Web Directory

Porn Surfing 101 - Cancelling A Membership

When you decide to cancel your subscription to a pay site you may be asked for any of: subscription number, username, password, email address or the first several digits of the credit card you signed up with (which is why you kept all that information, right?)

A link to the site's customer service page should be included in the confirmation e-mail you received when you joined. You can also find the links to cancel at:

* the Member Services or FAQ page of the site
* the Terms and Conditions document
* the form page where new members sign up

At one or more of these locations you will find a reference to canceling with a link to a cancellation form. Just as when you joined, document your cancellation request by noting the date and time. In virtually every instance you will receive an email confirmation of the cancellation immediately.

Don't Cancel by Email

Sometimes you are given the choice of canceling by sending an e-mail. Avoid this. Instead you should always try to cancel by web form instead because the transaction is automated and instantaneous. With an e-mail you never know when your request will be acted upon. 

If Cancelling Doesn't Work

The adult Internet, under increased scrutiny from federal regulators and credit card companies, has really cleaned up its act in recent years. Consequently, problems with getting a pay site subscription cancelled or getting a refund are very  rare. 

Still, there are some renegade (often foreign operated) sites out there and it is conceivable that your initial attempt to cancel a membership will fail. If you don't receive a confirmation of the cancellation, you should then e-mail the site to make sure they have processed it.

If you have cancelled a subscription and then find an unauthorized billing on your credit card statement, contact the pay site immediately and explain the situation. Most sites will issue a refund to you in order to avoid having the billing charged back to them.

Likewise, if you join a site and find that it has patently misled you as to its content or you are having unresolvable technical problems and cannot enjoy the content, contact the site and request a refund.

If a pay site refuses to refund an unauthorized billing you can call your credit card company. Both Visa and Mastercard will likely believe you, charge back the disputed amount to the pay site and debit your account accordingly.

Fighting Back
 
If you believe a website is ripping people off, you can file a consumer complaint with the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel and / or the The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IFCC) which is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center.