Provisional Order on Subscription Cancellation
The subscription is not being used. The decision to cancel it was made last month. The cancellation has not been completed.
In the version of events where the subscription was cancelled on the 14th:
The subscription ended. No further charges occurred. The cancelled subscription's features were no longer available, which was acceptable because the features had not been used in several months.
Three months of charges: avoided.
This Version
The decision was made on the 14th. Cancelling the subscription requires: finding the settings within the service's interface, locating the cancellation option, working through the retention flow (a series of screens designed to complicate the cancellation), and confirming. This takes approximately five to eight minutes.
Five to eight minutes was not available on the 14th. The 15th was also not right. The cancellation was noted as pending.
The Retention Flow
Services that want to retain cancelling users have designed flows that introduce:
- Reminders of features available.
- Offers of discounted rates.
- Options to pause rather than cancel.
- Confirmation screens with "are you sure" framing.
- A final screen that confirms cancellation will take effect at the end of the billing period.
This flow is not difficult. It is designed to feel like more work than it is. It is approximately five minutes of work. The five minutes has not been available across three billing cycles.
The Provisional Order
Cancel the subscription during the next session with five unallocated minutes. The session will occur. The order is provisional on this.
The subscription has been charged three times in the three months since the decision was made. The next charge is in eleven days.
The Counterfactual
In the version where the cancellation happened on the 14th, the money saved exceeds the effort required by a factor of approximately forty.
The cancellation will happen. It will happen before the next billing date or shortly after.