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I have been in that situation before. I send them an email stating I wanted to cancel and I got the run of the mill "call this number". The reply proved that th

I have been in that situation before. I send them an email stating I wanted to cancel and I got the run of the mill "call this number". The reply proved that they're reading it so I send a reply back that I was unable to call, that they must forward the mail, and they're welcome to call me if they think it isn't me that is canceling. Then I refused any future CC payments and that was the end of it.

Overtonwindow 11y ago
When I encounter these types of windows that I can't seem to "close" I use Google's developer console to inspect the element and then...delete it. The box goes away and I can read the rest of the news article. It's a pain but it's better than clicking anything that might lead to further annoyances.
- dhimes 11y ago
  Same. Would be nice to have a "make this recur" button so when page reloads I don't have to keep doing it. EDIT: If it's just text I'm after, I'll also go in with elinks.
  - _asummers 11y ago
    You could use something like Greasemonkey and set up rules for that domain, though it'd be nice if this was automated from the action of deleting an element.
  - sp332 11y ago
    uBlock Origin has an element-selector built in. It pops up a little editing window, and you can modify and save the element to your own block list.
  - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    The downside is that web pages often change, so this might not work for long.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Write a small TamperMonkey script to fix their BS JS. That's what I did when Comcast wouldn't let me pay my bill without creating a Comcastic!!! Account. My login worked just fine, but they really wanted to block me from paying my bill until I created a separate account with their useless email features and other things for some reason. Killing some DOM elements let me pay their ransom.
- islon 11y ago
  I do something similar but using noScript (js disabled by default). Most of the times the news are loaded without popups and sometimes with wrong CSS but still readable. Sometimes I need to enable js only for the actual host for it to work. In the end it's worth the hassle.
- BlackFly 11y ago
  To be clear, you can do this in any browser. I also am in the habit of editing EULA's before agreeing to anything.
sago 11y ago
Unfortunately, you're risking your credit score. If you signed (or agreed to) a contract with a specific termination procedure, then just cancel your payments without going through that procedure, they are within their rights to recover the money. There's no law to say that you can terminate by email. Most companies won't bother chasing, but there's nothing to stop them really hurting you.
- alphapapa 11y ago
  Recover what money? Payment for services not yet rendered? In perpetuity until the customer makes a phone call?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Its not sensible, but it might be real.
  - sago 11y ago
    Yes, they are providing a service: access to their content. Whether you read it or not is not their fault. It's a silly situation that arises because of the (almost) zero marginal cost of providing digital media. It makes sense in the physical world: you can't claim your money back because you didn't read the magazine they sent. But these laws are much the same in the virtual world. If they provided and you agreed to a way to cancel, and you don't use that way, they are totally within their rights to continue (passively) providing access, and charging for it. In perpetuity, yes.
    - alphapapa 11y ago
      An analogy to a magazine subscription would be a for-pay email newsletter. In that case, if the newsletter was sent, obviously the company is owed. But in the case of a passive web site subscription, if the customer stops accessing the site and stops the method of payment, no services have been rendered, and no cost has been incurred by the company. Web server logs could even prove this (although the company could also falsify them). So a better analogy would probably be a gym membership. Imagine a gym refuses to allow a customer to cancel in-person or on the phone, instead requiring the customer to mail a letter. So a customer, justifiably angry at this, calls his bank or credit card and stops future payments, and never sets foot in the gym again. Now, no services have been rendered after that date, and no costs have been incurred by the gym. They are owed nothing--if not legally in all jurisdictions, then ethically and morally, and therefore legally it should be the same. I would like to see this tested in court, even a small claims court. In the case of a company intentionally making it difficult and time-consuming to unsubscribe, and a customer cancelling the payment method due to that difficulty, I have a feeling that most judges would side with the former customer. And as has been pointed out, in many places this is not legal, and I would not be surprised if that included several U.S. states.
Silhouette 11y ago
I certainly don't condone making it artificially difficult for people to cancel, but there are several reasonable points against accepting some random e-mail as cancellation. It's not authenticated or tamper-proof, for a start. There's no proof of whether or when it was actually delivered. It probably requires a real person to read and act on it, which may delay things like cancelling any recurring payment process, possibly beyond the point where more money has been spent. For any subscription services I run, if someone mails us asking to cancel, we normally direct them to the on-site cancellation process. This does use all our normal security and log-in procedures, and is fully automated and can be used in moments at any time. However, if someone did not cancel that way (or in one of the other ways we allow for in our terms) and just blocked their payment, we would be well within our legal rights to take action to recover the money they owed us. In practice we're only charging a small amount in these cases so we'd probably just cancel their service when payment didn't go through, but there is no guarantee any other business would make the same decision, so your strategy is risky.
- hvidgaard 11y ago
  > There's no proof of whether or when it was actually delivered If a real person replies to my mail, it's reasonable to expect that it has been delivered. They're more than welcome to ask any question via mail or initiate the call in the time I specify (outside of my working hours) - which I wrote. Or they can have an online form to do it as well, just like they did when they accepted my money in the first place. > we would be well within our legal rights to take action to recover the money they owed us I don't owe any money, since I told company I wanted to cancel before I had to. That is enough done from my part such that the consumer laws protect me and any lawsuit would be dismissed before I even hear about it.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    I don't owe any money, since I told company I wanted to cancel before I had to. Sorry, but that usually isn't how it works. That is enough done from my part such that the consumer laws protect me and any lawsuit would be dismissed before I even hear about it. I don't know where you're from, but in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with, it seems unlikely that would be the case. From a purely practical point of view, I'm not sure it should be the case either, even though I'm generally in favour of reasonable consumer protection laws. For e-mail specifically, there are too many problems with relying on it, particularly if significant amounts of money or other commitments are affected by whether or not a subscription continues.
jf271 11y ago
You are lucky you got a reply. All I got was another bill.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I skipped to the end of that process. Called ETrade to cancel. They said it cost money to cancel! That's why they had a minimum balance - so they could steal it when you tried to quit. That smelled. So instead I signed up for the ETrade checkbook, wrote myself a check for my remaining balance, cashed it, and never dealt with them again.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  I tried something similar with a big bank once. I got calls from collections agencies about 9 months later. I ended up paying them about $50 in account fees to save a black mark on my credit report. They were charging me to keep my account open even though I made it very clear that I didn't want that, but I didn't go through all their proper paperwork. So yeah, it's not like any of these types of establishments care at all about their reputation. They'll gladly ignore your not-to-their-letter cancellation, stop contacting you, and send your $50 usage fees for no actual usage to collections.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

When I encounter these types of windows that I can't seem to "close" I use Google's developer console to inspect the element and then...delete it. The box goes away and I can read the rest of the news article. It's a pain but it's better than clicking anything that might lead to further annoyances.

dhimes 11y ago
Same. Would be nice to have a "make this recur" button so when page reloads I don't have to keep doing it. EDIT: If it's just text I'm after, I'll also go in with elinks.
- _asummers 11y ago
  You could use something like Greasemonkey and set up rules for that domain, though it'd be nice if this was automated from the action of deleting an element.
- sp332 11y ago
  uBlock Origin has an element-selector built in. It pops up a little editing window, and you can modify and save the element to your own block list.
- knowaveragejoe 11y ago
  The downside is that web pages often change, so this might not work for long.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  Write a small TamperMonkey script to fix their BS JS. That's what I did when Comcast wouldn't let me pay my bill without creating a Comcastic!!! Account. My login worked just fine, but they really wanted to block me from paying my bill until I created a separate account with their useless email features and other things for some reason. Killing some DOM elements let me pay their ransom.
islon 11y ago
I do something similar but using noScript (js disabled by default). Most of the times the news are loaded without popups and sometimes with wrong CSS but still readable. Sometimes I need to enable js only for the actual host for it to work. In the end it's worth the hassle.
BlackFly 11y ago
To be clear, you can do this in any browser. I also am in the habit of editing EULA's before agreeing to anything.

sago 11y ago

Unfortunately, you're risking your credit score. If you signed (or agreed to) a contract with a specific termination procedure, then just cancel your payments without going through that procedure, they are within their rights to recover the money. There's no law to say that you can terminate by email. Most companies won't bother chasing, but there's nothing to stop them really hurting you.

alphapapa 11y ago
Recover what money? Payment for services not yet rendered? In perpetuity until the customer makes a phone call?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Its not sensible, but it might be real.
- sago 11y ago
  Yes, they are providing a service: access to their content. Whether you read it or not is not their fault. It's a silly situation that arises because of the (almost) zero marginal cost of providing digital media. It makes sense in the physical world: you can't claim your money back because you didn't read the magazine they sent. But these laws are much the same in the virtual world. If they provided and you agreed to a way to cancel, and you don't use that way, they are totally within their rights to continue (passively) providing access, and charging for it. In perpetuity, yes.
  - alphapapa 11y ago
    An analogy to a magazine subscription would be a for-pay email newsletter. In that case, if the newsletter was sent, obviously the company is owed. But in the case of a passive web site subscription, if the customer stops accessing the site and stops the method of payment, no services have been rendered, and no cost has been incurred by the company. Web server logs could even prove this (although the company could also falsify them). So a better analogy would probably be a gym membership. Imagine a gym refuses to allow a customer to cancel in-person or on the phone, instead requiring the customer to mail a letter. So a customer, justifiably angry at this, calls his bank or credit card and stops future payments, and never sets foot in the gym again. Now, no services have been rendered after that date, and no costs have been incurred by the gym. They are owed nothing--if not legally in all jurisdictions, then ethically and morally, and therefore legally it should be the same. I would like to see this tested in court, even a small claims court. In the case of a company intentionally making it difficult and time-consuming to unsubscribe, and a customer cancelling the payment method due to that difficulty, I have a feeling that most judges would side with the former customer. And as has been pointed out, in many places this is not legal, and I would not be surprised if that included several U.S. states.

Silhouette 11y ago

I certainly don't condone making it artificially difficult for people to cancel, but there are several reasonable points against accepting some random e-mail as cancellation. It's not authenticated or tamper-proof, for a start. There's no proof of whether or when it was actually delivered. It probably requires a real person to read and act on it, which may delay things like cancelling any recurring payment process, possibly beyond the point where more money has been spent. For any subscription services I run, if someone mails us asking to cancel, we normally direct them to the on-site cancellation process. This does use all our normal security and log-in procedures, and is fully automated and can be used in moments at any time. However, if someone did not cancel that way (or in one of the other ways we allow for in our terms) and just blocked their payment, we would be well within our legal rights to take action to recover the money they owed us. In practice we're only charging a small amount in these cases so we'd probably just cancel their service when payment didn't go through, but there is no guarantee any other business would make the same decision, so your strategy is risky.

hvidgaard 11y ago
> There's no proof of whether or when it was actually delivered If a real person replies to my mail, it's reasonable to expect that it has been delivered. They're more than welcome to ask any question via mail or initiate the call in the time I specify (outside of my working hours) - which I wrote. Or they can have an online form to do it as well, just like they did when they accepted my money in the first place. > we would be well within our legal rights to take action to recover the money they owed us I don't owe any money, since I told company I wanted to cancel before I had to. That is enough done from my part such that the consumer laws protect me and any lawsuit would be dismissed before I even hear about it.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  I don't owe any money, since I told company I wanted to cancel before I had to. Sorry, but that usually isn't how it works. That is enough done from my part such that the consumer laws protect me and any lawsuit would be dismissed before I even hear about it. I don't know where you're from, but in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with, it seems unlikely that would be the case. From a purely practical point of view, I'm not sure it should be the case either, even though I'm generally in favour of reasonable consumer protection laws. For e-mail specifically, there are too many problems with relying on it, particularly if significant amounts of money or other commitments are affected by whether or not a subscription continues.

jf271 11y ago

You are lucky you got a reply. All I got was another bill.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

I skipped to the end of that process. Called ETrade to cancel. They said it cost money to cancel! That's why they had a minimum balance - so they could steal it when you tried to quit. That smelled. So instead I signed up for the ETrade checkbook, wrote myself a check for my remaining balance, cashed it, and never dealt with them again.

seanp2k2 11y ago
I tried something similar with a big bank once. I got calls from collections agencies about 9 months later. I ended up paying them about $50 in account fees to save a black mark on my credit report. They were charging me to keep my account open even though I made it very clear that I didn't want that, but I didn't go through all their proper paperwork. So yeah, it's not like any of these types of establishments care at all about their reputation. They'll gladly ignore your not-to-their-letter cancellation, stop contacting you, and send your $50 usage fees for no actual usage to collections.