I used to use GoToMyPC.com to remotely access my home machines while I was away, but a couple years ago a friend pointed out that LogMeIn.com was cheaper and had some services that surpassed GoToMyPC.com. I tested it out and switched. While I still like the LogMeIn.com service, and it is priced fairly cheaply, I absolutely hate LogMeIn.com’s business practices.
Let me illustrate. After Christmas I realized I spent a bit too much money on presents and needed to cut back some expenses before my next pay check. Most online services make this easy. I was able to log into my WoW account and a few clicks later I’d canceled my account outright — restarting it a few days later would be just as simple. Same thing with the Usenet/VPN provider I use, Giganews. They actually have a really slick “suspend account” feature that I really appreciate.
OTOH, here’s how you suspend or cancel an account at LogMeIn — you post a message to their support system asking for your account to be canceled. Then a support person sends you an email saying they’ve “scheduled” your account to be canceled, whatever the f— that means.
Of course, what it meant in my cases is that I put in a request for the account to be canceled over a weekend, so they didn’t actually cancel it until Monday … after they’d already charged my account for the next month!
Blizzard, Giganews, and others make it easy to cancel my account pretty much anytime and from anywhere I want. Just like web designers realized many years ago, the easier a site or service is to leave, the more enticing it is to stay. I know I can subscribe to WoW or Giganews or any of a half dozen other web services I use and come and go as I want.
Not so with LogMeIn.com. Instead I have to send a request to the ether and then just hope my request gets fulfilled. So when my LogMeIn.com account finally does get canceled, I’ll have to think long and hard about ever coming back because I know the company is going to make it a pain in the ass for me to ever leave again. That’s just a ridiculous policy for a web service in 2011.