If every customer is entitled to a refund then why isn't it automatic and automated?
There needs to be a term for this kind of malicious refund policy that does everything possible to prevent you from claiming it.
The account in another comments makes it clear why it's done like that: To get a refund you not only have to talk to support (i.e. spending quite some time in some chat interface), then escalate the issue (talking to another support agent once more) and THEN you might get your money.
I guess only a very small fraction of people will do this, making it a very cheap way for Spotify to stop any negative press regarding this issue.
Some people have been working on using LLM's for scam baiting. I've also seen LLM's used to interact with the chat support windows. It's just a matter of time now.
I've had Spotify premium for 12 years now. Back in 2020 I got a rather large prepaid debit card. I put a couple low dollar subscriptions on there. Spotify being one of them. Card ran out of money.
So Spotify instantly shifts me down to the free plan, after 1 failed payment, and deletes all the songs I synced to my phone until I update my card on file. Which was supremely obnoxious on mobile (but that's because I signed up for Spotify with Facebook, and 8 years after breaking FB SSO OTP code generation on mobile they still haven't fixed it)
No grace period, no warning that my payment failed and I was being downgraded. Just a big old full screen pop-up warning me that if I continue into the free version, it would immediately delete all my playlists.
Paying customer for 12+ years, with 12+ years of playlists. Had I not read the small print and just clicked "continue" it would've deleted ALL of that. Even after updating my payment method, and not having pressed "continue" (to the free plan) I had to re-sync all the songs I'd already downloaded.
They're a very user hostile company, and I've never had the slightest bit of sympathy in their fight with Apple, and this is a pretty good reinforcement.
