sony, you need to change this

Sony Online Entertainment, you need to change your subscription billing policy. It is unfair and takes advantage of families to generate excess profits. What do I mean? Consider this scenario: kid wants to play Star Wars Galaxies online, and asks parent to provide a credit card for payment. Monthly charges start hitting the Visa bill. Kid plays SWG for a few months, finds it boring, and quits playing. A year later, parent notices the SOE line item on the Visa bill and asks kid if he still likes SWG. Kid says he quit playing a really long time ago. Parent contacts SOE and asks for a refund because the account has been unused for a year. SOE refuses, and points to the legalese in the click-through agreement that says they get to bill until the account is officially cancelled, without limitation. Helpful SOE customer service rep suggests parent should "write a letter" to SOE. Parent fumes, sends email to George Scotto, SOE's VP of customer service, requesting attention. Parent waits for a response. Parent waits more. Parent briefly considers throwing Sony digital camera against the wall. Parent vows not to buy anything from SOE in future. Parent starts telling people about how unhappy he is at Sony over this. It's all downhill from there.

Listen, I know that automatically renewing subscriptions is an increasingly common practice for online services. But I think it's a lousy business practice that takes advantage of people's natural tendency to lose track of these things. My magazine subscriptions don't automatically renew, they stop after a year. And the publishers remind me *frequently* of this fact. Did Sony remind me? Did they notice my kid hadn't logged on for a year, and alert me? Why not?

Hey SOE, what's more important to your business model: creating long term customer loyalty by being fair to your players and payers, or padding your profit margin by billing for dormant accounts?