Stay Away From My PC

Many years ago I used a service called logmein.com and at some point it changed to logmein123.com and its newest and latest iteration is called gotomypc.com. It is all the same company as far as I can tell. I used the service and it was free and very useful so I could log onto my work computer from my iPad and get prescriptions and other things done. Over the decades the technology shifted so that my iPad was sufficient for all tasks I needed when away from the office. About four years ago a specific task came up that I thought I would actually need to log back into my computer from a distance to get some work done so I went back to that old service and now it was a paid service – that has been a pattern for many web-based businesses, get customers and then start making money off of customers later. We have all seen innumerable web-based businesses come up and go away, most pointedly in the .com bust of the early 2000s. So I was fine with that and I signed up for their service which was a month-to-month service. After about six months I discovered that I had not logged on even once I so I decided to discontinue the service because it was a monthly ongoing fee.

I had signed up for and paid for the service in less than five minutes and without the help of a human being – it was all web-based and quite easy to sign up. I logged on to find out how to cancel the service and it turns out there was a phone number I had to call to cancel (cue the ominous music now.) You cannot cancel it as easy as you can start it (I suspect this is somewhat analogous to marriage.) So – annoyed – I then called the number and got a call center in the Philippines. I then started to talk to a series of five people trying to get my service canceled. All of them desperately telling me why I should not. It took literally one hour on the phone and I finally got my service canceled. This was the supervisor of the supervisor of the supervisor so I suspect one of the Marcoses. A few months ago my office manager wanted me to go over the credit card bill to get receipts for some of the work purchases I had made on the card and what did I see there but gotomypc.com monthly fee. I have been billed monthly straight through: meaning I spent an hour on the phone canceling my service, and they chose to ignore it and did not cancel it. And to my regret, I did not double check them. I propose the following rule across the planet: if you can sign up for a service online and not talk to anyone, it must be possible to cancel the same service in the same way, and it cannot take longer than it took to sign up for the service to cancel the service. Signing up for the service I had to put in the names and addresses and usernames and passwords and billing information and credit card information and to cancel I should click a button and say I would like to cancel. Any company that does not adhere to this needs to be punished severely. I am not calling for a boycott, I am not speaking for anyone but myself, but I will state definitively for myself that this is a disreputable practice this company uses and does not need to be engaged in business with further, again, by me. Yesterday I canceled a gym membership that I had not used for two years. I have paid faithfully for two years and they have gotten my money and I had to call the gym where I signed up for the service and they informed me I had to call a service that was in charge of canceling, and they were a call center in – you guessed it – the Philippines.

I had to go through a series of questions but at least it only took 10 minutes and a 30 day cancellation period. They got to get two more fees from me as they bill twice a month.  I dislike this pattern of business emerging. Three years ago I tried to get an International calling system so that I could have workers from outside of America working for me calling from my work number. I used RingCentral for the service and I was very clear with them what my requirements were the entire time and finally I got an account started and within a day it became clear that they there was no way that they could spoof my number from outside of America so it was pointless – so I said that is fine, I would like to cancel. 45 minutes later I was able to cancel. These companies are disrespectful of America in essence, and certainly disrespectful of our needs and our wants and our desires, because all they really care about is our money. Since that is the case, I think we need to speak with our money and speak out against processes like this which prey on American businesses. In specific, they often prey on American medical businesses, so I include this in this blog. I love the Philippines and the Filipino people: I was raised there. It is sad that they are becoming a repository of pain and call centers that are designed to frustrate and stymie anything that looks like cutting down their businesses. Not a very profound blog entry, but profoundly bothering me so I thought I would mention.