Captain Company's ads (in Eerie & Creepy) for AMT's Star Trek model kits were always enticing, but I never ordered any.



I should have reconsidered, since by the time of the ad, some of the kits, such as the Galileo shuttlecraft and Exploration Set had been discontinued by AMT years earlier.

*shrugs*

It’s shocking. I wonder if Britannia Music did anything similar?

On negative option billing, here in the UK, there have been quite a few companies who make it next-to-impossible to cancel a subscription or service. As we don’t have decent politicians over here, I don’t expect that’ll change, but it should.

Years ago, I had a subscription to 2000 AD. You could do all sorts of updates via your online subscription portal. You could change your address, phone number, debit card number, etc. There was also a “Cancel subscription” button - but when you clicked on it, you were taken to a page which stated you needed to ring a number in order to cancel. Great. So I’ve got to spend money to make a phone call so that some employee can try to talk me out of cancelling.

It happened with other services. Some were fine, though. I mean, I had a crate of food delivered monthly and that was easy to cancel, but on another occasion, it took me an age to cancel. One company ONLY allowed you to cancel via phone. And when I rang, the woman almost wore me down with her, “How can we convince you to stay?” No matter what I said, she’d throw a variation out there, such as, “How about if I give you half-price next month?” In the end, after much mental exhaustion, you managed to convince her, at which point the friendly demeanour dropped as she realised she would have to cancel your subscription.

By law, I feel ANY service should have a one-click cancellation button, no questions asked.

Some are robbers.

I was with a DVD rental by post company long ago. I cancelled mainly because I was never getting the releases at the top of my list. Anyway, I cancelled yet discs kept coming - and they kept billing me. Took me two months to sort out, as the bank told me it was between me and the company.

So I returned the discs they sent me and contacted them. But I’d set a little trap for the crooks: I had returned the discs via Royal Mail’s recorded delivery system, meaning the recipient had to sign for them. The crooks claimed that although my cancellation had finally gone through, they hadn’t received the discs I had sent so would need to bill me for them. Oh what a shame that I was able to tell these robbers that I had proof via Royal Mail that the discs had been returned, and that one of their crooked employees had signed for them. Oh dear.

That, and a threat to go to the local press, meant that, mysteriously, my membership was cancelled once and for all. I am not a person who takes kindly to big companies trying to get money from me under false pretenses.