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If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with
by mrspeaker 8y ago
If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it.
I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the phone number of someone to call to cancel (remember phone calls?!). They put the hard sell to stay.
My plans changed, I stayed in the country. I really loved my NYTimes subscription (I miss my crosswords) - but ain't no way I'm signing up again until they make it equally easy to leave as it is to join. I apply that to every company I deal with now.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoprivacy.com is probably what you want. You're making it a pain in the butt to cancel? That card is no longer valid.
- cschneid 8y agoRemember that this is not cancelling, and some companies can and will sell your bad debt to collection agencies. You don't get out of contracts just by ghosting on them.
- maz1b 8y agoCan you expand further on this?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fencepost 8y agoIf you have a contract for a service, quite often simply stopping paying does not end the contract - it just builds up charges and past-due fees. If you stop paying your electricity bill, the utility doesn't cut you off immediately - they keep providing service (availability of electricity, even if you're not using any because you flipped the circuit breakers) and charges keep accruing. Eventually services will be cut off, but contractually you're likely responsible for charges up to that point and the companies involved may end up selling that debt to collection agencies (often for pennies on the dollar).
- user5994461 8y agoThat's not entirely comparable. For utilities, you always pay much later after it was consumed. At least a whole month usually. It's a fundamental constraint with distributing water and electricity. You're always in debt with the utility provider. For a newspapers subscription, you always pay in advance. They can cut it anytime. There is no reason for them to give you access if you didn't pay.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIn the UK the utilities take money to meet an estimated bill; meaning most people are usually creditors to the utility. If a customer doesn't rein it in then the utility will often take stupid amounts to meet an anticipated bill. I think they were threatened with regulation and so stopped being so blatant, but they make money off holding customer's cash.
- user5994461 8y agoThe projection is roughly the monthly consumption from last year if I am not not mistaking. You should change provider if you're being charged stupid amounts. The provider certainly allows debt when moving in, while the contracts and payments are setup. Afterwards, I am not sure if the last bill if for the next or past period, probably a bit of both.
- bduerst 8y agoBad debt lists are sold for pennies on the dollar to collection agencies, who can and do make a profit on then collecting a percentage of it. Planet Money had a good podcast episode on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/08/354591198/episode-574-the-buffalo-talk-off https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/08/354591198/epis...
- briandear 8y agoNot to mention trashing your credit in the process.
- cschneid 8y agoSay you sign up for a gym. The agreement is for $50/month with a year commitment. You give them a credit card to pay. 6 months in, you cancel your credit card (or it expires or whatever). The fact that they can't bill you doesn't change that you agreed to the plan and that you owe the second 6 months anyway. That's a debt and the gym can (and some do!) choose to go after you for it in whatever legal way they feel. That's collection agencies, and direct lawsuits. An open ended agreement ($10/month for a newspaper) often will have this same style - you agree to pay $10/month for access, they give you access. Valid until cancelled. If you simply ghost - is that cancellation? Probably not, and it's up to the contract. Of course, most consumer things just drop it and shrug, but that is not a given.
- mLuby 8y agoWell explained. Privacy.com gives the illusion of control in this regard (and I love the service) but to enable full user control like this you have to be untraceable after ghosting, which means signing up with a "fake" (I prefer "per-use") identity. --amend yes it's (close to) fraud so be careful. Lots of things were illegal before they weren't; union strikes come to mind.
- eli 8y agoSigning a contract under a false identity sounds legally very questionable
- manigandham 8y agoThat is fraud. Do not use fake identities to buy things so you can then get out of contracts by not paying.
- mindslight 8y agoThis is true, but only in regards to actual commitments like a yearly gym membership. If your intent is to mitigate dark patterns that frustrate the cancellation of a pay-as-you-go relationship, it's better described as shielding yourself from fraud and extortion. Still, everybody should routinely use nyms when interacting with parties that needlessly ask for them - if for nothing else than to hinder the surveillance society.
- username223 8y agoThis is no joke. If you get tired of dealing with an annoying Comcast "customer retention specialist"[1] and simply stop paying and stop using their service, they'll keep charging you for awhile, then sell the bill to a collections agency. This hurts your credit rating, and can have all sorts of side effects and take years to repair. It sucks, but it's how things are. [1] https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service
- manigandham 8y agoJust because you stop paying doesn't mean you stopped the subscription. This is why there are late fees in the first place. If you do this with any sizable company, you will just end up accumulating the original charge along with late fees until it is sent to collections and hits your credit report. Even if you get lucky and they just cancel your service, your lack of payment will still be reported to payment networks and eventually you will be deemed high risk when paying for other things.
- fipple 8y agoWhat PayPal should do is offer a “PayPal subscriptions” product where the terms require cancellability through PayPal. So NYt and others can’t offer PayPal unless they agree, and when a user cancels through PayPal, PP agrees to send an API call to NYT notifying them.
- virtualized 8y agoPaypal has recurring payments and I thought it was exactly this. Never tried to cancel via Paypal, so I am not sure how this works.
- zenexer 8y agoThat’s not entirely true; it seems to depend how much effort you put into informing them that you want to cancel. If they make it too difficult, then they’re creating all sorts of legal issues. They’d have to be pretty ballsy to sell it to a debt collector at that point—it does happen, but it’s pretty rare, and I’ve never heard of anyone actually being forced to pay in the end. That BS just isn’t going to hold up in a courtroom.
- faitswulff 8y agoSo how easy is it to cancel privacy.com?
- JesseWright 8y agoI use Privacy.com but haven't had to cancel. You don't pay for the service, as they make their money in adding as a credit-card company and charging merchants fees (or something to that effect). The trade-off is that I had to give them access to my bank account, which would likely make it much more difficult to cut them off if it came to it. It's extremely useful though, and they say all the right words when it comes to their revenue and their management of user data. The way I see it: they're basically a credit-card company that gives you much finer control of your online payments; they could probably screw me over, but so could my actual credit-card company. They at least make it harder for other companies to screw me over.
- sjg007 8y agoSounds like a good idea. Basically a concierge credit card service that can negotiate canceling a subscription for you. That's actually the best thing that can happen for these cancel my contract type companies.. You pay a flat fee say $10 and then do the hassle of canceling for you or something. Or you build it in as a perk. The mass aggregation factor gives you some money to get the whole process streamlined for your customers.
- nammi 8y agoTheir support pages didn't seem to have any information on how to cancel. I emailed their support and requested to have my account deleted and got a polite reply from a human the next morning saying that they had done so.
- faitswulff 8y agoGood to know, thanks!
- rzzzt 8y agoHow is this working? Don't they send the unpaid part to collections?
- towelr34dy 8y agoOnly for certain things. My experience is anything primarily offline, they collect: gyms, ISPs, gas companies, etc. Anything primarily online? They don't. Netflix, hulu, most credit card subscriptions that are VC funded (I've done with with countless SAAS providers), etc. I've ghosted them with no repercussions on my credit score or collections calls. Edit: I also use paypal and click the remove merchant authorization button from there; that might also trigger some kind of forced cancellation?
- sjg007 8y agoMastercard is getting into the cancel subscriptions game too.
- manigandham 8y agoThis is very bad advice. Do not just cancel your payment and expect things to be ok. You might end up with additional late fees, increased risk scores, notices on your credit report, and collection agencies. Cancel the service properly and always have proof.
- rurounijones 8y agoWouldn't just cancelling the card and sending them a email to their support email saying "I hereby give notice I have cancelledy subscription and further attempts to come will fail". I doubt any court would go against the consumer in that situation. Especially if you never login or use the service again.
- manigandham 8y agoI don't know the legal details but court is a far off thing. Companies don't have to accept arbitrary notices and can send your account to collections for being past-due according to whatever terms you accepted for the subscription.
- pgustafs 8y agoAmen. Same problem with Blue Apron and every other meal kit delivery startup.
- berberous 8y agoThey make you subscribe (vs purchasing just a single meal), which is very annoying and the reason I don't use them, but I've found them very easy to cancel. You just click a button online. And even better, they then send you a $60 coupon to rejoin a month later.
- pgustafs 8y agoSure, it's not like you have to call them, but all the ones I've tried have employed anti-patterns for cancelling meals and worse ones for cancelling subscriptions.
- chrisseaton 8y agoWhat are credit card deets?
- scblock 8y agoDeets is just a shorthand for details.
- chrisseaton 8y agoOh I assumed it was some new temporary credit card thing!
- sxates 8y agoHow do you determine how easy it is to leave before you actually need to do it? Before even signing up?
- tedunangst 8y agoReading about the experiences of others. Or asking around.
- anonytrary 8y agoIt's sad that that's the only way at this point. Maybe sites will start bragging about how easy it is to leave if it becomes taboo enough to make it hard to leave (akin to "100% money back guarantee if you don't like it!"). Until then, someone's gotta be the first to try the poison.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago100% money back guarantee is also something that's usually gated behind a sufficiently annoying process that few people take advantage of it.
- zo1 8y agoPersonally, I would just assume they're all like that, to varying degrees. Everyone optimizes the "on-boarding" process that they completely neglect how to let customers get out.
- everybodyknows 8y agoNot true. I cancelled Netflix last month, no problem.
- objektif 8y agoHere at HN.
- r3bl 8y agoThis tool is highly useful: https://backgroundchecks.org/justdeleteme/ https://backgroundchecks.org/justdeleteme/ It ranks hundreds of websites from "easy" to "impossible".
- kuschku 8y agoIf it’s harder to leave than to join, then it’s also illegal in the EU. You have to be able to cancel through the same medium through which you can subscribe (so if you can subscribe through email, then unsubscribing only through snail mailing a letter is illegal), and it can’t be an unreasonable effort. I’m very interested what the consumer protection agencies in the EU have to say about this.
- distances 8y agoThis is definitely not the case in Germany, unless there has been a very recent change in legislation. There are lots of scummy companies in Germany that make you fax/email copies of official ID to unsubscribe, even if joining was possible with a click of a button.
- tormeh 8y agoI'd say that this is more common than not. Fax/mail is the standard among the telecoms. That said, I'm trying really hard to buy internet from Deutsche Telekom right now without much success, so it might just be that they're really struggling to make anything work at all, and they prioritize selling. I don't know how Germany got here. It's just absolutely insane at this point.
- kuschku 8y agoThey simply violate the law and don't care about it, it's that simple. It wouldn't be the first time they did that. I've been waiting since November to try and switch ISPs cause Unitymedia is as reliable as RFC 1149.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago> reliable as RFC 1149 Don't tell me... As reliable as Twitter? It's got birds :-D
- germanier 8y agoSince October 2016 this practice is explicitly outlawed (for most cases) https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Artikel/DE/2015/12182015_Verbandsklagerecht.html https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Artikel/DE/2015/12182015_Verb... Although the way you describe it probably wasn't legal for a long time.
- svv 8y agoI've cancelled by NYTimes subscription just a few months ago. Didn't have to do any phone calls-- just answered a few questions in the chat, right there on their website.
- _bxg1 8y agoThey "generously" let you use an IM chat now, yes. But there's no excuse for it not being a simple button. The only reason is so they can raise the effort barrier just a bit more.
- tobr 8y agoHad a similar experience when I left my previous ISP. I didn’t even have a choice to keep the service as I was moving. Upgrading the service was an easy click, but cancelling consisted of reading through their help pages to find a number to call, which of course was only open a few hours per week. It explicitly said that this was the only way to cancel. Instead I simply sent them an email insisting that I wanted to cancel, and that I refused to talk to them on the phone to do it. They replied with a “great offer” to reduce the price. In my reply I simply insisted on cancelling. I didn’t hear from them again, except for a confirmation by post a while later that the service had been cancelled. Of course, this is much more effort than it should be, especially an emotional effort because being treated like this is very upsetting. But it might be worth trying.
- jonahx 8y ago> just answered a few questions in the chat there is no "just" about that...
- tedunangst 8y agoThey wouldn't let me cancel until I answered the question "how are you doing today?" I said "I want to cancel" but they just repeated the question until I finally said "fine" and then the conversation could proceed. Fun times.
- 8y ago
- bennylope 8y agoThe NYT at least lets you use PayPal. When I wanted to cancel I couldn't even get through to a rep, so I just switched my payment method to PayPal and then deauthorized the recurring payment from PayPal.
- towelr34dy 8y agoSo much this. I LOVE paypal as a user because of it. All my subscriptions go through it and if it isn't offered via paypal, I'll reconsider. I love to see a list of all my subscriptions with the ability to unilaterally cancel my subscription at any time via PayPal... I never even contact the companies I 'unsubscribe' from... I simply remove their access to my paypal.
- p2t2p 8y agoI've recently paid for a VPN subscription using BitCoin. When you do BitCoin there is no auto renewal and I consider it to be a good thing. EDIT: s/now/no
- artursapek 8y agoIt's a pita for the service provider who is implementing the subscription logic, but as the customer it's pretty sweet.
- michaelt 8y agoIsn't the logic the same as a gift subscription? Just at the payment stage you send them to BitPay instead of Paypal?
- artursapek 8y agoThe main difference is customers will send the BTC a few minutes too late, and then it turns into this situation where it has to be refunded. This used to be an extra step when using Stripe for BTC payments (they have since stopped supporting BTC payments completely)
- aurea 8y agoThe daily Washington Post crosswords are a nice free alternative.
- bookofjoe 8y agoI'm an online Washington Post subscriber; IMHO it's well worth $9.99/month.
- digikata 8y agoOn that note, I was really impressed with how easy it was to end an xmradio trial subscription just recently. I had gone over a few days into their regular monthly service. I was anticipating something unpleasant, but it was very easy to cancel, and they refunded the new month pro-rata without prompting.
- jwr 8y agoIt seems to be a dark pattern in the news/media industry. Even the otherwise enlightened Economist makes you CALL in order to cancel/change your subscription. Going from a quick, precise and inexpensive communications channel to a slow, synchronous, error-prone and costly one is something that really annoys me.
- Klover 8y agoI just sent them an email in order to cancel but maybe that’s different in the EU.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoNo, I had to phone.
- Spooky23 8y agoI don’t get why NY Times gets so much grief. They are fast and friendly on the phone and usually offer to halve the bill if it’s a price thing. Dropbox is annoying to me because I have a service that I’m overpaying for, lack basic features like search, up sell with every interaction, and make leaving tough too.
- icelancer 8y ago> on the phone This should be an option, not the only way to cancel.
- Spooky23 8y agoWhy? I’m surprised at the downvotes I got on my original comment. The Dropbox online cancellation, like many others, is a deceptive, tricky option designed to make you think that you cancelled when you did not to rip you off. Dropbox isn’t unusual. Why is a phone call so evil? It’s bizarre to me that a arguably marginal inconvenience is more noxious than active trickery.
- tedunangst 8y agoI want to cancel my subscription. I don't want to explain why to a pleading sales rep telling me about all the great things I'm going to miss while they "pull up my account".
- cge 8y agoWell, at least in California, it is outright illegal (from SB-313).
- function_seven 8y agoCan you imagine a business that insisted on a phone call to begin a subscription? Like, say the NYT website had just a phone number instead of a link and a form. That would severely reduce their circulation. The whole reason the signup flow is done entirely online is because its simpler and more convenient for both the subscriber and the provider. Which tells you why they don't offer the cancel flow through the same medium. Because it's too easy. They want to add friction and inconvenience to the cancellation. It's not as bad as many gyms ("you must (snail) mail a form to our headquarters to cancel"), but it's a step in that direction.
- Kankuro 8y agoI wanted to subscribed to Mediapart, one of the very very few independent news site in France. Everything is online (subscription, article) but the unsubscription with requires register mail! That's crazy, they are financed only by subscriptions (paywall, no ads) and not backed by any major media group/tycoon/the state, but they still rely on this dishonest practice. I read that you can unsubscribe by email, but if it's not written in the terms and conditions I'm not going to trust them on that. What a pity.
- bduerst 8y agoFascinating. This retention tactic is usually pitched as a successful last-ditch attempt to retain subscription customers, but it comes at a hidden cost to the brand - and losing repeat buyers like yourself. Comcast, Blue Apron, credit cards, etc. do it but I didn't think publishers were getting to this point.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- caconym_ 8y agoThis happened to me too with NYT. 20 minutes on the phone with some poor woman whose compensation I'm sure depended in part on convincing me not to cancel. I was really surprised because they generally have a good reputation as an organization. I'll never let them get their hands on my payment details again.
- ianai 8y agoThere should be a way to cancel this sort of thing with your bank. On a recurring basis.
- SteveNuts 8y agoI suppose you could use something like Privacy.com and just revoke the card.
- tomschlick 8y agoThats a good way to get 100 calls from a collection agency.
- davidgh 8y agoUnless the contract bound you to a specific term, I don’t think they will attempt to send you to collections. What do you owe if you haven’t contractually agreed to a subscription term?
- ohiovr 8y agoYou can sometimes find a merchant’s direct line for billing in common personal banking sites. There is usually a toll free number you can call concerning on going payments like subscriptions next to a transaction. They got to cooperate or they could run afoul of the bank so I have found the numbers useful.
- api 8y agoIf I have to call to cancel I usually just make a fraud complaint. It causes more pain to the company in exchange for hassling me this way. I will also never ever EVER use you again if you do this, and I will provide a terrible review of your product to anyone who asks. Pretty much any kind of slimy "roach motel" sales or customer retention tactic get your company instantly placed in the bottom circle of hell in my mind.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoThey deserve it, but, does the law have your back on this, or are you accepting some risk of being charged with false accusation?
- rootusrootus 8y agoHappened to me too. Guy actually laughed at me when I refused a six-months-for-free-if-you-stay option. In that instant I committed to never giving the NYT another dime of my money. Another one is the ACLU. Easy to start, damn near impossible to stop without just canceling your card. All I wanted to do is change to a different card, but they ignore me. Great way to ruin your reputation.
- dguo 8y agoIf you'd like to donate to the ACLU in a way that lets you easily change/cancel your donations, I recommend using Sublime Fund (https://sublimefund.org/ https://sublimefund.org/). Disclaimer that I am a founder. We deduct the cost of credit card processing, but we don't charge any sort of platform fee. Donating should be easy, but canceling should be just as easy. You can do it through our website anytime without speaking to anyone.
- massysett 8y agoI would never even consider donating to an organization if I have to think about using a service like yours, I only donate to organizations that I like and are trustworthy, but thanks anyways
- mikeash 8y agoI made a one-time donation to the ACLU, and they subsequently spent it all on mailing me crap asking for more.
- scarcely 8y agoLmao my NYT guy actually switched into a stereotypical Chinese accent when I didn't catch sth he said and asked him could he repeat (my surname is Chinese)
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoMimicking an accent can help understandability, fwiw. Might not apply here, but it's possible they were just attempting to be understood.
- megaman8 8y agoYup, I'm making a note of this, and will never sign up for a DropBox Pro account now.
- 1123581321 8y agoHow likely were you to sign up beforehand?
- megaman8 8y agoit's a good point. I wasn't in the market for that type of service anyways. But, if I was at any time in the future, I'd look at other competitors.
- rkagerer 8y agoFor services like that it might be easier just to get a new credit card ;-)
- lurquer 8y agoBe careful with this. I had a monthly charge from several vendors. Despite phone calls, letters, etc. cancelling the service, they would keep charging. So, I said, 'screw it' and got a new card. The next month -- on my new card -- the charges appeared. Turns out that Visa will honor a recurring charge even if the old card number has been cancelled. Insane. You will need to move to an entirely different type of card. Don't know if this is true for the others (Amex, discover, etc) but I was shocked that this was Visa's policy.
- throw82m2bdv 8y agoThe account number update feature can be turned off for accounts at the credit card company I work for. It must be done before the account is cancelled, though, and the setting itself is not widely known by front-line reps.
- cstejerean 8y agoFor this reason I only subscribe via AppStore subscriptions or PayPal whenever possible (and unless I have no choice I won’t subscribe otherwise).
- shereadsthenews 8y agoI recently canceled NYT by email in one round.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoPerhaps if they know they can retain you by being awkward then they'll try; if they know you won't succumb then they're better saving their "breath".
- paulie_a 8y agoThere was one instance of a subscription that seemed impossible to cancel. I spent enough effort trying. I called the credit card company and explained the steps I had taken and told them I want any future charges to be considered fraudulent. That company got the hint really quickly. On the flip side I subscribed to cigar afficiando for a year decade ago. Every year I get a renewal notice, every year I get new issues. I definitely have not paid for it since the first year. I don't know if it is to keep subscription stats up or they make enough on the ad revenue. But I'll receive multiple notices each year to renew and they just keep coming for free.
- NIL8 8y agoExactly the way I feel. I'm willing to lose big just to make this point to every company I deal with, nowadays. 'Too many Mutha'uckas...'
- neya 8y agoThis is a dark pattern usually dying companies like to follow. Why? Because, if you are confident of the value you provide to your customer, you don't need to be so aggressive about not letting them go. Yes, retention is an important KPI, but trust and transparency are even more important than anything else, so companies that offer little value and can't keep up with competition usually do this because they know they are dying. A little while ago, I noticed the dark pattern that dropbox uses and showed it to my friend while talking about dark patterns. Turns out he was in charge of his university for selecting a good vendor for file storage. He saw it and immediately said 'fuck that' and went for another vendor instead. You see, this is how dark patterns shoot you in the foot - the cost of trust and transparency is even higher. In this case, dropbox lost significant money that they could have otherwise won. Besides, In this day and age, there is literally no value that dropbox offers to its users. Their competitors offer way more value for similar price points and the experience with dropbox isn't even that good. All they have is their brand name, which will also be gone soon after they've tortured their customers with these dark patterns.
- millisecond 8y agoThe insidious thing about this from their side is that retained revenue from dark patterns shows up in a report someone can use to justify a promotion but your friend’s situation will forever remain anecdotal (in their reporting). Growth teams run amok.
- elcomet 8y agoIn France, on of the biggest journals, Le Monde, is also a hassle to unsubscribe. Subscribing is very easy, just enter credit card online. But for unsubscribing, you have to send a registered letter with recorded delivery. This is a hassle, you have to go to the post station, and is also pretty expensive (around 5-10 euros), which is almost the price for 1 month subscription to the journal. I find this unbelievable that you can't unsubscribe online (even for the online edition).
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoMany legal systems recognize a fax (with delivery receipt) as equivalent to a letter with recorded delivery. Setting up something that lets you send those is a hassle the first time, but after that, sending a fax is about as easy as sending an e-mail.
- tmalsburg2 8y agoNYT is a great example for mindless optimization of short-term metrics. Canceling my subscription during the 2016 presidential race was such a humiluating experience that I would never again subscribe even though I miss reading the NYT. They lost me forever.
- daveheq 8y agoI tried to cancel SoFi Money online (after not using it because of terms I didn't like that they didn't mention til after signing up), and they told me I had to call to cancel... this after everything else on their site that I use is online-only. I told them if I had to call, I would call my lawyer first, who would be calling them... and then they wrote back that they canceled. So, these companies don't need to make you call, and even if it's inconvenient, difficult, or impossible to call to cancel, some won't budge. This should be illegal; if I sign up online, I should be able to cancel online. Making these artificial steps hampers business, my work time, my personal time... sitting on a phone waiting or slogging through steps or upsells is not a good way to do business and interferes with everything else. It hasn't bothered the politicians enough, who are corporate shills anyway, so they haven't made it so companies have to be reasonable with this, like they did with CANSPAM.
- axaxs 8y agoIf you by chance see this, would you mind expanding on terms you didn't agree with, either here or privately(email in profile)? It sounds like a sweet deal, and I'm considering moving ahead with them.
- js2 8y agoI just canceled my NYT subscription based on this comment. I was able to do so by logging into my account, following the "Cancel" link, then choosing the online chat option. It wasn't as easy as an automatic cancellation, but it wasn't terrible. Here's the transcript: Isaiah: Hello Jay and thank you for contacting The New York Times! My name is Isaiah and I will be able to make any changes to your account today! One moment while I pull up your account. Isaiah: I have located your digital account and I would like to personally thank you for being a Basic digital subscriber with the account number (XXXXXXXX) Isaiah: If you don't mind me asking, what led you to cancel? I would love to gain your insight and see if there are any potential issues that I may resolve for you. Jay: Please cancel my subscription. Isaiah: May I ask why you wish to cancel? Jay: I decline to answer that. Please cancel my subscription. Isaiah: please note that leaving will put you back at 5 free articles per month and you will no longer have unlimited access to our content. Any saved Cooking recipes will stay saved but you will not be able to view them until you subscribe again. Jay: I understand. Please cancel my subscription. Isaiah: I understand your concerns. Because your readership is important to us, I'd like to extend a special offer for $2 per week for 1 year. Jay: No thank you. Please cancel my subscription. Isaiah: You will continue to enjoy all your subscription benefits for the rest of your billing cycle, which ends on February 07, 2019. Unfortunately we cannot issue any credits or refunds for the remainder of this billing cycle.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoYou're saying it's not terrible, but you had to state "Please cancel my subscription" four times and respond to their questions/suggestions, all of this after you already expressed that you want to cancel just to get there. What happens when you try to cancel outside business hours? Do they have 24/7 support, do they just let you cancel, or do they tell you to try again the next day?
- js2 8y agoYou're right, and I had "please cancel my subscription" on my clipboard to save some typing expecting I'd have to write it more than once. But the whole thing took less than 5 minutes. So yes it should be easier but it wasn't as difficult as say canceling cable service. I don't know about canceling outside business hours.
- dhimes 8y agopbs did this to me (wgbh). Pissed me off.
- noworld 8y agoHow do you know how difficult it will be to leave before you sign up?