I recently canceled my account with Vonage and on behalf of Space Shot canceled our contract with Custom Weather upon switching to AccuWeather which is free. It took about fifteen minutes to navigate all of the extra offers that Vonage wanted to make me to try to retain me. It may be good short-term business, but I felt their hard-sell tactics alienate me. I draw the line if an organization asks me “are you sure?” after I have already said I don’t want something, I complain to their customer service for being rude. They may be retaining a few extra customers, but I’ll remember how long it took to cancel the service and be less likely to buy again given the “exit tax”. These last few customers seem sub prime.

Space Shot also canceled its contract with Custom Weather. What do you think this term in my contract with them says?

…this Agreement will continue for further successive one year periods until it is terminated by either party giving to the other not less than 90 days written notice prior to the end of the initial one year period or on any subsequent anniversary of the Effective Date…

I think it means Space Shot can cancel with no notice on its second and subsequent anniversary with no notice. Space Shot also requested early termination of the current year contract which is in no way prohibited and a refund which is also consistent with policy as reported in the contract. Not acknowledged.

Custom Weather CEO, Geoff Flint wrote me:

I apologize if our lawyers did not make that clause clear enough since the “or” that you refer to is associated with the last verb which was “giving” in the clause “giving to the other not less than 90 days written notice.”

and later:

Our contract was put together by a top law firm and like I said in my last email, the “or” that you referred to is always associated with the verb closest to the “or” statement and in this case, that required giving 90 days notice.

But that would lead to “this Agreement will continue for further successive one year periods until it is terminated by either party giving to the other not less than 90 days written notice prior to … on any subsequent anniversary of the Effective Date”. The “on” in this read makes no sense to me.

Perhaps this read: “this Agreement will continue for further successive one year periods until it is terminated by either party giving to the other not less than 90 days written notice … on any subsequent anniversary of the Effective Date” also makes no sense. That would be 364-730 days notice which contradicts the “90 days”.

The only thing that makes sense to me for the second condition is “this Agreement will continue for further successive one year periods until it is terminated by either party … on any subsequent anniversary of the Effective Date”.

If we agree with Geoff’s read, he is committing Custom Weather to an annual negative checkoff where the negative checkoff comes ten months before the contract renewal date. His read further commits his firm to a no-refund policy.

Is Vonage a case of a gotcha cancellation policy, Custom Weather, or both, or neither?