AutoShip, or the automatic delivery of products or services on a monthly basis primarily serves two functions: 1) To create consistent consumption and repeat purchases of that product or service by the consumer; 2) Customer convenience, by eliminating the need for the customer to have to repeatedly reorder the same products or services over and over again.

Unfortunately, the benefits of AutoShip for either of the above purposes are vastly overrated. It is true that network marketing companies would love to see their customers continue to come back month after month to make repeat purchases. However, in reality, it simply doesn't work that way. Unless you have a product or service that by nature is generally delivered via ongoing subscription, i.e., newspapers and magazines, utilities (including communications and Internet), insurance, loans, financial services, etc., just getting the customer to agree to go on AutoShip is no guarantee that they won't cancel it.

Many companies and their representatives like to rely on the fact that a certain percentage of customers will indeed stay on AutoShip for extended periods for no other reason than habit, and/or because they simply don't know how to cancel it. Is that really the position that you want your customers to be in, though? People who are buying your product simply because they forgot or don't know how to cancel the recurring AutoShip order?

Most friends and associates tend to view me as a well organized person. And certainly I'm not one to waste money. Yet, despite that, I will admit that in any given year it is not uncommon for me to spend anywhere from several hundred to over one thousand dollars on products and services that I simply didn't have time (or didn't know how) to cancel. It is not by accident that many companies make it easy to sign up for the automatic delivery of their products or services, but provide no easy way to cancel.

In the case of one MLM related service that I decided to try out, not only was there no way to cancel online, but their Contact form didn't work, so there was, seemingly, no way to send them an email either! At first, they provided only a Contact form and no email address. When eventually I found an email address and sent an email asking them to cancel my account there was no reply! Finally I found a phone number and called them, and even then they often had problems with their voicemail box being full or not taking messages, etc.