Stupidity sucks

It took a millisecond to change my mood from a sense of satisfaction to stupidity. Once again I had been ripped off by 3 Sweden. The story goes something like this.

Early May I got an offer from 3 Sweden (through S/MMS I think). They told me I could try their new service 3Musik for free all the summer. After that the cost would be SEK 49/month (less than 5 Euro). Signing up was easy (of course) and instant. I immediately got a SMS that said "Hello! The content package 3Musik that You ordered has been activated. Press the 3-star on Your 3mobile and select Musik to start. Thank You for choosing 3! [my translation]". From the sales material it was clear that the summer ends August 31. After that they would start charging.

As I've reported here in A1000blog throughout the summer I have played a little bit with the service. From my initial skepticism I have come to the conclusion that 3Musik is pretty OK. But, for my personal use I don't think it's worth the money. Mainly because I don't find it useful enough. Streamed audio draws a lot of battery. Downloaded videos are choppy and of insufficient sound quality and I never found any MP3's audio. Never bothered too really look for it and all the promos turned out to be for videos and ringtunes. All of that is probaly OK if you don't have any alternatives, but I have plenty. In addition the A1000 memory where downloaded stuff is stored is very limited and it was cumbersome to move it elsewhere. In any case I was satisfied with the possibility to try out an interesting service.

So, the last couple of weeks I have had in my mind to cancel the service before the end of the month. Today I decided to sign off from 3Musik. I logged into "Mitt 3" (My 3), found "my content packages" and three packages of which the first was 3Musik. Besides it was a little checkmark indicating that I subscribed to it. I clicked the 3Musik package and came to a page that acknowledged I was cancelling. The page also asked me why I was doint it. None of the suggested reasons felt right, so I write something like "I didn't find it expensive, but not worth the money".

After pressing the "OK" button the screen looked like the image above (click for an enlargement). It translates into "Hello Richard Gatarski. Feel as home. Your cancellation has been registered. The time to note your cancellation is 30 days. After that your subscription has ended. Regards from us at 3". What!?! Are they not following the agreement? The deal was to try for the summer for free. I don't care about the lousy SEK 49. I care about not being disappointed and irritated. Furthermore, 30 days doing what? It takes only a few computer cycles (read millisecond) to start the subscription. What motivates a months waiting time for cancellation? Don't you ever think that felt "like home".

Maybe it is just a coding error in the system and they had no thoughts of activating the notice time for us "summer trials". But that does not matter. The reality is how I feel - stupid.

p.s. As I checked some facts for the above I recognized that the 3 Sweden site still regards my 3Musik subscription as active and there is no information about the 30 days notice in the initial offer which is still out there. d.s.