Teamviewer at it again tho this was a thing for a while.

[TakenMC]

Summary

 Teamviewer is making it harder to cancel the subscription by removing the previously available button to just cancel. Now you would have to submit a support ticket at least 28 days before the cancelation period, and the support average is 7 days. If you are within 28 days you would get charged next month/year.

 

Quotes

Quote

 "All cancellations must be submitted in written form, by submitting a ticket. Written requests must be received by TeamViewer at least 28 days before the end of the initial subscription term or any subscription renewal term" - Comming from TeamViewer Support.

 

My thoughts

Honestly this is scummy if not borderline illegal and would be great to have this mentioned out there.

 

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbrPQsMK2gU

https://community.teamviewer.com/English/discussion/117183/needlessly-difficult-to-cancel-subscription

 

 

[OhYou_]

If you use paypal you can just cancel the subscription from paypal immediately and they wont be able to charge you anymore. 
 

[Brooksie359]

Just dispute the charge and be done with tbh. Also pretty sure this is illegal if they don't have a really good justification for needing a 28 day written notice that has to be reviewed by a support team member. 

[Fasterthannothing]

2 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

If you use paypal you can just cancel the subscription from paypal immediately and they wont be able to charge you anymore. 
 

I love this feature that PayPal has I don't even bother going into subscriptions to cancel anymore I just link them through PayPal and cancel that way 

[lootfree]

YIKES!

[Rysters Tech]

I lost all faith in teamviewer and switched to realvnc years ago, im so glad i did

[wanderingfool2]

So it likely varies by state, and also country.  It feels wrong though to require more effort to cancel a subscription than it is to subscribe.

 

Actually, there were some places that were putting in policies to make it so that companies would be required to offer a similar form of cancelling as there was to sign up...guessing that didn't go too far.

 

Teamviewer is unfortunately a tool that does need to be used in some situations (although there are other solutions now, but usually not as clean as Teamviewer).  The last company I was with had a perpetual license though so it didn't bother us as much (and we only used it in the cases where we couldn't be on site and we had to configure their computer to work on their particular network...but they still had regular internet access)

 

36 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Just dispute the charge and be done with tbh. Also pretty sure this is illegal if they don't have a really good justification for needing a 28 day written notice that has to be reviewed by a support team member. 

The issue with that is there is a contract in place.  If lets say they are legally allowed to do what they are doing, and in it it states that you have to give 28 days written notice and instead you don't and cancel the payment you are still technically on the hook for that money.

 

Normally I would say a company wouldn't bother with small amounts of money and bad publicity for going after people for small amounts...but this is TeamViewer we are talking about.  Doing a refusal to pay can get quite costly.

 

Let's break down at least one of the EULA I found (which given you are a paying customer, you would have agreed to it) https://static.teamviewer.com/resources/2021/04/2021-04-01_EULA-ENG-Update-April-2021-Release-Candidate-EN.pdf (Page 3 pretty much sinks your battleship):
The tl;dr

1) They can charge interest rates at the highest amount allowed by law.

2) They can charge a "reminder" fee if they ask you a second time

So I could be wrong, but in Canada that would be 60%.  I'm sure they could also try going to a debt collector or something as well (hurting your credit score)

[Arika]

I only have 1 thing to say.

 

Nomachine

[NinJake]

Both NoMachine and realVNC have been mentioned... and both are pretty solid although I do enjoy NoMachine's UI a bit more.

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

So it likely varies by state, and also country.  It feels wrong though to require more effort to cancel a subscription than it is to subscribe.

 

Actually, there were some places that were putting in policies to make it so that companies would be required to offer a similar form of cancelling as there was to sign up...guessing that didn't go too far.

 

Teamviewer is unfortunately a tool that does need to be used in some situations (although there are other solutions now, but usually not as clean as Teamviewer).  The last company I was with had a perpetual license though so it didn't bother us as much (and we only used it in the cases where we couldn't be on site and we had to configure their computer to work on their particular network...but they still had regular internet access)

 

The issue with that is there is a contract in place.  If lets say they are legally allowed to do what they are doing, and in it it states that you have to give 28 days written notice and instead you don't and cancel the payment you are still technically on the hook for that money.

 

Normally I would say a company wouldn't bother with small amounts of money and bad publicity for going after people for small amounts...but this is TeamViewer we are talking about.  Doing a refusal to pay can get quite costly.

 

Let's break down at least one of the EULA I found (which given you are a paying customer, you would have agreed to it) https://static.teamviewer.com/resources/2021/04/2021-04-01_EULA-ENG-Update-April-2021-Release-Candidate-EN.pdf (Page 3 pretty much sinks your battleship):
The tl;dr

1) They can charge interest rates at the highest amount allowed by law.

2) They can charge a "reminder" fee if they ask you a second time

So I could be wrong, but in Canada that would be 60%.  I'm sure they could also try going to a debt collector or something as well (hurting your credit score)

In both EULAs and contracts there are still protections in place where they can't just put whatever they want in them. My brother had a landlord try and charge 300 dollars for every hour late he turned in the keys to the apartment. This is 100% illegal as the cost of the charge is not inline with the damages done by having the keys submitted late. We never ended up paying any of those fees when we brought up the illegality of the charge. Anyways they lose 0 money by them not giving 28 days notice so if you dispute the charge it's very unlikely they could win in court that they really wanted to take it there. Granted this is more of an assumption on my part as this is based on my limited knowledge of contracts that I have heard from my mother who happens to be a contract lawyer who usually is the one who reads and writes contracts. So again take what I say with a grain of salt. That being said I would imagine that a company wouldn't want to waste the money or energy on a lawsuit over a subscription fee. 

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

That being said I would imagine that a company wouldn't want to waste the money or energy on a lawsuit over a subscription fee. 

They could probably send to a debt collector or depending what their EULA is something like binding arb. that pins costs on the end user.  Not sure, didn't read the entire EULA.

 

With that said, there is a difference from your example of $300/hour (which would probably violate renter laws and be viewed by the courts as excessive and predatory) vs incurring "fees" for secondary notices and interest (which they state is pretty much whatever they want up to what is legally allowed).  The secondary notice, they could claim they incur costs from having some admin staff on hire who has to deal with it, and the interest that's pretty standard to have...they are allowed certain punitive measures to make sure people don't "steal" the service.  Like as an example, if I were to steal a $5000 bike from you; and if you find the bike and take it back...you could still sue in some states for 2x the value of the bike and attorneys fees (as it's written into law that you are entitled to that).

 

They do legally lose money by not getting a 28 day notice thought.  By not giving 28 days they lose the price of the subscription.  It's like paying for a cable bill and not telling them you are cancelling the service (instead just issuing a charge back), they lose out on that and are entitled to that if the contract states.  I doubt a court would toss out a provision like that (unless in the particular state it's against the law to have one).

[williamcll]

I just use anydesk, all the features of teamviewer with even less hassle.

[goodtofufriday]

Fairly normal tactic with most enterprise services. 

[rcmaehl]

19 hours ago, Arika S said:

I only have 1 thing to say.

 

Nomachine

Senator Armstrong Agrees

 

[Brooksie359]

11 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

They could probably send to a debt collector or depending what their EULA is something like binding arb. that pins costs on the end user.  Not sure, didn't read the entire EULA.

 

With that said, there is a difference from your example of $300/hour (which would probably violate renter laws and be viewed by the courts as excessive and predatory) vs incurring "fees" for secondary notices and interest (which they state is pretty much whatever they want up to what is legally allowed).  The secondary notice, they could claim they incur costs from having some admin staff on hire who has to deal with it, and the interest that's pretty standard to have...they are allowed certain punitive measures to make sure people don't "steal" the service.  Like as an example, if I were to steal a $5000 bike from you; and if you find the bike and take it back...you could still sue in some states for 2x the value of the bike and attorneys fees (as it's written into law that you are entitled to that).

 

They do legally lose money by not getting a 28 day notice thought.  By not giving 28 days they lose the price of the subscription.  It's like paying for a cable bill and not telling them you are cancelling the service (instead just issuing a charge back), they lose out on that and are entitled to that if the contract states.  I doubt a court would toss out a provision like that (unless in the particular state it's against the law to have one).

They aren't entitled to a subscription fee for a service that wasn't being used. Unless the person who charged back used the service as well it would be hard to say they are entitled to the subscription fee especially when they made it particularly hard to unsubscribe for no real reason. Also if this in the EULA then I would just throw it out the window as EULAs are basically not legally binding in the majority of cases especially when there is something unreasonable in the EULA. Companies try to do this all the time and 99 times out of 100 they end up not being legally binding. 

[wanderingfool2]

9 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

They aren't entitled to a subscription fee for a service that wasn't being used. Unless the person who charged back used the service as well it would be hard to say they are entitled to the subscription fee especially when they made it particularly hard to unsubscribe for no real reason. Also if this in the EULA then I would just throw it out the window as EULAs are basically not legally binding in the majority of cases especially when there is something unreasonable in the EULA. Companies try to do this all the time and 99 times out of 100 they end up not being legally binding. 

Just because you don't use a service doesn't mean you aren't responsible for the fees.  The person would have had a subscription before, and if the terms specify that you need to provide 28 days notice of cancellation the courts aren't going to just throw it out for no reason.

 

It would be different if lets say it was a monthly service, and you cancelled after a month or two but it's a year license, which a 28 day notice is somewhat acceptable.  As an example, until the CRTC prohibited it in 2015 a 30 day cancellation was very much a thing (despite if you cancelled your line and switched the number at the beginning of the month you didn't use the other service you cancelled).

 

EULA's are contracts, and specifically if you are paying for a service you will be bound to that EULA.  Where a lot of it get stricken down is that they are often overly broad or too restrictive in areas that they aren't allowed to be or have portions that are just plain invalid or contradictory (which do get invalidated).  The simple fact is, by purchasing a TeamViewer service you are agreeing to the terms of that service which includes you having to notify them in 28 days of cancellation.

[Brooksie359]

10 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Just because you don't use a service doesn't mean you aren't responsible for the fees.  The person would have had a subscription before, and if the terms specify that you need to provide 28 days notice of cancellation the courts aren't going to just throw it out for no reason.

 

It would be different if lets say it was a monthly service, and you cancelled after a month or two but it's a year license, which a 28 day notice is somewhat acceptable.  As an example, until the CRTC prohibited it in 2015 a 30 day cancellation was very much a thing (despite if you cancelled your line and switched the number at the beginning of the month you didn't use the other service you cancelled).

 

EULA's are contracts, and specifically if you are paying for a service you will be bound to that EULA.  Where a lot of it get stricken down is that they are often overly broad or too restrictive in areas that they aren't allowed to be or have portions that are just plain invalid or contradictory (which do get invalidated).  The simple fact is, by purchasing a TeamViewer service you are agreeing to the terms of that service which includes you having to notify them in 28 days of cancellation.

They would have to justify in court why they need 28 day notice before the cancelation. You can't just say they need a huge heads up like that unless there is an actual reason especially because it's in the EULA. 

[wanderingfool2]

35 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

They would have to justify in court why they need 28 day notice before the cancelation. You can't just say they need a huge heads up like that unless there is an actual reason especially because it's in the EULA. 

No they don't have to justify it to the courts, it's the other way around.  You would have to argue why it should be invalidated.  It's a contract (EULA's can be a contract), if you don't agree with the terms you shouldn't have been paying for the service and agreed to the yearly payment terms.

 

The fact it's part of the EULA doesn't automatically make it weaker.  https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/342875-nintendo-wins-dismissal-of-joy-con-class-action-lawsuit

The above is an example where an EULA applied to a lawsuit (even though there technically wasn't a EULA in place on the party suing)

 

Just because a lot of EULA's end up with sections voided doesn't mean that they are not enforceable.  EULA's aren't usually upheld as much simply because there are other factors at play (such as having already purchased a product, overreach, or things such as money not changing hands).  If TeamViewer wanted to they could make people who do chargeback's lives a pain (specifically if you break a contract and the other party incurs damages which they would as chargebacks cost them money and resources if the contract is upheld the other party could be on the hook for the damages)

 

 

[drumselector23]

On 2/14/2023 at 1:50 AM, williamcll said:

I just use anydesk, all the features of teamviewer with even less hassle.

will have to look into that as an alternative. cheers