Dead Man Switch

Newbee
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So in the case of the Dead Man Switch - 4. Deadman switch! If you stop using Beeminder altogether, we’ll (eventually) stop charging you
How long is eventually? I have visions of Beeminder charging my cc in the case of real death!!
Yes, I can be a detail person and sometimes known ( :wink: ) to overthink things
Having said that, it is still a possibility for us all at anytime and someone will have to pay this - after working out what the hell the charges are :smile:

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Good question! Being vague about that is slightly intentional (we don’t want to tempt you to ever think “if I ignore this for N more days I’ll be off the hook…”) but mostly for historical reasons. Anyway, to actually answer the question, since you asked, eventually means that after 30 days we will stop automatically recommitting you when you derail. So in the worst case you could derail one more time after 30 days. So something like 37 or 39 days is the worst case.

For premium payments, you probably know we have auto-canceling subscriptions which is exactly 30 days. So I think all-in-all we’re drastically better about this than almost any other company.

Also if you have a high pledge cap and are worried about the charges escalating, we do start manually paying attention, definitely for any $810 charges. Ie, we’re personally guaranteeing that we’ll make sure you’re actually alive before letting an $810 charge go through. :slight_smile:

[UPDATE 2021: Oh our sweet summer past-selves. $810 charges are no big deal these days (for some users!) and we no longer feel like we should necessarily manually follow up on all of them, though often we still do. But in any case, for normal humans for whom $810 is absolutely a huge deal, probably just set your pledge cap to the level below that. In any case, it’s still the case that if you completely disappear, Beeminder will stop charging you within a couple months.]

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Brilliant - Thank You! That’s very reassuring.

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Every derailment comes with an email to check whether it’s legit, as well. So if your end-of-life planning includes “Who will check my email?” that person will be able to let Beeminder know. (Less morbidly, it’ll mean you get reminders you’re being charged, if you happen to just forget about your commitments.)

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Thank You. Yes, good point. I will of course put this in my “if anything happens to” letter.

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