Yes. I'm so sick of businesses relying on people not cancelling to exist, and thereby making their calcellation process as time consuming and obtuse as possible to reduce consumers chances of cancelling.

Consumers should be able to just NOT pay for a service, and then it's on the service-provider to turn off the customer's access.

I can't tell you the amount of services I've past up on simply because I don't want to (potentially) deal with an awful cancellation process, and then go through the hassle of charging back on my CC. It's just not worth the time -- and they know it and depend on it -- which is frankly disgusting. Invest some time in a better product...

There is a tricky balance to the point you have raised. If the business makes the process too easy, the attrition will increase and the pricing structure will have to go up for the remaining buyers. When that happens, you would come in here to complain that the prices of goods & services are exorbitantly high.

"Invest some time in a better product" is not an appropriate solution since consumers have different incentive processes and those incentives changes throughout their lives. There is a diminishing return on investment for the producer of the g&s and they have to find the right balance.

The process of increasing cancellation cost (e.g. time), inadvertently puts the onus on the consumer to do their due diligence prior to purchasing a product.

No. I personally wouldn't complain that prices are exorbitantly high. If the price should be higher to cover the cost, it should be higher! It should NOT be hidden in an absurdly complex cancellation process. That's my opinion.

Maybe you feel differently. But know that a lot of people feel the other way also.

I found Spotify cancellation process surprisingly refreshing. Just a big giant cancel button with a confirmation. Done.

Same with Sling and Britbox - no fuss cancellations all online. Was impressed.

I use the Amex online chat to block a specific merchant when I want to cancel. Takes less than 60 seconds and they will decline any charge matching that merchant descriptor.

Does their data remain though? If it does then your data would still be in danger of hackers if said business got attacked, etc. Aren't businesses supposed to treat customer data as liabilities now?

Some consumers would want complete removal of their data after deciding not to continue paying for service.

just to reflect your attitude, why should we trust them to delete our data? why do we even tolerate a background level of fraud at all?

how about this - I dont use my cards that often - maybe 20 times a week. i'd be much happier if i got a notification through a side channel with a proposed charge and I could click 'yes' or 'no'.

it makes alot more sense to me than having to poll my account to look for potential fraud and argue with the bank about re-issuing a card with a new number.

wouldn't that be simple? i understand that for some usage patterns that would be inconvenient.

the broader point is that I shouldn't need to expose personal information just to buy a tea towel, I shouldn't even have to give you my email address so you can start sending my helpful hints about how awesome your other products are.

Firstly, MOST businesses don't store any credit card information so it's easier to be PCI compliant if the need arises and in order to limit liability. So if you trust the business enough to put in your CC#, you don't have to worry about the biggest issue.

Secondly, I don't know of ANY company that deletes customer data upon cancellation. I've worked at a few ecom companies now, and the marketing team would just LOL at that idea. Past customers are pretty much your highest converters. No way are you gonna get rid of your data on them.

MAYBE in Europe with GDPR. Even still, no company I've worked at does this even for European customers. I'm skeptical a meaningful percentage of companies do.

> Just allow me to create as many 'virtual' credit cards from a single card and that's enough

Apple Pay already does this via the "EMV Payment Tokenisation Specification":

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Technology

Anyone can implement it; it's not Apple-proprietary.

This is not what parent is talking about; they want to be able to generate a unique number for a website where the number + CVV is entered manually.

If you're using Safari, it will auto-fill the virtual card number automatically for you.

BofA still offers this but it's a shameful desktop-only tiny popup that only works with flash. They call it shopsafe.

They create a virtual card for each and every purchase automatically.

No need to do that manually.

> Just allow me to create as many 'virtual' credit cards from a single card and that's enough.

What? Apple Pay does this. Oh they don't expose the numbers to you, but they use a virtual card at time of purchase.

I believe Google Wallet does the same.

The virtual card is also set up in such a way that it can only be used to make purchases through Apple Pay. Which makes it, unlike regular (American) credit cards, a 2-factor authentication system: Something you have (phone) and something you are (fingerprint or face).

That's a big part of why I use Apple Pay when it's available; it gives me a fair bit more protection against credit card fraud.

Google Pay as well: https://usa.visa.com/pay-with-visa/featured-technologies/goo...

> When you use your phone to pay in stores with an eligible Visa card in Google Pay, we don’t send your actual credit or debit card number with your payment. Instead, a virtual account number is used to represent your account information – so your account details stay safe.

Kinda want the ability to cancel a virtual card at will too, which isn't possible via Apple Pay.

The concept of virtual cards is that they're essentially single use -- they cancel themselves.

I think, the parent comment meant that they would like to get a virtual card, so that they can attach it to a service (e.g., create a virtual card for paying your netflix subscription only, and then another card for hulu only, etc.), and then simply remove that virtual card when they want to stop using that service. Especially helpful if the service makes you jump through a ton of hoops to cancel your subscription.

Correct. I use Apple Pay with a web service (Hover, domain registrations) and with an app service (Uber).

In the case of Hover, I have performed a single authorisation, and it is now capable of performing repeat transactions against my card. There is no interface within Apple Pay (that I can find) to remove that authorisation, I have to ask Hover to do that.

In the case of Uber, I perform an authorisation for an expense before I know what the amount is, and I'm not required to re-authorise when tipping.

The Hover example is the problem. Not specific to Hover, but rather specific to the lack of virtual card management within Apple Pay.

Virtual cards by definition do not have to be single use, (un)fortunately.

I used that feature so many times with Paypal and Final and both closed that product after a year or two. I'm not sure what kills it, but it's a difficult space I guess. Maybe too much fraud to handle?

I'm pretty sure Bank of America had it probably 5-8 years ago. But it was web-only (I think it required a Java applet?) and awkward to use.

Longer. I used it once around 2006 to pay for an academic conference that the university was reimbursing me for. Looking back, the university making me pay registration during one of the most cash strapped points in my life was crazy.

Capital One provides this through a nifty chrome extension. Works great.

Revolut offers this. I can create virtual cards and one-time-use cards.

Only on their Premium plan. It's also sad that they seem to be the one of the few companies outside the US that does this.

Did you try Citi cards? I've been using one for years and I think at most I had about 15 virtual account numbers on it (but I do try to keep things tidy generally).

Unfortunately the only approach that I know of with Citi is this Flash-based app, which is increasingly getting painful to use on desktop browsers and seems impossible on mobile. Have you found a more modern approach to using them?

Privacy.com?

I think you have to give them your bank #. so i'd assume its bad for similar reasons a debit card is bad. but i'd like to hear more from people that used it.

also i doubt you'd get any spending points.. which is kind of a big perk

I hope someone does this based on Stripe's API. https://stripe.com/issuing

I use privacy.com for that and have been happy with it. Nice controls (one-time, max monthly allowance, custom expiration).

Revolut lets you do this, but I suspect they will be going out of business soon, given the new competition from Apple.

Apple isn't launching this in Europe (where Revolut operates) anytime soon, at least with this kind of offer.

The major difference is that Revolut is prepaid, whereas this one is credit.

As i understand it, this is part of what Apple Pay does anyway. Rolls a new use-once number per transaction.

I've heard of services that offer this, but perhaps they don't work as well as they say they do.