DoNotPay's New Service Auto-Cancels Free Trials (wired.com) 37
DoNotPay, a free chatbot that offers AI-powered legal counsel, has a new service called Free Trial Card that will help you cancel free trials before you get charged. Wired reports: The Free Trial Card is a virtual credit card you can use to sign up for free trials of any service anonymously, instead of using your real credit card. When the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines to be charged, thus ending your free trial. You don't have to remember to cancel anything. If you want, the app will also send an actual legal notice of cancelation to the service. The DoNotPay app will send you an email when you sign up for a service and another when your trial ends -- a way of nudging you with the reminder that if you want to convert your trial into a paid subscription, you'll need to update your payment info and hand over your actual credit card number.
What happened to DoNotPay? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember this started as a web site, but now it only seems to be available as an iOS app. Not even an Android version.
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Sounds like we should still go ahead and trust these guys with our credit card info though.
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Re:What happened to DoNotPay? (Score:5, Funny)
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In a different thread someone mentioned that in their country (not USA) they had something like a virtual number for checking accounts.
If you were expecting a deposit the other party would use the virtual number rather than your real account number, cuts down on fraud....
Can't imagine why no US bank I know of offers such a service.
Just can't imagine.
Another late capitalism product (Score:2, Insightful)
Company invents product to mitigate marketing behavior of other companies.
Re: Another late capitalism product (Score:1)
We need a capitalism curve so everybody can see how late we are in the capitalism cycle and run for the hills accordingly.
Re: Another late capitalism product (Score:1)
Huh. Sounds like you're stuck in the trough of disillusionment, Ivan. Why don't you come up and join the rest of us in the first world on the plateau?
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see how late we are in the capitalism cycle
We are always at the very end.
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Company invents product to mitigate marketing behavior of other companies.
yet so worth it I think I'd pay for it. I've been burned enough for those silly offers after forgetting I'd signed up. Here's a model I'd like: a single small payment to DoNotPay via PayPal for each single "free trial" offer registration. A payment of $1 or so would pay for itself. I'd not be so happy if I had to sign up to DoNotPay on a subscription basis--that would defeat the whole point.
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Re: Until donotpay's cc number block is blocked. (Score:1)
Usually you need to behave very badly to get blocked. How about a reverse version? If I block you as a vendor everybody else should too. Kind of like a credit report. Now we have a service worth every penny.
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Usually you need to behave very badly to get blocked.
Not only that, but blocking the card vendor would be affecting people the service wants to be their customers.
And their prospective customers deliberately chose that vendor for some reason.
This is just blocking potential signups, which is the opposite of what marketing people want.
The last thing you want to do (as a marketer) is give a bad experience to a prospective customer.
Services are unlikely to do squat about this, at least unless people start
Re: Until donotpay's cc number block is blocked. (Score:1)
Citibank has offered virtual cc for years. Works v. well for this type of thing. You can dial in the amount and exp date (1mo .. 1yr).
BOA ShopSafe does a lot of this (Score:5, Informative)
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Similarly I have used CitiCard 'virtual card' numbers for more control of who is charging me and when. Virtualcards are real credit card numbers that are different than the main number on the account allow me to specify expiration date and maximum amount each number is good for. Vendor never gets the real number, and they cannot charge more than the maximum amount.
virtualcards can also be used more than once by a single vendor so I can setup repeated payments and the card will expire when I want it to. A
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My only fear is that this becomes more mainstream then the vendor tactics will adapt to avoid these.
With the advent of these, and probably programmable cards coming (Or cards where charges will send a push notice to
customer's smart phone to Allow/Deny).
It doesn't seem like there will be any way vendors to "adapt" sleazy tactics to these:
unless their plan is to actually charge people's credit cards before starting a trial,
but that would kind of mess up some of their marketing plan, as more people would
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I also generally move recurring billing I am about to end to a virtual card before terminating the relationship.
Why not just use a unique virtual card for every service?
If I have a service that I expect to keep continuously, then I use Citi's advanced option take the expected monthly cost of whatever service i'm signing up for, multiply it by 13, and then create a virtual card that expires in 12 months.
So in the event my vendor's security is breached; the virtual card number is nice in that only the
Will DoNotPay offer a free trial? (Score:1)
From TFA:
He’s not worried about the DoNotPay app itself, which is doing well. Earlier this month it closed a new $4.6 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. It’s also working with a local San Francisco law firm to make sure all its offerings are legally compliant and robust, and has plans to become a subscription-based app that offers all its legal and convenience services for a monthly cost of around $3.
I hope it comes with a free trial ;-)
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I wonder what would happen if you Malkovich the thing, and use DoNotPay to cancel its own free trial.
Any Credit Rating Downside? (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who posted about BOA virtual cards or similar programs: Since you then signed up for some "free trial" with contract that stated you have to keep paying unless you actively notify the vendor, what happens when you shut off your virtual card? Theoretically you still owe the vendor the bill for continuing service. Wouldn't that company report you to credit bureaus for nonpayment?
Happy to have a reallytruly lawyer chime in here.
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Besides, isn't it fraud to supply a cc number that cannot actually be charged?
I imagine DoNotPay might have thought of that...
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ShopSafe at BofA (Score:2)
Just adding that Bank of America has a virtual credit card feature on their MasterCard and VISA cards called ShopSafe [bankofamerica.com] that allows you to create virtual credit cards with a unique number, CSC, specific dollar limit and expiration date that get charged to your actual CC. An additional benefit is that the entity that makes the first charge to the virtual card is the *only* entity that can then charge to that card.
Here are articles about banks that offer this type of feature:
- https://www.doctorofcredit.com [doctorofcredit.com]