When I retired in December 2022, I had dozens of online accounts I would no longer be using. Accounts with web hosts, domain registrars, and many others.
One of my first projects the following month was to delete accounts for those services.
Little did I know how long it would take.
Almost five months later, I’m still receiving updates from organizations who chose to make deleting an account confusing and difficult.
The Good
Don’t get me wrong.
Many organizations plan for customers to delete their account by providing a clearly marked “Delete account” option in the customer profile.
Organizations like:
- Wayfair
- Mockflow
Kudos to their design and customer support teams!
The Frustrating
I quickly learned dozens of organizations have no clear process for deleting your account.
Not something for the faint of heart, but reading Terms and Conditions (TOC) is where I turned to find a contact email address (when no online contact form existed) or another online contact method to reach the organization.
Which led me to ask Rosenfeld Media via their online contact form to delete my account.
It was done quickly.
However, as a customer, I’d prefer an automated online deletion method instead of waiting for a response from a general online contact form.
Then there were organizations like Termageddon, which had me confused about their account deletion process.
And their customer support admitted it when I contacted them because I couldn’t find an option to delete my account:
Typically that’s done through our cancel form (Sorry it’s not as clearly visible as it should be. Our new user interface will be fixing that).
With that said, I took the liberty of deleting your free license and closing your agency partner account. You’re welcome to re-apply to be an agency partner any time to get back your free license and access to reseller rates and affiliate promo codes.
Good on Termageddon for recognizing the issue and deleting my license and closing my account!
What Are They Thinking?
The grand prize for irritating customers who want to delete accounts goes to Patreon.
I used Patreon in the past, when I had several active memberships. But I stopped the memberships years ago.
Patreon’s account deletion process requires you to visit their privacy policy page, “to grant access to the Patreon Privacy Center to view my public profile.”
Except every time I visited their page, whether I used Firefox or Chrome, I received the error message:
Unexpected error occurred while creating your session
Didn’t matter if I used an incognito window or not. I couldn’t get past the error message.
I reported the issue to Patreon support.
They didn’t seemed concerned their page was displaying error messages.
Rather they asked me to provide info to verify my account.
If I used a credit card, I needed to provide:
- Date and amount in your creator’s currency of your two most recent payments to Patreon
- Last four digits of your credit card number
- Card expiration date
- Billing zip code
- Current IP address
Something I’ve never provided to Patreon.
Seemed to me that kind of financial information was beyond what Patreon needed for verification, it seemed more like a phishing attempt to me.
Patreon offered another option: verify with PayPal payment information.
Except I already deleted my PayPal account info from my Patreon account.
I couldn’t provide info to Patreon for verification without reviewing my PayPal history for prior years (remember, I haven’t used Patreon for years).
Gosh, wouldn’t it have made sense for Patreon customer support to find out why their privacy page was throwing errors?
I can’t imagine I’m the only Patreon customer who reported the error.
Skillshare Shows the Way
I completely forgot I had a Skillshare account (somehow it wasn’t saved in my password manager) until I received an email notification about an update to their terms and privacy policy.
After getting dozens of these messages every year, you get used to the wording:
- We’ve updated our terms and privacy, etc.
- Changes are to support our business model, etc.
- By continuing to use their services/website after a certain date, you accept and agree to the changes
Except, Skillshare also included a link to delete my account:
… you may terminate your agreement with Skillshare at any time by deleting your account following these instructions.
Which led me to their online Privacy Request Form, a five-field form I quickly filled out and submitted.
Phew!
I don’t recall other terms and privacy policy notifications including a link to delete my account.
But I approve!
And I wish more organizations would include that option in their privacy notifications.
Wrapping Up
A big shoutout to organizations who make deleting accounts obvious in their online customer account profile.
And to Skillshare for recognizing new terms and conditions notifications can be another account deletion option.
As I learned, deleting an online account can be time-consuming and difficult.
For organizations who don’t provide an online option to cancel accounts, do better and respect your customers.
Offboarding is as much a part of the customer experience as onboarding is.
