Reoccurring Charges for online products... thoughts?

What does everyone here think about reoccurring charges?

Because I have such respect for Black Hat World and what everyone here has taught me, what do you think?

I have searched around for any other posts and I couldn't find a good discussion on this. Let us have a proper discussion on reoccurring charges and online software/services/etc. I know the likes of Skype, Steam, and numerous other companies right here on Black Hat World that will automatically charge for the next months/years fee. It just happens. I have personally paid many SEO companies on here for a month service and I was surprised when the following month I was charged again. I didn't complain. It was my fault I didn't cancel with them and no refund was given. My fault. I contacted the service provided and cancelled any following charges and used the service to its fullest extent until my time was up.

Let us have a proper discussion.
How should reoccurring charges be handled by the customer or the service provider?

Thoughts?

Thanks!
- Shea

I don't know what do you think about recurring revenue? The trick is to stop people from cancelling before the next charge comes around. Some people watch over their credit card statements like hawks and will cancel a $9.95/ month recurring charge...

Those sites are called membership sites.
They are great as with some people yo can reach $ xxx per month easily.

And theres a section here on bhw

A rather large topic that encompasses many different reasoning's. Monthly fees on what? On SEO services? Those are dependant upon the seller, what they want as a business model and what they have to offer their clients. If some provider only has zennoposter templates for 12 different web 2.0 sites that they maintain, they may want to sell one off packages to many people, whereas if they had a lot of resources and link targets they could offer scalable monthly programs that will deliver more diversity each new month.

If we are talking about apps online, it may or may not be worth the time. It depends on the service offered and its usefulness.

If we are talking about desktop apps, do they need to be constantly updated? If so, I rather pay monthly, quarterly, or yearly for them.

SEO Rage I completely agree about it being dependant on the creator of the product or service. If time is put into creating the end product and is constantly doing things for the buyer then a reoccurring fee just makes sense.

What do you think about how the re-billing is done? I have looked at companies like Steam and Skype and if you sign-up for their monthly credit, the fee comes around monthly. According to their terms of service, if a renewal comes through there can be no refund on this credit as it is the buyers responsibility to cancel the charge. Do terms like this make sense? I personally think this is fine. I think Apple even had a thing in their iTunes Terms of Service which said "All sales and rentals of products are final. Snooze? You lose." Haha!

- Shea

I don't do reoccurring charges but I break my payment up into two payments.. that has helped a lot. For example instead of charging $74, I'll charge two payments of $37 and people buy like crazy where as when people see $74 it's a 20% drop in sales.. so I like it to break up payments but other than that unless you deliver consistent value month after month it's hard to rebill until they cancel.