18 Minutes

Eighteen minutes. That's how long a coffee break lasts. A walk around the block. A call to an old friend, if you keep it short.

Eighteen minutes — that was also the difference between me and $623.

Here’s how it went. Since 2022, I’d had an annual subscription with DeepL, the German translation service. Good product, no question. But when you start counting subscriptions, DeepL isn’t the first one that stays. So I cancelled.

DeepL sent me a reminder three days before the renewal date. Three days — on an annual contract worth six hundred dollars. I acted immediately. Went into the portal, clicked Cancel, confirmed everything. The screen showed: *Cancellation scheduled.* Done, I thought.

It wasn’t.

My cancellation arrived at 6:50 p.m. The deadline was 6:32 p.m. Eighteen minutes of difference — on a cycle of 365 days. That’s 0.003 percent. The machine calculated, the machine renewed, the machine charged my account.

I wrote to support. Explained the situation. The reply came friendly. And empty. A template. Rules are rules.

No room to move.

I wrote again. Different person, same answer. Same template, presumably. They were sorry. They understood. They were afraid they couldn’t.

Now, I’m Swiss. And the Swiss understand rules. We have rules for rules. We have clocks that keep time to the second — in every train station, every kitchen, every factory. Punctuality isn’t a virtue. It’s the air we breathe.

But even the SBB — Swiss Federal Railways, world champions of punctuality — know what goodwill looks like. If you miss your train by one minute and your ticket is no longer valid, no conductor will fine you for the full fare. There is a grey zone between rule and humanity. That grey zone is called judgement.

DeepL has no judgement. DeepL has a server.

This isn’t about the $623. It’s about what happens when companies hand their customer relationships over to algorithms. When between a loyal user and a fair outcome there stands nothing but a clock that nobody’s watching.

Three days’ notice. Immediate response. Eighteen minutes of difference. And a company that says “No” twice without once actually looking.

There’s an old saying I know from the music business: “Winning a customer costs ten times more than keeping one.”

DeepL collected $623. And lost a customer who tells their story.

This one

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