from the nicely,-look-at-that dept
We’ve been writing a bunch recently about DoNotPay, the massively overvalued “AI lawyer” run by Stanford dropout* Joshua Browder. Once more, the corporate has obtained a ton of publicity relating to its “robotic lawyer,” usually from a number of the publicity stunts that Browder pulls. Once more, I feel the underlying idea of utilizing expertise to assist individuals remedy issues is an effective one. And that may embrace serving to them to get higher entry to helpful info that was, traditionally, stored behind costly authorized gates.
However all through this saga, it’s turning into clearer and clearer that DoNotPay is smoke and mirrors, and little or no is authentic. Even Browder’s publicity stunts appear to be nonsense.
Nonetheless, as we maintain mentioning, a number of the elementary providers it claims to supply sound like they may very well be helpful: for instance, serving to you cancel subscription providers that firms don’t need you to cancel. Everyone knows about these experiences. Firms make it simple to enroll, however inconceivable to cancel. DoNotPay is steadily lauded for serving to customers cancel such subscriptions. It brags about this service on its web site.
That web page has an extended listing of ridiculously poorly written “articles” that learn as in the event that they had been all generated for optimum SEO on cancel numerous providers. Who is aware of if these articles had been auto-generated with AI. Kathryn Tewson requested Joshua that query and he by no means answered.
Anyhoo, in case your massive claims in your web site are how you need to use DoNotPay to “battle firms,” “beat paperwork,” and “discover hidden cash,” you’d assume that your personal service would make it simple to cancel your subscription with out runaround and paperwork, and never maintain charging individuals lengthy after they’d been promised the subscription was canceled.
You’d assume.
Over on Twitter, Sasha Perigo instructed the story of how she observed that DoNotPay had been charging her $3/month for years final summer time, regardless of her by no means remembering that she had signed up (although she admits it’s fully attainable she signed up and simply forgot about it).
After emailing DoNotPay, buyer assist particular person “Quinn” instructed Sasha that her account had been cancelled. That electronic mail was on July twentieth final summer time, noting that her account would run by the top of the final month-to-month fee, on August twelfth.
Besides… Sasha just checked and found that DoNotPay continued to invoice her $3 each month since then.
Kathryn Tewson leapt into motion, tweeted out Sasha’s thread, and instructed Browder to refund Sasha’s cash.
Now, Browder has Tewson blocked on Twitter, however it seems that both he or another person on employees is monitoring her account, as a result of 27 minutes after Tewson tweeted that out, Sasha famous that DoNotPay DM’d her and stated it had cancelled her account and refunded her cash. In fact, it additionally claimed that the error was that she had two accounts, besides (as Sasha appropriately notes) this makes little sense, as she was solely charged as soon as per 30 days…
Additionally, it seems that Sasha will not be the one one. In her replies, Eve Kenneally identified that they’ve been making an attempt to get DoNotPay to cancel for two years with out success. Hilariously, Eve’s tweet shares a screenshot of an electronic mail from “Stacy” at DoNotPay saying “We’ll get this sorted out for you very quickly.” And that was actually from February 1st 2021. Precisely two years in the past.
Sasha DM’d DoNotPay about Eve’s account, and magically that was lastly cancelled as nicely, with DoNotPay dubiously claiming that it hadn’t been capable of finding Eve’s account till Sasha referred to as it to their consideration. Then, they “sorted” Eve’s account inside mere minutes.
In the meantime, I’ll observe that whereas the subscription charge for DoNotPay that Sasha and others had been paying was $3/month (a quantity low sufficient to overlook), in case you strive to enroll now, it says $36 each two months (which looks as if a bizarre option to invoice).
It feels like DoNotPay jacked its costs approach up (although, oddly, sticking to the $36 quantity, as the unique pricing was $36 per yr. A TechCrunch article from a yr and a half in the past says that the value was $36 every three months, versus each two months immediately). I assume when you’ve raised $27.7 million {dollars}, and your instruments are as flimsy as Tewson found final week, the perfect you are able to do to attempt to present your buyers (together with Sam Bankman-Fried and his bankrupt agency Alameda Analysis) that you just’re rising the enterprise is jack up costs and attempt to sucker in additional customers, after which make it laborious to cancel.
However, actually, you kinda need to ask your self: how good can Browder’s “AI” service be at canceling different providers when it could’t even cancel individuals’s personal DoNotPay accounts? Do you actually need to pay $36 each couple of months to seek out out?
* Earlier on Tuesday, Kathryn Tewson called out the truth that Browder each claimed to have a level from Stanford in Laptop Science and to have dropped out. After she tweeted about this, though Browder blocks her, his LinkedIn magically modified to say that he had dropped out (although, oddly, it nonetheless stated he had a B.S. diploma from Stanford for a short while after which was up to date a second time to only observe that CS was his “main”).
Filed Beneath: ai, canceling subscriptions, joshua browder, subscriptions
Firms: donotpay
