Sling TV — at best very poor customer service, at worst willfully stealing customers money.
Back in April 2017 I signed up for a one week trial of Sling TV — But never actually used the service, and from memory on 22 April, the day before the trial expired, I logged into the account and ‘thought’ I had cancelled prior to the trial period ending. I recall the date because I added it into my calendar.
As it turns out, Sling didn’t recognize my cancellation on the 22nd of April and started charging my credit card for a monthly subscription. I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that I just was too dumb to work out how to cancel (even though I’ve been in the tech and UI industry for 20 years)
Now, I should point out that on both Facebook and variously blogs etc Sling TV seems to have a terrible reputation of willfully trying to thwart peoples attempt to cancel their subscriptions or cancelling their active accounts.
Here are some examples of past customer complaints:
https://sling-tv.pissedconsumer.com/complaints/RT-P.html
And this https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/sling-tv/internet/sling-tv-dish-network-deceptive-fraud-impede-cancellation-awful-wrong-avoid-class-a-1299898 — where it seems Sling TV made it über difficult to cancel by using tiny text and blurred out screenshots,. I guess they figured if you couldn’t work out how to cancel they might get another month or two subscription out of you.
As for my situation — after what I considered were reasonable and respectful attempt to request at least a partial refund, they flatly refused.
As I mentioned above, I had first tried to cancel on 22 April a day before the trial ended. Like I said, lets give them the benefit of the doubt and just say “I was too dumb to work out how to cancel” (like the guy in the above example, and those apparently simpletons with the same complaint on Facebook)
But I wasn’t too dumb to eventually notice they were still charging my credit card (albeit 5 month later), and on 27 September I email them to request they cancel immediately given my effort on 22 April hadn’t worked. Below is the email I sent to an email address they had included on one of their email info@sling.com
But once again I was too dumb for believing they would act on my email. They didn’t act, they ignored it. But because I was too dumb — I assumed it would be sorted and got on with my life. Until again four months later spotting the Sting TV, on sorry I meant Sling TV on my credit card.
So this time with all the evidence I had — they agreed to finally cancel my account once at the end of January (i.e. an account that I had never used and so far had been charged US$234). But when I asked about being refunded for at least the period after I had sent the email to info@sling.com on 27 September, their reply was….
Once again, dumbo me had sent my cancellation request to apparently the wrong email address. Even though they included the info@sling.com email on the emails they sent to me. They got the email, as it didn’t bounce back but they didn’t think to perhaps reply and say “hey dumbo use this@email.com instead”, because if they did that I might actually had end up cancelling and deprive four more months of subscriptions.
So my advice would be to avoid the temptation of a free one week or any duration trial with Sting TV (ask Sling TV). I am obviously biased given the experience cost me $234 and got zilch out of it, except the satisfaction of writing this blog.
PS. I am a big fan of @trustpilot and I just check the Sling.com account and below is seriously the five most recent reviews…. and if you scroll down the next three pages you get the same one star rating and sentiment from disgruntled customers. Surprising they can still be in business with such a bad reputation.
