processing software, etc etc. I challange anyone to take N3V's method of operation and try to acquire all the 3rd party software it would take to run it "perfectly" and "smoothly" without compromise. Impossible. N3V is not Google. N3V is not Amazon. N3V is no Apple. They must use off the shelf softare for these things and 3rd party software will NOT fit all needs or situations perfectly.

Who suggested that NV3 should develop all these services ? I think you will find that anyone could easily acquire an off the shelf piece of software that would enable them to send a monthly reminder to yearly subscribers, this sort of software typically costs a few hundred bucks a month to run and would probably pay for itself in far fewer disgruntled customers., this isn't a hard ask, unless of course NV3 is so cash strapped they cant afford it, in which case fair enough. no one wants to see them go belly up. . .
 
Who suggested that NV3 should develop all these services ? I think you will find that anyone could easily acquire an off the shelf piece of software that would enable them to send a monthly reminder to yearly subscribers, this sort of software typically costs a few hundred bucks a month to run and would probably pay for itself in far fewer disgruntled customers., this isn't a hard ask, unless of course NV3 is so cash strapped they cant afford it, in which case fair enough. no one wants to see them go belly up. . .

Things are not as simple as may seem... suppose you put a separate system in place (separate email list for subscribers) but then the customer changes their email themselves on their account. Only the customer knows of the change. The subscription notification system now has the old defunct email and is useless.

All I am saying is that we don't know everything that goes on and things may not be as simple as they seem. That's all. I maintain a large subscriber email list for a mail order company using MailChimp. Customers forward emails to friends who wonder "Why did I get this mail list email from XYZ?" and they promptly hit the "un-subscribe" button removing the original person from the list. The original subscriber doesn't even know they have now been un-subscribed.

Again, I'm just saying we don't know everything involved.You may be right, but there is no way we can know what goes on "inside" to make things difficult.

P.S. If you forward your "list" emails to anyone, edit out the "Unsubscribe" in the forwarded email.
 
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It's pretty standard practice with most subs. The problem is that we cannot send an automated email to just annual renewals. Enabling an auto-email to all renewals means that monthly users would get an email every month. At least some of them will get annoyed, decide to unsubscribe or just ignore all emails and miss out on potentially important emails.

The simple option to avoid this happening is to cancel after signing up. You'll get a reminder email 3 days before your expiry date. Not perfect, but the ability to avoid being rebilled "accidentally" is certainly available to you.

If someone dies and is billed, I'm 100% certain we would offer a refund should a request come in to helpdesk.

Actually I never received a reminder 3 days before the expiry date. Just a confirmation the payment was made. I remember now I signed up as part of a promotion last year. I'm a very casual user and not sure I even used the service I signed up for.

Regardless of the reminder, can someone explain why NV3 won't refund the prorated amount? If I cancelled today does NV3 need to collect the entire year ($64.99) from me? Do they need all of that $64.99 to cover costs for a service I'm not using?
 
Regardless of the reminder, can someone explain why NV3 won't refund the prorated amount? If I cancelled today does NV3 need to collect the entire year ($64.99) from me? Do they need all of that $64.99 to cover costs for a service I'm not using?

It will be in the "fine print" of the subscription agreement. As far as I could tell none of my current subscriptions will offer a refund if you (the client) decides to opt out early but I have not checked the Trainz fine print. If the reason to leave is through no fault of the supplier then, unless agreed in the contract terms, they would be under no obligation to refund. But laws may vary between jurisdictions.

This argument could easily go to ridiculous extremes - like "I only use the service 4 days a week, can I get a refund for the other 3?". Today I visited my club for the first time in 8 to 9 months. I have a membership subscription that expires in 2026, can I get a refund for the 8 to 9 months I chose not to visit?

My thoughts and not to be considered as legal advice.
 
Who suggested that NV3 should develop all these services ? I think you will find that anyone could easily acquire an off the shelf piece of software that would enable them to send a monthly reminder to yearly subscribers, this sort of software typically costs a few hundred bucks a month to run and would probably pay for itself in far fewer disgruntled customers., this isn't a hard ask, unless of course NV3 is so cash strapped they cant afford it, in which case fair enough. no one wants to see them go belly up. . .

If we figure two hundred buck s a month, that means a minimum of 37 subscriptions go to pay just for this software. If three hundred bucks a month, then a minimum of 55 subscriptions are needed to just fund this software. Does this cost include start up cost of making sure it is compatible with the existing software and the software is secure? What about training? What about labor to maintain the software? How many disgruntled users are there without the software vs disgruntled users if the software isn’t configured properly or spams users? $64.99 a year a lot of money for some people but it is ok to dictate that a business spends a few hundred bucks a month? It isn’t my money right?

My post is #39 in this topic, is there really that many disgruntled people about this topic?
 
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