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Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

• shujito 6y ago
  I've been wondering for a while why the root div from imgur deletes as it is loading on safari, it's happening even in incognito mode. Firefox works fine.
• paulie_a 6y ago
  Tell them to cancel and if they continue to charge you report the charges as fraudulent
• rmk 6y ago
  17 minutes to do something that should take 17 seconds. These folks are the masters of dark patterns!
• salex89 6y ago
  General advice when subscribing to NYT is to do it through PayPal. Once you cut them loose from their funding from PayPal, they let you go without hesitation.
  • bwag 6y ago
    This. I've been using privacy.com for all my online subscriptions. I just cancel the card I used to sign up and call it a day.
  • kenhwang 6y ago
    I have all my subscriptions go through PayPal. Makes everything easy to cancel.
  • mannerheim 6y ago
    I have not had good experiences with cancelling subscriptions through PayPal. My one attempt at reversing a transaction there went nowhere, and eventually I had to contact my bank to do so.
• violetgarden 6y ago
  The marketing/sales talk like, “Am I to understand you’d like to cancel even though our product could be saving you $xx in time and money?” repulses me to no end. I understand they’re trying to keep a customer. I just hate the leading questions. I hate that I feel like they’re trying to outwit me, or trick me into realizing I’m so silly for wanting to cancel something. Even though I might cancel products, the cancellation isn’t always forever. I’ll gladly go back to companies that treated me well. However, companies that pressure me to stay I typically write off as scummy and won’t go back if the need arises.
  • draw_down 6y ago
    You’re not supposed to like it. It’s supposed to be effective.
  • Karunamon 6y ago
    Reminds me of the old MCI telemarketers. You'd tell them you're not interested in their long distance service, and the rejoinder would be "You don't want to save money?" I've been witness to a number of cold callers having their heritage and species loudly questioned for using this tactic.
    • mnw21cam 6y ago
      My answer would be "Don't change the subject."
  • davidivadavid 6y ago
    "Cancelling your product is going to save me even more money." I mean, it's annoying to have to talk to sales reps when you don't have to, but I feel like people here are being a little overly dramatic? There are certainly some cases where it becomes almost impossible to cancel things (people hanging up on you, etc.) which are much worse than what is described here and looks like it would take about 30 seconds of my attention in a background chat window.
• thgaway17 6y ago
  Not paying the bill worked for me.
  • tambeb 6y ago
    Haha yes! Right around the time I decided I didn't want the sub anymore was luckily right around when I cancelled (for unrelated reasons) the credit card they had on file. Super easy!
    • jrockway 6y ago
      My credit card expired and they sent my account to collections. I still subscribe because I like the work their journalists do, but when I read an article about how they're dying I don't really feel bad for them. (I am also tempted to cancel my Wall Street Journal subscription when I accidentally read an opinion column. Not sure why real journalists let partisan hacks put their opinion columns right next to their real work. Strange business model!)
      • Karunamon 6y ago
        How is that not fraudulent? Obviously they're not giving you online access anymore or sending you papers once your card gets declined for a month-to-month subscription.
        • jrockway 6y ago
          No, I resubscribed. They made a mistake by aggressively collecting on an open account.
      • jmckib 6y ago
        I canceled WSJ a little while ago and it was a total nightmare. Had to call a number, got put on hold for about 45 minutes, then had to answer a bunch of questions and deal with an aggressive sales pitch. Never subscribing again because of that. I'm sticking with Washington Post for now because it's a lot cheaper, has better politics coverage, and the cancelation process is more reasonable (I think, haven't had to do it yet). When the WSJ rep asked me why I was canceling, one of the reasons I gave was how bad the op-ed section is. A little while ago the news room writers actually put together an open letter complaining about the lack of accuracy in the op-ed section, and also asking for the labeling on the op-eds to be more clear, because it was affecting the news rooms' credibility.
• abdabab 6y ago
  If you subscribe through Apple it’s just as easy to cancel it as canceling any other subscription.
  • zwily 6y ago
    I’ll gladly pay more through Apple just because I know it’ll be trivial to cancel later.
  • foobiekr 6y ago
    Yep, me too. For things like the NYT, I buy through Apple's store, and cancellation is all in one place and easy, as are the terms of when the cancellation will take effect. Completely straightforward, no hassle, no surprises.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    Yep, and they will even refund you if you cancel promptly after a recurring payment.
  • kshacker 6y ago
    The challenge is the price. I call and cancel every year, and then renew in the same phone call since they finally offer me 8 bucks a month (and then bump it to 15 after a year). With Apple the cheapest option I see is 14.99, so even though it sucks up my time, the call helps me save 80+ bucks a year.
• newintellectual 6y ago
  I've long thought that there should be an absolute rule against linking to NYT articles on Hacker News. This underscores one reason why.
• notjtrig 6y ago
  I'm surprised how many publications went the route of selling subscriptions to a virtual paper. I can't bring myself do to it. If it was just a 75 cents charge for the new articles and you could access them forever, that would be more appealing to me. Put it this way wouldn't mind buying a national geographic on the iPad but I don't want a subscription for this very reason and it seems like a waste of money paying for something I might not get into. Thanks for posting
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    You can buy a single issue of the NYT (and many other newspapers) via kindle and "own" them forever.
    • notjtrig 6y ago
      That's good to know thanks.
• DHPersonal 6y ago
  I bought a subscription last year during their $4 a month special but cancelled it a few months later. I had to go through the chat system on the website to cancel my subscription, but my experience was rather different. I told the customer service agent that “I thought I’d be reading more of the newspaper but I found that the free allotment of articles will likely suit my usage,” and the service agent cancelled the subscription.
• asadlionpk 6y ago
  This is a sign of dying industry.
• chris_wot 6y ago
  When they ask why you are cancelling say "No reason". There is literally nothing they can say to prolong the whole experience. Don't volunteer any information. Don't tell them what is wrong with their website. Don't tell them anything. You will make the whole process go longer.
  • vidanay 6y ago
    I always chose "other" for any question of this type. If there is a text box that must be filled out to describe "other", I always write "Other".
    • bavell 6y ago
      Love it, definitely gonna start doing that now! Thanks!
    • discordance 6y ago
      Hi, this is Antonio from the New York Times. May I inquire as to what your 'other' reason is?
      • vidanay 6y ago
        No
        • chris_wot 6y ago
          And why is that?
  • meowster 6y ago
    I just say, "Cancel my subscription." Don't play their game, don't give them an inch, if they ask why, just repeat "Cancel my subscription". If they say something else, just say "cancel" and nothing else. They will cave.
• frading 6y ago
  This reminds me of the French newspaper lemonde.fr, which I had subscribed to, and then wanted to unsubscribe after a couple months. There was simply no way to do so online, not to reach any customer support. The only option was to send a letter via post. This was during our first lockdown in UK, so no way I would go to the post office for that. I'll simply never be a customer again.
  • brendoelfrendo 6y ago
    Ha! I had this experience years ago. I subscribed in college to practice my French, but ended up wanting to unsubscribe because I had more important uses for the money. Sure enough, I had to use my rudimentary language skills to write a letter to unsubscribe and mail it off to France.
    • frading 6y ago
      Glad that worked! I hope that didn't put you off learning French. Personally, I stopped trying to write such letters after a couple instances where the recipient company claimed they never received any letter from me. Then I learned you should always send a letter with a signature to have a proof of reception, which is a bit more expensive. And then one kept charging me anyway, and still claimed the letter didn't reach the right department (after more time spent on the phone with them). Bottom line is if a company wants to make it difficult for you to leave the relationship with them, there are tons of tricks in the books for that. Therefore I blacklist them after any sign of dishonesty.
  • jimmaswell 6y ago
    Being too afraid to make a quick trip to the post office sounds like major overkill to me. Besides that couldn't you have ordered stamps and envelopes online?
  • rthomas6 6y ago
    Can people in the UK not send outgoing letters by putting them in their mailbox and raising the little outgoing mail flag? Is that a uniquely American thing?
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  I subscribed to the NYT a couple years back. I had to talk to a rep to get canceled, and at one point he offered something like half a year for free if I'd keep the subscription. I insisted on canceling, because I was getting irritated, and he laughed out loud that I refused the free offer. Right then they lost me forever as a customer. But it was a valuable lesson on looking at the exit strategy for a service before you sign up for it. And I try real hard to only do business with companies that make it as easy to stop spending money with them as it is to start.
  • fencepost 6y ago
    There is value to them in having you as an active subscriber on a paid plan, even if they've given you a discount.
    • EvilEy3 6y ago
      Seriously???
      • fencepost 6y ago
        Tried to expand on it but I missed the edit window. If you're a subscriber (even at a discount) you count in their circulation numbers. Those numbers affect their advertising costs, the value of the news outlet (not just the NYTimes), and probably the internal performance reviews of lots of people who really don't want to lose you. Traditionally newspapers didn't make enough money from subscription revenue to cover their costs - advertising is where the money was, payment for subscriptions was nice but a big part of its importance was as an indicator "this person cares enough to pay for this news source" for selling advertising. That hasn't really changed that much.
        • rootusrootus 6y ago
          Not sure why your comment got downvoted, really. I agree, from their perspective it makes sense to give away a half year of service if it keeps the subscriber account active. It increases the odds above zero that the customer will stay even after they have to pay again, it looks good for the advertising stats, etc. I don't think they're really factoring in the "angry customer" aspect, however, or they'd stop. They turned me from an ambivalent customer who decided the ROI wasn't there, into an opinionated former customer who is willing to tell friends and family the horror show that will happen if they subscribe and then decide later it isn't for them. It's the opposite of good word-of-mouth advertising, and NYT is going to suffer for it. Even if they change their policy today.
• aerovistae 6y ago
  Honestly only case where I'm willing to overlook it. It's so hard for them to stay in the black. I can't imagine, in this age. For a serious newspaper that does good investigative journalism, I'll accept some desperate measures to keep subscribers and not hold it against them. Any other company and I'd call them garbage, but the NYT does a lot of good. (Same would go for other top investigative journals that have published a lot of pieces revealing major information to the public.)
  • leesalminen 6y ago
    > For a serious newspaper Unfortunately this is now a debatable topic. Their headlines have been trending towards the National Enquirer for years. IMHO, they should crash and burn.
    • RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
      Also then drama in the newsroom. It does not inspire optimism about the professionalism and objectivity of their coverage.
  • mStreamTeam 6y ago
    You must really like the NYT. These dark patterns are never excusable.
  • Cyph0n 6y ago
    If they really need to rely on dark patterns just to survive - which I highly doubt is the case - then they simply don’t deserve to survive. Yes, it sucks, but that’s how the free market works.
    • ganstyles 6y ago
      Presumably not, if they use dark patterns and not only survive, but thrive. Right?
      • Cyph0n 6y ago
• mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I don’t understand why a crossword puzzle company spends so much effort on a journalism side project.
• rawtxapp 6y ago
  I've never been able to cancel any subscription with ease, so nowadays I always use Privacy to get temporary credit cards. When I want the subscription cancelled, I try the provider's website, if it doesn't work, I just cancel the card all together.
  • I_Byte 6y ago
    Woah, I had no clue that Privacy existed before but it looks really cool! What do you think of the service? Have you had any problems with it?
    • morpheuskafka 6y ago
      I have used it and it seems to work pretty well, they just set up a complete integration with 1Password so I trust them because of that as well.
    • rawtxapp 6y ago
      I love it, I use it for the gyms, my internet provider, the laundry machine provider, any place that I don't trust their data storage, etc.
    • 1shooner 6y ago
      I have to replace my simple.com account, so instead of doing that for a dozen or more subscriptions, I just changed the funding provider in Privacy, and keep the vendor-specific virtual cards.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • franklampard 6y ago
      Sometimes the merchant will tell the card is a virtual card and not allow it, but most of the times it works perfect
  • Spivak 6y ago
    There is some danger to this since just because your card is declined doesn’t mean that you stop owing them money. Gyms like to take advantage of this.
• duxup 6y ago
  I'm fine with paying for quality news.
  • Spivak 6y ago
    That’s not really the point. It’s that once companies have your CC info they make it arbitrarily difficult to stop paying them. This kind of behavior should run afoul of consumer protection laws.
    • duxup 6y ago
      That is the point, that's why I subscribe, regardless of the unsubscribe difficulties. The value is way higher than some inconvenience.
      • Bakary 6y ago
        Irrespective of the quality of the publication or whether one wants to support a specific industry or publication by default, there's no good-faith reason why canceling a subscription has to be difficult.
        • duxup 6y ago
          I agree but the original post seems to want to ask someone to reconsider subscribing (or something to that effect). To me that raises the question if it is worth whatever hassle they demonstrate. For me it is and I stated why.
  • cbozeman 6y ago
    Then why are you subscribing to the New York Times? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involving_The_New_York_Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin... So much for your "paper of record". It's the Paper of the Establishment. And always has been.
    • duxup 6y ago
• whoisjuan 6y ago
  Imagine having a business model so fragile that your only line of defense is to obscure the cancellation process through these tactics. Do they really think that they can curve their churn this way? I mean best you’re doing is getting maybe another month or so of revenue from a customer who is just pushing the pain of cancelling because they are busy or lazy. And at the end instead of getting what could be a dormant customer who can sign up later again, what you get is someone who hates your company. What an incredibly stupid way to erode the brand of a publication, whose major asset to survive is precisely its brand.
  • Theory5 6y ago
    This happened to me with audible. They didn't have the cancel subscription on the app. Had to hunt for it on the site. Was asked if i was suuuuuuure i wanted to leave, 3 separate times before it canceled. Definitely not thinking of doing that again, or like i do for some streaming services, pay for a couple months, stop, then pay for a few more. Utterly rediculous.
    • treeman79 6y ago
      Signed up for some hosting online. Cancelation apparently required a fax. Got a legal friend to help me write a scary letter. Service was promptly canceled.
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      Another related dark pattern: When cancelling a Prime trial, Amazon makes it appear as if you're going to lose the Prime benefits immediately, not at the end of the trial, to keep you from cancelling early. (It seems like you DO keep them until the end of the trial, but you only get told that after cancelling) Together with their decreased support quality (agents barely understanding what I write + the typical "tell the customer what they want to hear so they go away and give you a good CSAT, by the time they realize you lied it won't matter for you anymore"), I have a _very_ low opinion of Amazon. They still have a service (delivery time), price (free shipping) and consistency advantage in many cases, but it's quickly shrinking, and I am much more likely to buy from alternative places if they can make a competitive offer.
• 1shooner 6y ago
  Most of this chatlog is "you" adding more noise than is necessary for this transaction.
  • _coveredInBees 6y ago
    Exactly. I was cringing so hard because he kept engaging with the rep on lines of questioning that were so obviously going to go down the path they did. I've cancelled my NYT account in the past and it was rather painless because I was consistent in my response and communicated clearly that I just wanted to unsubscribe. I've since renewed my subscription, but cancelling service with an ISP or even Amazon Prime at this point is way more annoying.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • bscphil 6y ago
      It also took exactly 15 minutes between encountering the live agent for the first time and the final sign-off. That's nothing given that they had to communicate via live text chat. And as others have pointed out in this thread, it's actually possible to cancel just by filling out a form, not that this excuses the dark patterns and endless offers. This reads as someone determined to get something juicy they could screenshot, or else someone who was already so annoyed from having to find the cancellation method on the site that they let it cloud their responses to what was a relatively painless process.
      • Helloworldboy 6y ago
        It’s only possible in california to cancel via web form
  • jwilber 6y ago
    Maybe, but there still remains the issue that such a pointless chat is even required to cancel in the first place.
• hitekker 6y ago
  I recommend http://privacy.com http://privacy.com for guarding against greedy, software subscriptions. 1. Create a virtual credit card for one merchant 2. Set the monthly payment limit just above the merchant's monthly charge 3. When you no longer feel like paying the charge, decrease the limit to $1 a month or just cancel the card. 4. Any future charges will be blocked! 5. Let the merchant's systems go through the hassle of terminating your account.
  • 3np 6y ago
    US residents only. Anyone aware if something similar that doesn’t discriminate?
    • nickthemagicman 6y ago
      I don't think they're discriminating, probably just massive laws they have to deal with for every new country, and they're still pretty new so probably don't have their resources. Can you use a VPN?
      • 3np 6y ago
        I argue they are discriminating, even if it is indeed regulatory issues at play there. I'm not going to fraudulently open an account misstating my residence, that's breaking their ToS - you do promise thet you're a US resident when signing up. Of course it's their choice who they want to take on as customers. They've been providing the service for ~6 years though, which is really not that new in context.
        • nickthemagicman 6y ago
          Oh apologies good citizen for suggesting you do something against the rules! Is my local ice cream shop DISCRIMINATING by not serving ice cream in Norway and Osaka Japan? No, they're not discriminating. They just don't have the resources to serve those locations. I'm enjoying the hell out of Privacy.com. I'll think of you next time I use it!
• perryizgr8 6y ago
  I always hate it when a customer service person asks me why I'm canceling their subscription. I called my mobile phone carrier to cancel and they asked me why. I said "I don't like your TV advertisements". That put a quick end to that line of enquiry.
  • koala_man 6y ago
    You don't owe them a justification just because they ask for one. You can simply say "decline to state".
• JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  I'm curious if there is a relationship between how strict one company's retention policy is (e.g., tactics like this), and the overall health of the business. Is it positive, negative, neutral? In either case, I do worry about the future of paid journalism.
• kgermino 6y ago
  This is the only reason I’m not a subscriber. I have no interest in starting an open ended subscription that I have to fight to cancel. Shame too because I love the NYT, but I’m mostly able to scratch that itch with the economist, my local paper, and some smaller news outlets.
  • xuki 6y ago
    You can subscribe through Apple/Google and cancellation will be a few clicks away.
    • px43 6y ago
      How do you subscribe through Google? Do you need to download their app or something?
      • xuki 6y ago
        Yeah subscribe through their app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nytimes.android&hl=en_AU&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nytimes.an...
        • px43 6y ago
          Eh, I'm not going to download a whole app for reading one article a month. There really needs to be something where I can just hit a bunch of checkboxes for the news sites I want to subscribe to, and then that app could charge me accordingly. Hell if Google integrated it with their Google News app, it could be super seamless.
    • kgermino 6y ago
      Oh! I didn't know that. Looks like you give up the introductory offer, but the price is actually a bit better ($17/mo vs $17 every 4 weeks) and I'm perfectly fine with that. Thanks for the tip!
• shyn3 6y ago
  Netflix does something similar. It won't let you remove your credit card so you don't get billed automatically after the first month.
  • city41 6y ago
    Can't you just cancel your account at any time? https://help.netflix.com/en/node/407 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/407
    • shyn3 6y ago
      When most people see "cancel membership" they will think it is immediately. They will just wait to cancel until the last possible day and when they forget it's free money for Netflix. It's smart/shady. I'm sure it contributes to their decreasing churn.
      • city41 6y ago
        Full disclosure, I used to work for Netflix. I really don't think they're trying to be shady. When you click to cancel, it tells you what your last day of service will be. This is also how just about all monthly subscription services work. One of the most important metrics at Netflix is how many hours members are watching. Any A/B test that can improve that metric is really cherished, because Netflix wants happy customers who both stick around and tell their friends. Trying to squeeze an extra month out of them doesn't really fit their style.
        • joveian 6y ago
          That is a whole different type of shady :(.
        • shyn3 6y ago
          Okay makes sense then. I just don't see any of the elder people who I have setup Netflix risk pressing the cancel button because they can't get it set up. However, they do try to remove their credit card number and it doesn't let you. Which is actually another annoyance, why can't I delete my credit card from your site. It's still a dark pattern or just bad data security.
• cletus 6y ago
  There are several publications I would willingly support (eg The Atlantic, the New Yorker) but I don’t and this is the reason why: I absolutely refuse to subscribe to services that are going to be a hassle to cancel. It’s the gym business model. I’m sure this shows incremental gains in revenue but I bet it’s at the cost of retarding growth. I want to start and stop a subscription as I please. I want to do it without having to speak to a human being. I don’t want to be called by the provider to renew my subscription. I will not reward or support scummy retention tactics.
• zachberger 6y ago
  Last month I cancelled my subscription online in about three clicks. Not sure how they determine who to redirect to chat.
  • b1gtuna 6y ago
    Me too. I've subscribed and unsubscribed to their digital plans a bunch of times in the past ~10 years and it was never difficult. Perhaps this is new?
• berryjerry 6y ago
  Sadly I've seen worse for a subscription service. For example, Birchbox, a monthly makeup service will autorenew for you for a full year and won't allow cancellations at all. Also obviously you can sign up online easily but can't cancel there, you have to work through their customer service, like most of these sites that try to steal your money. I guess treating customers who already left you doesn't matter much to these companies and in some cases like Birchbox I'm surprised what they are doing isn't predatory and illegal.
• cperciva 6y ago
  I had a similar experience with the Economist a few years ago. Signed up for a trial (something like $5 for 13 weeks?) and decided to cancel at the end of the trial. It took me 10 minutes on the phone to cancel, and then I received 3 phone calls later that day from the Economist offering me special offers to re-subscribe. I have to admit that I may have answered rather rudely when the third caller asked how I was doing...
  • gumby 6y ago
    At least for the economist this was not the case last month. I canceled my sub and got a new one for my kid who wants the paper copy (this way I got the intro deal for students) and it was painless. Plus I can still log in online. So maybe enough people complained, or someone in the subscription department ran across a conscience and tried it on for size.
  • sundvor 6y ago
    This is a bit off topic, but if you ever want a cheaper Adobe subscription just go through the cancellation process and opt to discuss it. This was some time back and I've simply cancelled since then, but it was a good little thing to do back then.
• valzam 6y ago
  I signed up in app for they $1 a week or whatever offer during the election cycle and also had to go through this ordeal, although it wasn't as bad. Initially it sounded like you had to call them or fax your cancellation, so I was already happy when I found the chat option.
• jiggawatts 6y ago
  This is nothing. Try cancelling the "monthly" Adobe Creative Suite subscription without paying out the remaining 11 months!
  • Karunamon 6y ago
    To their credit, they tell you pretty plainly that the monthly subscription is a year-long commitment. I also find that they're usually pretty willing to keep adding new customer promos if you threaten to cancel because their price went up.
  • sneak 6y ago
    Fun fact: the Adobe Creative Suite is insanely simple to pirate.
    • duckfang 6y ago
      That's an obvious reason though.. It provides user training, addiction, lockin, and demands to further entrench Adobe CS in companies as "required software". The lockin of all my documents and content is enough to run me towards Free and Open Source software. Albeit the software may not be as polished, but I will not be subject to my data being hijacked and ransomed by a for-profit entity.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• macjohnmcc 6y ago
  It will make you want the cancel process to be just as easy as the subscription. Instead you have to chat with a person who will try to retain you as a customer.
• zapzupnz 6y ago
  Got my NYT online subscription via Apple, so I just cancel it via the App Store. Easy-peasy.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    This sort of thing is why I’m fine with Apple charging the people I do business with a 30% cut: Apple provides a lot of value making “payments” and “subscriptions” consistent between vendors.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Of course, they could do the same thing without charging 30%, which they only get away with for lack of competition.
• pkulak 6y ago
  This is why I use throw-away credit card numbers for everything. I'll give a quick try at cancelling a service (out of respect), but if it takes me more than a few clicks, I just stop the card and send their emails to spam. Done and done.
  • rendall 6y ago
    How do you get a throwaway credit card number?
    • basicplus2 6y ago
      privacy.com As many cards as you need
• buck4roo 6y ago
  Same: SiriusXM
  • meowster 6y ago
    I bought a new vehicle that came with a free year of SiriusXM, but I never activated it because I've heard how scummy the company is about canceling. Once a month they mailed me a postcard to sign up, I called them to ask them to stop mailing me a post card, after a few back-and-forths, the person said, okay, we won't mail you anything for two years. I said don't mail me ever, I will never ever use them. The person said okay, they've taken me off their list. We shall see...
• dv_dt 6y ago
  In theory signing up online in California gives a consumer the right to cancel online, but I don't know how closely that's enforced, or if a non-resident of the state can vpn the signup.
  • macksd 6y ago
    Would this not count as "online"? Or is the law specific that a person not be in the loop?
    • dv_dt 6y ago
      I'm not sure. This is a reference to the law I had in mind: https://blogs.findlaw.com/common_law/2018/07/what-to-know-about-californias-new-online-cancelation-law.html https://blogs.findlaw.com/common_law/2018/07/what-to-know-ab... It seems to imply the subscription had to be a "click" affair. "If the subscription was started online, consumers must be able to cancel it online. No more dealing with fruitless or contentious phone calls with these businesses! One click of a button, and the service is canceled."
      • macksd 6y ago
        I think their analysis is mistaken. I think NYT lawyers could successfully argue that virtual chat complies, at least enough that they'd get a slap on the wrist at worst. From the law linked in your article: (b) A business that makes automatic renewal or continuous service offers shall provide a toll-free telephone number, electronic mail address, a postal address if the seller directly bills the consumer, or another cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation that shall be described in the acknowledgment specified in paragraph (3) of subdivision (a). Edit: I do see a later clause that says transactions that start online have to be endable online. But there's no stipulation that it be a simple "click". Even though I think this is scummy, I think they're within the letter of the law.
• Clewza313 6y ago
  I just unsubscribed from the NYT. I originally signed up via the Google Play Store, so the process was literally two clicks in the app: choose the sub I wanted to cancel, then confirm. Done. Of course, this isn't particularly useful if you signed up via any other channel, but it definitely makes it easier next time around.
• lonelyeagle 6y ago
  A little trick might work. You only need to say you become a trump supporter and they will cancelled it immediately. I use this way and the whole process cost less than 5 mins.
  • keiferski 6y ago
    The Curb Your Enthusiasm strategy in action. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B2oLFKYNInQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B2oLFKYNInQ
• oski 6y ago
  When I learned that NYT is a publicly traded company, that totally changed my perspective on them.
• binaryorganic 6y ago
  I had a similar experience with them as well. It definitely surprised me and made me grumpy, but it honestly took half the time as this one because I didn’t put up a fight. I remember being similarly disgruntled by canceling Prime. Lots of misleading calls-to-action across multiple screens. But something about being forced to talk to a human being really rubbed me the wrong way with the Times.
• crazydoggers 6y ago
  They do the same stuff with the paper end. Back in the day used to get it delivered... excruciating time canceling it... for a couple weeks it would keep showing up on the doorstep, and they couldn’t tell me why the cancel didn’t go through. The process was so abysmal I vowed never to do business with them. It’s a shame. I dealt with a lot of print companies for some of my business back in the day. The business people would always complain that the editorial boards hated what they did... but then they just replied, “who’s going to pay your salary to write your articles”. I still think journalism needs a better business model. Ads conflict with honest content, and subscriptions don’t pay the bills when it’s easy to get free news from other less reputable sources.
  • meowster 6y ago
    I don't remember where I read it, but apparently one person was successful with stopping a free weekly paper from being delivered by reporting littering to the police (they tried telling the newspaper first, but they didn't stop).
• bdastous 6y ago
  If Facebook made it this hard to cancel, there would be a New York Times article about it.
• AntiImperialist 6y ago
  Here was the input necessary to cancel the subscription. Cancel my subscription. Cancel my subscription. No reason, cancel. Cancel.
• raegis 6y ago
  If you live in southern California an have a Los Angeles Public Library card, you can view the NY Times by logging in every two days. You do have to register at nytimes.com but it's all free. Regardless, you should check if your local library has an online subscription.
  • mshroyer 6y ago
    AFAIK this is actually true for any California public library (including mine in Sunnyvale). The re-registration process is annoying, but hey, it's free...
• H8crilA 6y ago
  Use easily cancelable, on-line only credit cards. For everything. No fuss with unsubscribing, just block the card and you're done. I don't even bother checking the website for the unsubscription process.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ilikehurdles 6y ago
  For what it’s worth, I’ve been in and out of a few subscriptions several times (incl WaPo and NYer), but I promised myself to never again subscribe to the NYT after I went through their cancellation process the first and only time.
• jeffbee 6y ago
  This is amusing but if you aren't trying to make memes, just email unsubscribe@nytimes.com, include all the necessary info about your account (account number, billing address), and in my experience they'll do it right away. Of course my experience has N=1, but there it is. Don't waste your time, use email.
  • brrrrrm 6y ago
    I feel this is maliciously burdensome compared to the relative ease of signing up.
    • gsibble 6y ago
      Indeed. It should be a requirement that it's as easy to unsubscribe to a service as it is to subscribe.
• floatingatoll 6y ago
  It was easier for me to call my credit card issuer and block NYT from issuing any further charges to my card than to try and deal with canceling with them by phone. I'm kind of shocked someone managed to cancel over chat at all. That's technically revolutionary for them.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I didn't have to speak to anyone to cancel mine through the web interface. Did that just last week so this info is not out of date. I'm not sure how you got to speaking to an agent in the first place.
  • astura 6y ago
    Do you live in California? Because apparently some services have a California-only web interface to unsubscribe. If your billing address isn't in California then you can't access that page. Because of a California law that says they must. https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance...
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      NYC
• SMAAART 6y ago
  17 minutes of OP that they will never get back. Poor Antonio too, stuck in the middle between a money-machine and disgruntled users.
  • koala_man 6y ago
    I feel really bad for the service reps. If you hate doing this every time you cancel, imagine how they feel having to do this all day every day, always with the threat of being fired from their minimum wage job if they're accidentally too helpful.
• flowerlad 6y ago
  If you're in California NYT is violating state law: https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance... The law applies to all companies and publishers with paying customers in the state.
  • msujaws 6y ago
    This conversation happened online, so I'm not sure this is technically against the law.
    • flowerlad 6y ago
      Hmm... looks CA needs to amend the law. They should specify that customers should be able to cancel online without interacting with a human.
  • otterley 6y ago
    For California residents, canceling NYT is very easy. Click "manage your subscription" and then "cancel subscription."
• Vaskerville 6y ago
  Add me to the list of NYT subscription failures. Sorry NYT, but I will never sign up again (and I think you are a good newspaper) unless you come clean about these lame practices.
• tinmandespot 6y ago
  Plus one. I was totally put out by this process too.
• sinuhe69 6y ago
  Thanks! I’m sure it will help saving trouble for a lot of people.
• tshaddox 6y ago
  It wasn’t quite that bad, but I had a similar tedious chat session in order to cancel my NYT crosswords subscription. I don’t think I’ll ever pay that company another dime.
• scaladev 6y ago
  If anyone can't read the image for one reason or another, here's my attempt at OCR with minor corrections. Info: How can I help you today? 21:33, Feb 16 You: Cancel my subscription Info: Welcome! We're excited to offer you messaging, allowing you to reply to us in your own time. An advocate should reply within 5 minutes To view The New York Times Privacy Policy and California privacy notices, please visit nytimes.com/FLLy_Agy Info: You are now connected to The New York Times Virtual Assistant. 21:33,Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: Hi, I'm the New York Times virtual assistant. 21:33,Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: Please answer the following questions and I will connect you with the appropriate Customer Care advocate. 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: What is your full name? 21:34, Feb 16 You: (hidden) 21:34, Feb 16 You: Digital Subscription 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: > 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: What is your email address? 21:34 Feb 16 You: (hidden) 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: What is your billing zip code? 21:34, Feb 16 Your: (hidden) 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: > 21:34, Feb 16 You: Other 21:34, Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: Please briefly describe the reason you are contacting us today. 21:35,Feb 16 You: Way too many ads. Beats the point of paid subscription. 21:35,Feb 16 New York Times virtual agent: Please wait one moment while I transfer you to an account specialist. Info: You are now connected to Antonio. 21:35,Feb 16 You: Why do I need to speak with someone to cancel a subscription??? 21:35,Feb 16 Antonio: Hi! My name is Tony. I'm an account specialist here at the New York Times. I will be happy to assist you. I'm sorry to hear you would like to cancel your subscription today. May I ask why you are canceling? 21:36,Feb 16 Antonio: The New York Times doesn't give customers the option to cancel on their own which is why you have to go through an account specialist such as myself in order to do so. This allows the customer to be canceling properly. 21:36,Feb 16 You: You asked that already! 21:36,Feb 16 You: Way too many ads. 21:36,Feb 16 Antonio: Are you successfully logged into your account underneath the correct email address? 21:37,Feb 16 You: yes 21:38,Feb 16 Antonio: What kind of advertisements are you seeing? 21:38,Feb 16 Antonio: Also are you using a apple product to see the news? 21:38,Feb 16 You: Can you please cancel my subscription? 21:39,Feb 16 You: Its impossible to read an article without the screen jumping to allow an add make space in the middle of the article 21:39,Feb 16 Antonio: Do you use a iphone or macbook? 21:40,Feb 16 You: And, the one that takes the top 1/3 of the homepage 21:40,Feb 16 You: yes, both ^ 21:40,Feb 16 Antonio: Apple products have a special feature called readers mode where it gets rid of all of the advertisements and miscellaneous pictures across the website or application. 21:41,Feb 16 Antonio: All you have to do is click on the lowercase and uppercase a in the top of the website and it changes the entire website to readers mode. 21:41,Feb 16 You: Antonio, thank you for educating me on web technologies. Can you please just unsubscribe me?? 21:42, Feb 16 Antonio: So just to clarify you would still like to cancel even though readers mode would solve the advertisements issue? 21:43,Feb 16 You: My conversation right now with you makes me even more determined to do so. 21:43,Feb 16 You: So please YES - CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION 21:43,Feb 16 Antonio: We thank you for your feedback, and I'm sorry you feel that way. I will make sure that your thoughts get sent through the proper channels. Your experience with us helps make us better. 21:44, Feb 16 You: Please also forward this feedback - this unsubscribe process makes me much much much less likely to resubscribe ever again. 21:44, Feb 16 Antonio: The New York Times doesn't give customers the option to cancel on their own which is why you have to go through an account specialist such as myself in order to do so. This allows the customer to be canceling properly. 21:46,Feb 16 Antonio: We appreciate your support as a Basic Access subscriber. This grants you unlimited article access on nytimes.com and on the go with the NYT mobile app. You are on the best deal of $4 a month for a whole year! Are you sure you want to cancel? 21:46,Feb 16 You: Yes. 21:47,Feb 16 Antonio: You will continue to enjoy all your subscription benefits for the rest of your billing cycle, which ends on Thursday, February 18th, 2021. Unfortunately we cannot issue any credits or refunds for the remainder of this billing cycle. 21:48,Feb 16 You: That's fine. 21:48,Feb 16 You: Can I get the transcript of this chat? I'm sure other users would value a lot from learning what this process looks like. 21:48,Feb 16 Antonio: You can email yourself a transcript of this chat, which will also serve as confirmation of our conversation today. The option to receive this transcript will be when our chat session ends. Make sure to select yes to receive your transcript and it will be emailed to you. 21:49,Feb 16 You: Cool thanks. 21:49,Feb 16 Antonio: (thumbs up) 21:49,Feb 16 Antonio: Is there anything else I can assist you with today? 21:49,Feb 16 Antonio: If you do not need any further assistance, I will close this chat in approximately 1 minute. 21:50,Feb 16 You: Nope, good night 21:50,Feb 16 Antonio: Thank you for being the best part of The New York Times. Have a wonderful day! Info: Conversation closed by the agent 21:50, Feb 16
• theknocker 6y ago
  The mainstream media is obsolete garbage, and that’s if I pretend 95% of it isn’t blatant, literal propaganda.
• uka 6y ago
  I just unsubscribed using web form. There are some dark patterns involved but not too dark. E.g. first option is the chat with representative, second is the call by phone and third option is the web form. After I have navigated 3 pages using "default button" for canceling the unsubscription process - it is done. It's not the best experience, but not the nightmare the OP described.
  • swdunlop 6y ago
    Same. I cancelled last week for one too many link-bait articles on the front page. After the usual page or two of pleas to stay, they let me go.
  • Helloworldboy 6y ago
    If you live in CA this is because they have a law requiring this.
  • deusex_ 6y ago
    They only have the form for people in California or Europe. long live strong consumer protection laws
    • Devagamster 6y ago
      I'm in washington and it showed up for me too.
    • twic 6y ago
      I wonder if subscribers in other states could change their address and then cancel.
    • gcbirzan 6y ago
      I'm in the EU and I don't have a form.
    • dbactual 6y ago
      FYI, using the NYTimes mobile app should follow the same flow described in the parent comment. I'm in NY state. Just choose the "web form" option to cancel, click through two or three confirmations to cancel. And you're done. Took all of 20 seconds.
• zephy20 6y ago
  lol
• pottertheotter 6y ago
  I had a similar issue with the Wall Street Journal a few years back, and despite having spent the majority of my career working on Wall Street, I’ll never buy a subscription again. I signed up for a really good deal for 6 months of digital + paper delivery, but my paper always arrived a day or two late, so before my 6 months were up I tried to cancel, but couldn’t figure out a way to do so on their website. I messaged support asking them to not renew my subscription, and told them that the paper always arrived late. They responded back that they were going to give me a free subscription until they could figure out the paper delivery. I should have held firm and cancelled, but it seemed lke they were trying to provide good customer service. Nothing changed with delivery, and I followed up a few times to see what was going on. I was told they were looking into it. One day, out of the blue, I received a large bill from them. I called to see what was going on and I was told that my trial was up and since I hadn’t cancelled that it had renewed. A proceeded to tell the about my problems with delivery and that customer service was supposedly working on fixing the problem and not charging me until they could. The person on the phone told me that that’s not possible since they don’t provide same-day delivery to my address. I recounted exactly what had happened, and they basically told me I was a liar, and would not refund the charge because the user agreement says they don’t have to, even though I called within a few hours of the new charge and subscription renewal. The part that really stung was that I was a PhD student and could get an entire year for less than what they charged me for a month. I’ve never had a company treat me so poorly before.
  • annexrichmond 6y ago
    I was able to (temporarily) cancel my WSJ subscription with a couple clicks last year, so looks like they've improved on that front.
  • zippergz 6y ago
    I almost bought a WSJ sub during a recent sale, and decided against it specifically because I checked and it said I'd have to call them to cancel.
    • Trias11 6y ago
      Same with me. First time i bought it via Amazon Prime, when it was available and with Amazon i could cancel stuff directly via Amazon at any time, bypassing WSJ minefields. Then WSJ got smart and start selling it directly in hope to force subscribers to go through their sales jerks in case they want to cancel. This made me to turn away from WSJ for good.
• bukhtarkhan 6y ago
  I am cancelling right now, same issues ....
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gaoshan 6y ago
  That's it? I mean, it IS annoying but that's utterly painless compared to any number of other financial interactions you may be faced with online. Take almost any medical related billing issue, for example.
  • rawtxapp 6y ago
    Just because something else sucks more shouldn't normalize this. NYT (and all other subscription based businesses) should make it easy to unsubscribe online without requiring customer service.
• busterarm 6y ago
  I used to work at a Cable company with commissioned CSRs and that has to be the alltime peak for dirty cancellation tactics. I wasn't a CSR but my office was next to theirs and what I heard was tragic. The commissioned nature of the CSRs and the penalties they received for cancelations created all sorts of perverse incentives. I used to listen to reps who would drag out a particular person's cancelation for hours, days or even months. People would beg to cancel their service (usually because they were seniors who couldn't afford it) only to be given endless runaround. A couple of nasty reps in particular would browbeat the customer for a while but then cancel them and note down the customer's information. Then at the end of the grace window that was built in for people to un-cancel service, they would go in and reactivate the person's subscription. I'm pretty loathe to sign up for anything with recurring billing these days.
• j15e 6y ago
  Beautiful website, good content. Most horrible customer experience ever. It is almost extortion.
• EdwardGoomba 6y ago
  Cancelling a membership at Golds Gym was the worst experience I have had so far. I think this just beat it.
• 40four 6y ago
  Not surprising, and honestly I didn’t think it was that bad comparatively speaking. Try canceling you home cable or your mobile service and see how that goes :) That’s no excuse though, ideally we would be able to cancel any service we want through an online form, but in reality that is a pipe dream. Most companies will take this as a opportunity to make a pass on you with a sales person. And honestly, it is their prerogative to do so I think. Once you’re gone you’re gone. I don’t blame them for attempting to retain your business. While I don’t blame them, I wish it wasn’t the case. Any person who lines up in the queue to cancel is just a ‘lead’ for the sales people assigned to this task. And they are sales people. Don’t be fooled and think you’re talking to a customer service agent. In this case, it was a pretty weak attempt by ‘Antonio’.
  • wyclif 6y ago
    Freddie deBoer dishes out a savage burn to the NYT that is, in itself, enough reason to cancel your subscription. No amount of shade is too deep to throw on the NYT at this point, from their cancellation process to their editorial policies: https://fredrikdeboer.com/2021/02/15/scott-alexander-is-not-in-the-gizmodo-media-slack/ https://fredrikdeboer.com/2021/02/15/scott-alexander-is-not-...
  • 8K832d7tNmiQ 6y ago
    It's surprisingly easy back in my home. Furthermore, they even offer me a discount for 6 months if you want to change your mind, and let you keep their card if you want to subscribe again.
    • 40four 6y ago
      Do you mean for canceling cable? Yeah, I’ve gotten many fully free months of cable in the past when trying to cancel. Offering discounted or free months is a good sales tactic for them because the cost for them to keep you on is basically zero. Then they hope you will forget/ or lose the motivation to call back in six months to cancel and keep paying. If you do actually leave, the chances of you coming back are approaching zero as far as they are concerned. Any good sales person will throw you a card just on that slim chance it will generate a commission in the future.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• shepherdjerred 6y ago
  I wanted to read an article of the NYT that interested me, so I purchased a month subscription. I only used it for that one article. This same thing happened when I tried to cancel. They don't provide a way to do it without talking to a representative unless you set your zip code to California which requires a way to cancel the same way that was signed up (i.e. if you can sign up without talking to someone you can cancel without talking to someone). If it were easy to cancel I'd definitely re-up my subscription when I want to read an article they have. Now when I hit the paywall I just move on or look for another source.
• iscrewyou 6y ago
  Here’s a kicker: once canceled, your card stays on file. But there’s no way to access that credit card management page anymore because you’ve canceled the subscription. How can you get back to the credit card management page? By signing up for the subscription again. Can you remove the credit card from file at this point? Nope!! That’s right. They have your credit card forever if you put it in once.
  • jopsen 6y ago
    Don't credit cards usually expire after 4 years? Otherwise, be European :)
    • iscrewyou 6y ago
      They also expire after a person dies. The burden shouldn’t be on the user but on the company. If you are American in the living room, what are you in the bathroom? you're-a-peein....
      • jopsen 6y ago
        Just saying, usually it's less of a worry since credit cards are temporary. With any luck you credit card will expire before you do :)
• caseyf7 6y ago
  This is why I started subscribing to newspaper apps through the Apple App Store. The apps are somewhat inferior, but the ability to unsubscribe and resubscribe easily are worth it to me.
• fattybob 6y ago
  I’m still receiving “spam” from the WSJ after a long long time, I unsubscribed when Murdoch took over, as it’s quality plummeted overnight!! It took the editor a few more months to quit and move on..
• Trias11 6y ago
  Can't ya all just file a CC chargeback attaching proof that it was impossible to cancel by normal means? This will teach them a lesson.
  • jacobsenscott 6y ago
    Their cancellation policy is clearly spelled out. I doubt you would win a dispute. Also disputing a charge is more work than a few lines of chat.
    • moate 6y ago
      If you have access to one, get an Amex and you'll find that's not the case. As someone who used to work in billing for a company with "not great" patterns, the bosses hated when people signed up with Amex because it made collections on lapsed payments borderline impossible because of how well they protected their members.
      • Trias11 6y ago
        Agree. I have $550/yr Amex Platinum and any vendor will be hard pressed to get Amex on their side
• WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  Alternative: Provide a privacy.com card, terminate card when you're done... it's cancelled.
• 40four 6y ago
  Pro tip: the sales person mentioned reader mode. I read all the NYT articles I want with no subscription through reader mode. A subscription is not necessary. Reader mode is the easiest way to bypass the paywall. I’m not sure this always worked, but in their current configuration you can read just about anything.
• dshpala 6y ago
  Thanks for the reminder - unsubscribed in two clicks in Play. Also, the subscription was $15 a month?! Don't remember seeing that number when I was subscribing.
• oatmeal_croc 6y ago
  When I have to cancel a subscription service like cable or internet, I always say I'm "moving to another country". Pick an obscure or made-up country name like "Maltova" to prevent BS follow up questions.
• gsibble 6y ago
  I have something like 4 subscriptions that I cannot figure out how to cancel on my AMEX. So I cancelled my AMEX. They now have a feature where your subscriptions will follow you any way. I literally have no way of getting rid of like $200 worth of fucking subscriptions unless I want to close my credit card account.
  • kyrra 6y ago
    Your wording is a little confusing. Are you saying that your card number changed and the subscription was updated to charge that new number? If so, that's known as account updater or card refresher. https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.html https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.ht...
    • gsibble 6y ago
      Yes. It's infuriating. How do I get AMEX to prevent those charges?
      • kyrra 6y ago
        As far as I know, there is no opt out for account updater features. If you are unable to cancel the subscription with a company and you don't want to do any future business with them, I recommend issuing a chargeback through your credit card company. Note that chargebacks should be a last resort, as if you use it too much, they may just close your account. It may be worth raising the issue with th se subscriptions saying that they should cancel or you will just start issuing chargebacks.
• yalogin 6y ago
  I know its not good but this is not different from most companies. All of them force you to speak with a human to cancel. Its possible people hang up when they have to jump through hoops and some others will be uncomfortable cancelling with a human.
• pmorici 6y ago
  I just revoked the payment authorization in PayPal and the issue resolved itself.
• franklampard 6y ago
  Now try cancelling SiriusXM...
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  You’re wasting their time by making them think they can engage you. They are wasting yours by thinking they can engage you. Be the binary choice you want to see in the world — copy and paste ad infinitum until they acknowledge, then take a screenshot / save the call recording: “Thanks, I want to cancel my subscription (Jo Doe jdoe94@gmail account 155234) please acknowledge”
  • gorgoiler 6y ago
    ...though in this case just pay $20 pa to get the crosswords from Ginsberg et al; worth every penny.
• umrashrf 6y ago
  These agents are paid $2/hour. I always avoid them using a prepaid card.
• BooneJS 6y ago
  Washington Post takes a few clicks and you’re done.
• epr 6y ago
  The next great SAAS idea? nytcancel.com: $1 flat rate and we will cancel your NYT subscription for you
• chmod600 6y ago
  I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of print and digital). But the NYT has drifted too far down the path of politically-correct fashions, and away from robust debate and discussion of challenging topics and how they intersect with real events. It feels more like they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions (which shifts rapidly), rather than informing me and letting me form my own. "Persuade" is even the wrong word; more like "pressure" or "coerce". If it's all ads, so be it; but when I pay, I expect that I am the customer and not the product. So I don't pay as of the end of my billing cycle. Also, the NYT cheers on, and even participates in bullying. Scott Alexander being a recent example, but there are a lot more when it comes to politically-charged topics. I should reiterate that this is not a right-left thing. I would have remained subscribed if the NYT had simply drifted left, and concerned itself mainly with arguments betweed various left-of-center factions. Lots of worthwhile things to discuss and debate there, and lots of events to tie it to.
  • DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    The New York Times' dismissive responses to leading American historians like Gordon Wood and James McPherson when they pointed out distortions and inaccuracies in the 1619 Project was an eye-opener to me. The NY Times promoted an extremely suspect hypothesis about the American Revolution (that it was fought in order to preserve slavery - there's essentially no evidence for this hypothesis), and got push-back from some of the top historians of the US. The NY Times' response was essentially, "You're wrong, and we're not changing anything." Then the NY Times' own fact checker published an article in Politico pointing out that she had warned the NY Times not to claim the revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery, but that the NY Times had ignored her. That finally prompted the NY Times to issue a slight modification of their claim ("some" of the colonists fought to preserve slavery - which colonists is completely unclear, but at least the updated statement is so vague that it can't be disproven). All around, it was clear that the NY Times had an agenda to push, and they didn't care if historians disagreed. That didn't stop the 1619 Project from winning a Pulitzer, though!
• myst 6y ago
  Capitalism at its finest.
• gnicholas 6y ago
  Six months after I bought a home, I started receiving the weekend NYT. I called them to inquire about it and they said unless I could verify the name on the account, they couldn’t talk to me. I guessed the name of the previous owner, and that was correct. I explained I was the new owner, that I read the NYT online (usually the night before the print edition comes out, since I’m in California), and that I would just end up recycling all the papers. The rep understood but said she couldn’t cancel the account without verifying my identity. I reiterated that I was not the account holder but I literally own the home where it was being delivered. The rep wouldn’t cancel the account. Eventually he suggested putting it on a vacation hold (maximum 6 months) and then repeating the process every time it started coming again.
• nickt 6y ago
  tl;dr 3 pages of pointless chat over 17 wasted minutes to cancel a sub that could be a single click and losing a customers business forever. About what you’d expect.
• ernsheong 6y ago
  iOS users can subscribe via iTunes subscription, which allows you to cancel anytime you like.
• juzerali 6y ago
  WSJ is even worse. You have to call their US number to cancel the subscription. I haven't been able to cancel it since 3 months.
• Fej 6y ago
  Has anyone tried canceling via certified mail?
• k1m 6y ago
  The Guardian ask you to call a number to cancel your "digital subscription", according to this tweet https://twitter.com/Cauchemar111/status/1359881508731944963 https://twitter.com/Cauchemar111/status/1359881508731944963
• funnay 6y ago
  That wasn't so bad compared to some other services. But I agree it should be easier.
• jhap 6y ago
  Does anyone here know of canceling Wired is also this difficult? I was considering starting a subscription after seeing a compelling offer from them, but if it will be this hard to cancel this puts me in the fence.
• niklasd 6y ago
  I also just canceled my NYT subscription (or, more accurate: I am in the process of doing that) and it is just terrible. I am in Germany, and basically they do not accept your cancellation via writing to the customer support, but require you to call a callcenter, which is extremly hard to reach (either they do not pick up, or the connection quality is so bad that they don't understand what you're saying). In short, I did not succeed in that. Rejecting the written cancellation and requiring to call is both borderline illegal, and an insult to the customer. Everyone involved knows that this is a just a maneuver to nudge you to give up on it, and that this requires me to waste vast amounts of my time trying to call a shady callcenter – that is just an insult to me, and it also destroys the NYT brand.
  • TheTrotters 6y ago
    Life pro tip: e-mail them your request to cancel and write that you’re deaf so you can’t call costumer service.
  • rogual 6y ago
    As far as I'm concerned, I don't need the company to "accept" my cancellation. I simply need to inform them, in writing, that I have cancelled, and to stop paying. Life's too short to jump through these hoops with abusive corporations.
  • lorenzhs 6y ago
    German law stipulates that ToS requiring a call (or letter) to cancel when you subscribed online are void (§ 309 Nr. 13 BGB limits what restrictions can be placed on the mode of communications). Cancelling via their contact form, email, or even SMS is totally fine as far as the law is concerned. I don't see how the NYT could refuse your cancellation via their contact form. Maybe nobody's bothered to sue them? (IANAL) Deepl translation of the law: Even to the extent that a deviation from the statutory provisions is permissible, the following shall be invalid in general terms and conditions: [...] 13. (Form of notices and declarations) A provision by which notices or statements to be given to the user or to a third party are bound a) to a form more stringent than the written form in a contract for which notarization is required by law; or b) to a form more stringent than textual form in contracts other than those referred to in point (a); or c) to special access requirements
• tobr 6y ago
  I went through this recently. I was also forced to repeat name/email etc so that they could “find my subscription”, despite having had to log in to the account to even reach the chat. After that I basically just kept repeating that I want to cancel immediately, and refused to engage with any of their other questions. It went relatively quickly. The chat operator said that I could have also canceled “through the website”, which as far as I can tell is a blatant lie, unless he meant the very chat I was already using on the website… It is of course completely unacceptable and dishonest to make it easy to subscribe or upgrade your subscription, but require this procedure to do the opposite, and I’m a lot less likely to ever become a subscriber again. But on the other hand, if you’re spending more than a few minutes in this chat it’s probably because you are engaging with their attempts to keep you subscribed.
• NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  I was thinking about a similar experience I have each time I need to do anything with any larger institution in the UK. For instance, if there is a problem let say you have with the bank because of their business policies, and if you get transfer to the agent, talking with the agent is even more annoying than talking with the bot. Employees here are trained to go by the script, so there is no thinking, no logic, no reasoning, if it is not in the script they will just go on and on, in the same loop like a broken gramophone record. Usually, humans should be more helpful, but in quite a number of cases, when things are exceptions to the book, that simply does not work. I personally find that type of behaviour super frustrating, wanting me to stop any kind of business with that organisation, for ... forever. Any similar stories in other countries?
• ruph123 6y ago
  I cancelled my NYT digital subscription 2 weeks ago and it was a matter of clicking a few buttons on their website. I don’t know what all the fuzz with virtually assistants is all about. It’s certainly easier than canceling Amazon Prime.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  The Wall Street Journal has electronic cancel. I did so temporarily. At first I was super impressed. Then I remembered that it was really hard the first time I tried years ago. Turns out that California SB 313 changed the game https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB313 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... Online registration means you need online cancellation. Actually, reading the bill, only the intro seems to imply that. The text doesn't. Either way, a pre-written email should suffice.
• foofoo4u 6y ago
  This is why I use burner cards from privacy.com. I can simply terminate my card at will so I don't have to play these games with companies.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  The NYT is a pretty crappy newspaper. I subscribed to it for years, then I subscribed to both it and the WSJ for a few months. If you saw a guy on BART with the NYT and the WSJ every morning, it was likely me. WSJ's Opinion page is total crap but the rest is good. NYT's Business page is okay and their Arts&Culture are good, but the news is fucking garbage. Their rare centerfold articles are great but everything else is trash news. Just the lowest quality of journalism. The WSJ reports much more accurately on way more issues than the NYT. It's not about the politics. They wrote about subversion attempts against the CA EPA and the laws in CA keeping the coast free. The NYT is just a lot more like those American news anchors you see who have this obvious slant to their reporting. If you're foreign, you know what I'm talking about.
• devy 6y ago
  Similar experience with Wired magazine online (owned Condé Nast). These subscription cancellation work flow and process steps are designed to be hard - otherwise their product team is not doing their job, IMO.
• juskrey 6y ago
  With all of its terribleness, PayPal is good for subscriptions, you can just cancel it any time and done. So if subscription only service doesn't offer PayPal, I'll skip it.
• khazhoux 6y ago
  I dunno -- if I went to cancel my NYT subscription and they instead offered me a super-cheap rate, I might take it. This guy was quite rage-y.
• ganafagol 6y ago
  I expected to read details of some legal battle over months. But this is a transcript of a chat for about 15 minutes. Srsly? That's what outrages you? Having to wait for a few minutes to cancel a newspaper subscription? How many times a day do you do this kind of thing?
  • croes 6y ago
    It's not about the time but about the way. You can sign up with a few clicks but to cancel you need to talk to human being.
    • ganafagol 6y ago
      Funny, when the rant is about issues with Google support then the critisism tends to focus around it being really hard to actually be able to talk to a human being.
      • naosouumhumano 6y ago
        Call me crazy but... Maybe people that have an issue with google wants to fix this issue, and a machine is the wrong option for this. Whereas to cancel a service there’s no reason ever for having to talk with a human?
  • fredsted 6y ago
    It's outraging because it should be a single click, and there should be no need to go through this ordeal. Incidentally, NYT can make it easy. I'm in Europe and canceled my NYT subscription last week – it was really easy, just a click on my NYT account page.
• andix 6y ago
  I always try to cancel subscriptions with a legally binding letter. In Austria we have a federal signature service, which can be also used to sign PDFs. Those signatures are legally binding and have to be accepted by all people and companies inside the EU. So I send a signed letter via email to the company. I ignore all their forms, procedures, intimidations. If they don't want to accept it, just threaten them with a credit card dispute (which you will win). I have no idea about the laws in the US though, if that's possible. And yes, it's annoying. But you just need to figure it out once, and use the same standard procedure for any services/subscription.
• KDJohnBrown 6y ago
  Not nearly as bad as cancelling a gym membership. 20 years ago I tried canceling my membership to 24 Hours Fitness when my company stopped reimbursing it. They refused to do it over the phone so I reported my credit card as lost and their charges as fraudulent.
• JanSt 6y ago
  I had a 20 minute conversation with what obviously was a bot (taking a painfully long amount of time for answers) to cancel an online subscription
  • jopsen 6y ago
    When I was in the US I learned to always start conversation with a bot by pressing random numbers until the bot gave up :) Usually, hitting # like crazy will do that trick.
• jopsen 6y ago
  Whenever I looked into buying an actual news paper subscription the fact that the was no price transparency made me conclude I couldn't do business with them. I'm a supporter of the guardian, but actually buying NYT or some other high quality journalism I've given up on. If I feel like I'm getting scammed when I'm buying the product, then I don't want to buy it! Low introduction price without telling me what the real price is IMO criminal fraud. I might put up with it from an essential service provider because I have no choice, but not from a newspaper vendor.
• onra87 6y ago
  Sadly enough, I found that the best way to cancel my NYT subscription was actually to cancel my payment card on which the payment was made...
• dirtylowprofile 6y ago
  In my country there is a cancel subscription button. I canceled and renewe twice already. I’m in Philippines.
• jmkerr 6y ago
  How I cancelled the New York Times: > To: help@nytimes.com > Hi, please cancel my subscription (account number ...). Thanks and regards. Answer: > Hello, ... > Thank you for contacting The New York Times! I am sorry to hear that you would like to cancel your New York Times subscription today. > I was able to locate your account under the email ... and I would like to thank you for your support as a Basic Digital subscriber. It is through the support of subscribers like you, that allows us to continue to pursue the truth, as the truth is more important now than ever. > I was able to see that you are currently on our rate of $4 every 4 weeks for the Basic Digital Access and I would be very happy to help you with 4 weeks free for your subscription then stay at a 73% discounted rate for just $1.00/week for a full year, then returning to a discounted rate of $2.00/week, no commitments! > By cancelling this subscription, you'll be missing out on unlimited access to all our published articles from 1851 until now; as well as access to exclusive features and Newsletters which are a big time saver as they are sent directly to your email with a summary of your preferred topics and sections such as the Morning Briefing, Arts and much more! Are you sure you would like to give up to these features? > If you would like to apply for this new promotional rate, do not hesitate to reach us back! If we do not hear from you within the next 7 days, we will go ahead and cancel your subscription. > As a reminder, you can always view/edit your account information online at myaccount.nytimes.com. If there is anything else we can do to help you, please chat with us at https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/cancel https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/cancel, text us at 855-419-6348 or call us at 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday & Sunday (ET). Thank you for being the best part of The New York Times and have a fantastic day. > Best regards, ... That's it.
• nikolay 6y ago
  That's why I use Privacy.com and can cancel the card at anytime with any merchant. Some merchants guess the new expiration date if your credit card gets renewed - I'm not sure why they are allowed to modify your payment method. Well, it's for my "convenience", I guess.
• deleted 6y ago
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• colorade 6y ago
  I used to work at a call center processing At&t cancelations. Usually just saying, "Please don't put me through the cancellation flow and just process my cancelation", works.
• isolli 6y ago
  To be fair, I've had the same experience with the Wall Street Journal (you must speak to a human and they try to give a few months free) and French newpaper Le Monde (where I even had to pay 5.50 euros to cancel via certified mail). On the contrary, canceling my yearly membership with Barnes and Noble was a breeze.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  I love that they are telling users how to not see the ads, while still getting paid by advertisers, of course.
• kylehotchkiss 6y ago
  The most compelling things about NYTimes that keep me coming back are the site design and experience and Wirecutter. It's a shame that other news sites haven't been able to use design more to their advantage. (Fox News has pictures of race car drivers on it, it doesn't really say "professional" to me) On the payments side, wouldn't be nice if Visa and Mastercard enforced easy-cancel subscription policies and punished businesses who didn't comply?
• okprod 6y ago
  Wall Street Journal wouldn't even let me do it online or via email, forced to call and go through a similar runaround.
• ivanstegic 6y ago
  Just use a privacy.com card and reduce limit to $1/mo and problem solved.
• smangold 6y ago
  I went through this process last month, and I was shocked to the bottom. Absolutely unprofessional. Thank you for spreading the word. I didn't even think of contacting NYT and complaining, because I knew from this experience that all I could ever reach would have been those awful robots. Thanks for sharing this. NYT, let's please fix that and move on.
• gotstad 6y ago
  I wonder if this would happen to me as an EU subscriber. There is a law (source unknown) that requires cancellation of services to be “as easy” as subscribing to it.
• sporkland 6y ago
  I've been looking into cancelling my NYT subscription for reasons. Everytime I look at their page to cancel they say they have no online agents available and I can call them instead. Which causes me to delay further. But the fact that it's been so hard to cancel is making the probability that I will cancel and never resubscribe 100%.
• mahnouel 6y ago
  And that's why I prefer the closed system Apple provides (even though I might pay the 30% premium publishers forward to their users): Being able to cancel any subscription the same effortless way and seeing clearly when it will renew and what I will pay.
• fire7000 6y ago
  Who wants to read that fake garbage anyways. They make up stiff like the whole fore extinguisher incident
• bsd44 6y ago
  That's honestly not bad, I was expecting much worse. I've been subscribed to UK services that took weeks to cancel. Weeks of emailing, calling and frustration and to this day I doubt they really closed my account. Normally I wouldn't care, but when the account has a credit card attached to it that you can't remove and they refuse to do so, it's a concern. From that point onwards I decided I won't subscribe to any service again that doesn't offer PayPal; at least that way I can control my credit cards and only have to worry about PayPal getting compromised as opposed to worrying about twenty different service providers. More so, I won't even purchase anything with a credit card directly if it isn't through a wrapper such as PayPal.
• kristianc 6y ago
  Does the NYT not allow you to pay via iTunes in the US? One of the main reasons I tend to sign up for things like this via Apple is how easy it is to cancel from within iOS
• gambiting 6y ago
  I just don't see any reason to be this rude to the agent. Also, why even bother explaining why are you cancelling? Just say you want to because you want to. Done. The conversation would have been done in 2 lines.
  • libra1 6y ago
    Totally agree. Having been in a call center-type job before, I can attest that the people on the other end are just trying to survive.
• nmeofthestate 6y ago
  Reminds me of cancelling my mobile phone service one time, though in that case it was a phone-call and the attitude of the Indian call centre guy was borderline hostile. It was amazing.
• mindwok 6y ago
  Yeah, I went through this process and wondered if this is even legal. Luckily my subscription was via PayPal so I just stopped paying them. I was so offended by it I'll definitely never subscribe again.
• kaltsturm 6y ago
  Take a look at the online subscription of WSJ - there is no online way to cancel the online subscription, you need to call a number and try to survive their retention script.
• yoaviram 6y ago
  Alternatively, if you live in California or the EU send them a data deletion request and job done. Not sure how to do that? Try this: https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/nytimes.com https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/nytimes.com Disclaimer: I created YourDigitalRights.org precisely for this sort of cases. We now send about 500 deletion request a day.
• hijp 6y ago
  There should be a law that you can cancel via the same method that you signed up. For example you can sign up for recurring paid channels on the Amazon app on Roku, but have to log in on the computer to cancel. What happens is my 80-year old parents try a week of HBO, Starz, Showtime, Britbox etc. Then can't figure out where they actually signed up. Was it under roku, under amazon, under a new app? What credentials did they use? Then they forget about it and are billed in perpetuity.
  • thitcanh 6y ago
    My understanding is that California has it and that you could use a CA proxy to get that easy path for NYC. I haven’t needed it yet.
  • arp242 6y ago
    In the Netherlands at least this is actually the law. May even be EU law – not sure. Of course, the law is only as good as it's enforced. A few years ago I wanted to cancel a mobile phone subscription and the cancellation procedure said I had to send a letter. Like, an actual letter. lol? I just sent an email quoting the law, and since I didn't get a reply I stopped payments. Never heard from it. I sent a notification to the consumer protection agency, but not sure if they actually did something with it.
    • nicbou 6y ago
      It's not EU law. Germany still relies heavily on cancellation in writing.
• phonebucket 6y ago
  There are clearly elements of this which make for a frustrating experience. But, looking at the timestamps, from the point of first message to actually cancelling the subscription was 14 minutes. Not too outrageous?
• miga 6y ago
  I had a similar problem, but the chat was unresponsive so I simply asked my bank to stop honouring their receipts. They sent me spam for another year, before I finally made a lots of GDPR threats to get cancellation. Is it even legal to ask for a zip code to cancel when there was no zip code in their system?
• dandare 6y ago
  Reading the horror stories in this thread, I am asking myself if this is only the issue with US based companies. I have never had this kind of problem with EU based company. Fellow Europeans, what is your experience? Have I just been lucky?
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    Here in The Netherlands there's a law that you should be able to cancel the same way you signed up. Signed up through a web form? Should be able to cancel through one. If they don't offer it, the closest alternative is valid. Just send them an e-mail with the relevant information and you've legally canceled. Doesn't matter whether they like it, accept it or respond to it, the subscription is void. If they keep collecting money, just reverse the charges. They'll have to sue to actually get your money, which they'll never do, because their lawyers aren't stupid and know that they'll lose (it has actually happened). It wouldn't surprise me if this actually originated as an EU regulation instead of national law.
• Chris2048 6y ago
  What BS. you know it's BS b/c there's no symmetry. Where are the account managers gate-keeping NYT subscription to make sure it's really what you want?
• rocgf 6y ago
  This was exactly my experience with The Economist. I tried for a few weeks to get through to someone because the queues were long, and I didn't have the time to wait around, checking the chat box every minute. It is absolutely unacceptable to have to chat to someone in order to cancel your subscription and I lost all my respect for the publication since. It is very sad to see this is industry-wide.
• ElectricMind 6y ago
  Anyone else get email saying "Please subscribe for 15 something. And offer ends in 48 hours". But you get same offer everyday :D
• crowdhailer 6y ago
  I wish I was surprised to see this.
• Xophmeister 6y ago
  I subscribed last year via the app, so the subscription and payments were handled by Apple. When the NYT jacked up the price, it was quite straightforward to unsubscribe. I had heard horror stories like this before, so I'm glad I did it through Apple. (It wasn't completely straightforward. I did have to search for how to do it -- I wouldn't have found the option otherwise!)
• benrapscallion 6y ago
  Here’s an NYT cancellation tip I read on Reddit: switch the payment to PayPal and then cancel through PayPal.
• nagaj 6y ago
  I subscribed to NYT annual plan and cancelled it within 3 months. There was no refund for the remaining months. I tried to resubscribe after a month and had to pay 12 months fee again. Weird!
• bluenose69 6y ago
  I had a similar experience, and it is what keeps me from signing up again, despite the fact that I really want to read that paper. Frankly, the experience motivated me to drop by subscriptions to other USA papers. I still subscribe to some overseas papers, which seem to respect their customers more.
• devsatish 6y ago
  To their credit it was pretty fast for me to cancel. All i said was “ I have a subscription from work and don’t need personal subscription anymore “ . They cancelled right away , no more questions asked .
• tobsterius 6y ago
  I vaguely remember that at one point the NYT provided a way to just simply cancel your account through a link on the NYT account portal -- no need to chat with a specialist. Though, it could have been another paper subscription that allowed for that, I don't remember fully, it was probably 4 years ago at this point. Anyway, I cancelled my NYT subscription a few months ago and received no push back from the specialist. While this tactic might be something that's expected from management, I don't think everyone is willing to do it... or maybe the specialist I chatted with met their retainment quotas for the month (if that's a thing.).
• thinkingemote 6y ago
  Lindsay Anderson the British film director with strong left wing or anarchist views only read the Daily Telegraph ( right wing paper) as "it makes it easier to see the lies". A good tactic to avoid retreating into one's own news bubble.
• lmilcin 6y ago
  It is simple. Make proof (recording, screenshots, mails, etc.) that you requested them to cancel subscription. I typically record the call and tell them I am recording. Then threaten them with lawsuit if they don't cancel. Works like a charm.
• fimdomeio 6y ago
  Making a subscription that by default lasts forever should be ilegal. Users should always have a choice to subscribe by a certain amount of time or undefinitely. Personally the fact that services start a business relationship with me trying to trick me into forgeting to unsubscribe is the main reason why I avoid subscriptions at all.
• olliewagner 6y ago
  I’ve had this frustration with a number of subscriptions over the years, but there’s a great workaround—subscribe from the App Store. I get access to the NYT website, and cancellation is one button press away in my subscription settings.
• damontal 6y ago
  These days I only subscribe to things like this via the iOS App Store
• ossusermivami 6y ago
  It's not that bad to be honest, in Europe where I live they are basically asking me a affidavit letter to be able to cancel official things,
• loudtieblahblah 6y ago
  I wouldn't give those Iraq War propagandists one red penny to begin with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
• cbames89 6y ago
  I signed up once for Sunday delivery only. After 3 months I never received a single paper, then I called to cance. I had a much easier time over the phone, but they were surprised I hadn't received any of my papers even though I called/emailed on 3 occasions that I wasn't receiving my paper...
• nojvek 6y ago
  Oh yeah. I made the mistake of getting NYT subscription. Absolutely hated the cancellation process. If NYT goes out of business, that’s on them for their shitty business practices. NYT is one company I wouldn’t ever do business with, nor ever recommend anyone else. It’s also funny how other publications are jumping on the bandwagon seeing NYT’s model. It’s like they are digging their own grave for long term retention. Or may be the shitty business tactics work and that’s the future. Just like how expedia pulls off every dark pattern to manipulate you into buying.
• hugoromano 6y ago
  This post was an inspiration, so I decided to cancel my subscription. It was a swift cancellation, 3 minutes, maybe because of the effect of this thread. I typed 2 x "I want to speak with areal person". regardless of the question of the bot, then NY Times account number. After that, to the real agent I typed "I can't afford the NY Times subscription". The "it's me not you" approach is perfect in persuasion.
• platty 6y ago
  I wonder if you were to just use a burner credit card (e.g. one of those virtual ones you can generate over your existing credit card) and use that to sign up. Then send them an email saying that you are cancelling the subscription and cancelling the credit card the subscription is with as well. I wonder if this would allow you to not waste your time dealing with their ridiculous process. The only potential issue I could see would be someone sending you to collections because they record you as cancelled when your payments start to fail.
• metalliqaz 6y ago
  you still see ads with a subscription??? man that's fucked up
• vcanales 6y ago
  I went through a similar process with the WSJ, except it was made worse by the fact that I had to call them to get it done. I'm not from the US; no such thing as a toll-free number for me.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Who would pay $50 to have a registered legal letter cancelling your subscription or service physically mailed to these organizations, and then with a registry of case numbers for credit reporting so that when collections buys the "debt" from the company, they can reference whether the person has executed this cancellation or not? If it saved you a couple of hours on the phone, was legally compliant and protected your credit, and forced the company to stop, and was just "point and shoot," would you use it?
  • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    No, I wouldn't. You never have to spend more than an hour actually talking to someone to do this and my phone can wait on a call and ping me when a human picks up on the other end, which frees my time up for other tasks
• Hnrobert42 6y ago
  It seems the problem was that the person engaged with customer service. I have more luck with firmly repeating, “No reason. I just want to cancel.”
  • tantalor 6y ago
    Exactly! Don't say anything about "ads". Just say you're not interested in subscribing anymore. It's not hard!
• mancerayder 6y ago
  See, there was no cancel culture after all at the NYT.
• chmaynard 6y ago
  A workaround: Make it impossible for the NYT to collect any further payments. For example, if they have your credit card number, cancel the card account.
• belval 6y ago
  Globe and Mail is similar, I spent 10 minutes on the phone answering questions before they let me cancel.
• float4 6y ago
  This is sleazy from the NYT, but the person trying to cancel allowed the NYT employee to change the conversation to a negotiation. They were talking to this NYT employee after 3 minutes (not too long IMO). The employee wrote in the very first message: > [...] May I ask why you are canceling? At that point you should say: > No. Cancel my subscription. Then, they'll always give you a counter offer nonetheless: > Are you sure? We can offer you xyz. Then you explicitly say that you won't negotiate: > I won't negotiate. Cancel my subscription. Maybe they'll give it one more try, but if you don't budge they'll back off. And then, at the end, you write: > Thank you for helping me, have a nice day! Because these people don't want to be sleazy. They would get a better job if they could.
• wsostt 6y ago
  NYT accepts PayPal which you can then revoke the authorization to cancel.
• nkrisc 6y ago
  Don't even engage them. Other than personal info, just answer everything with, "please cancel my subscription." Answering their questions just makes it take longer. You don't owe them anything.
• AcerbicZero 6y ago
  I’d probably just dispute the transactions and get a new credit card number - going through 10 layers of “choose your own terrible cancellation adventure” doesn’t work for me. I’m a strong believer in not paying any bills that don’t make financial sense for me to pay; worst case with enough disputes and drama almost anything can get taken off a credit report.
• ra 6y ago
  Just use paypal - you can cancel it from the paypal side without contacting NYT.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• lostgame 6y ago
  All of these comments seem to make it less defensible when people post NYT articles behind a paywall...maybe this kind of information will help people stop doing that here? It would sure make it a much more enjoyable experience.
• dusted 6y ago
  Yeah, I remember when I cancelled mine, it is about a year ago, but during the chat session, I had to be very stern in my wording, multiple times, before the person decided to do as I told.
• syndacks 6y ago
  The New York Times...some of the best journalism around, also some of the worst. Something happened in 2015/6, maybe Trump, maybe something more fundamental (ie larger shift in the zeitgeist that also caused Trump) but they are so off the rails these days. It's mostly the incessant playing of identity politics that's turned me off. Firefox/Chrome users: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome For educational uses only, it helps make the news fit to print.
• offtop5 6y ago
  I almost only subscribe to services via Google Play. Takes 5 seconds to cancel , even got a Duolingo refund after 3 months ( duolingos language education is so poor it's borderline malicious) by emailing Duolingo directly.
• ibirman 6y ago
  I was not able to cancel my subscription about 10 years ago, but I found that I could put the paper on vacation hold. I've been on vacation for all but one week a year ever since, one benefit is that I can still access the digital products all year round during my vacation.
• bilekas 6y ago
  This isnt too bad, hell annoying but I have had to deal with worse! Even with larger companies like YouTube I 'suspended' my subscription thinking it was suspended indefinitely. It is not. So they went to work charging again, on the day I tried to contact them about it and wow it was easily a good hour of my time just making sure i cancelled correctly this time. Then they got back to me a couple weeks later saying they didn't know what payment i was reffering to. I genuinely just gave up. Which is exactly why its designed that way.
• kamaitachi 6y ago
  The Economist is similar. You can subscribe online but in order to cancel, you need to chat to a human. It took several attempts by me to tell them I don’t want to change my subscription plan to a cheaper one - I wanted to cancel. It’s a really bad process for a magazine that considers itself a reputable news source. Won’t be signing up again.
• Humdeee 6y ago
  I'm surprised a person was needed to cancel, but with that in mind, this just seems very standard
• harha 6y ago
  Telcos in Germany also use some shady tactics (just one of many examples, my in-laws were paying 5€/month for an otherwise free AOL email subscription). The one thing that really works over there is threatening to bring in a lawyer, they usually can’t get their in-house counsel to look at some small subscription where they are probably at fault anyway.
• EGreg 6y ago
  This is a problem of the current model, and symptoms include the current battle between Australia and Facebook. Here is a solution: https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#DIGITAL-MEDIA-AND-CONTENT https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#DIGITAL-MEDIA-AND-CONT... If you’re interested to get involved to build this, get in touch via my profile
• mark_l_watson 6y ago
  The Economist magazine was the same. I had to call and talk to someone in the phone. On the other hand, I subscribed to Bloomberg for 3 months at a nice discount, and cancelling that was easy. +1 for Bloomberg, -1 for NYT and The Economist.
• paultopia 6y ago
  I once cancelled a whole credit card to get rid of a gym membership.
• TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
  I always go with: "Please cancel my account and do not respond until it is cancelled."
• chrisBob 6y ago
  This seems like a good space for an online service to get involved. Certified mail is often a good way to get through to companies with practices like this. They handle it differently because the fact that you are sending it via certified mail usually means that you are doing so to provide legal documentation. It should be easy enough to setup a business that sends cancellation letters for you with the proof you need if there are any issues. $10 to cancel your internet. $20 to cancel your NYT subscription!
  • hyperbovine 6y ago
    https://donotpay.com/learn/how-to-cancel/ https://donotpay.com/learn/how-to-cancel/
• paultopia 6y ago
  Oh oh oh here's another good one. A few years ago, I heard that The WELL still existed---yes, that classic pre/early internet community---so I subscribed. It turned out to be 99% dead and basically crap, so I tried to cancel, but nobody ever answered email and the telephone just went to a voicemail box in the void. Someone just kept collecting money but never responding to attempts to get it to stop. Eventually I just disputed the charge with the credit card company.
• andrewzah 6y ago
  The Financial Times isn't as bad, but I did have to call them to cancel whereas I could sign up online...
• rory 6y ago
  If you really need to read an article, you can just delete the nyt-m and nyt-a cookies then refresh (with trackers disabled).
• CharlesW 6y ago
  It's interesting to see all the recent HN complaints about Apple's app store in light of this, since this is exactly the kind of abuse that Apple's consumer-biased policies address. Specifically, if you subscribe to the NYT via the app store, unsubscribing is a quick, no-bullshit process. You can even do it from your Apple Watch.
• Demonsult 6y ago
  I learned years ago to cancel everything in writing, via post. It sounds anachronistic, but actually takes less time and stress. Companies don't mess with letter writers. There's a lot of legal precedent behind us.
• duckfang 6y ago
  For those of us on Firefox, I'd recommend in using "Bypass Paywalls Clean" plugin. It routes around all the obnoxious webtech that these companies put on their websites. If these news agencies are relying on fraud in various ways to retain customers, then it's better that they never have their claws in you to begin with. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
• oytis 6y ago
  You've definitely never tried to cancel a subscription in Germany.
• rchaud 6y ago
  Correction: Here's what it'll take to cancel if you don't make a call. I've purchased and canceled NYT and other papers several times. One phone call does it.
• spookybones 6y ago
  This happened to me. It was infuriating and made me lose a great deal of respect for the company.
• dreamcompiler 6y ago
  This is why everybody needs per-vendor credit card numbers: When you want to quit a subscription you just cancel the number.
• sneeze-slayer 6y ago
  To cancel a WSJ subscription you have to call in. There is no option to do it yourself or even via chat.
• simmanian 6y ago
  This article may be old. It took my GF just 10 seconds to cancel her subscription.
• spamtarget 6y ago
  -may i ask why do you want to cancel your subscription? -no. case closed
• jxy 6y ago
  This is the reason we need journalism. Somebody posted something on an image posting website and all the comments on HN go one way. Why is it so easy to manipulate people these days? Is HN going the same way as twitter, FB, or other SOCIAL sites? I just canceled NYT's subscription, and it took two messages. 1. I want to cancel. 2. I don't want your discount.
• buu700 6y ago
  I haven't R'd TFA, but if I ever wanted to cancel my NYT subscription I'd just close the associated Privacy.com card. It really makes daily life a lot easier.
• BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  In France I am sending an email to the company, and then cancel my direct debit agreement. Total 5 minutes. Of course you may have timing requirements (engagement for X months, or cooldown period, ...) but beside that it is very simple. Once you cancel the direct debit, the bank is not allowed to send money anymore and it is now a problem between you and the company if they do not get paid.
• kyleblarson 6y ago
  The Times lost all objectivity over the last 20 or so years and can't turn back, they're desperate. The only respectable piece of the org left is the crossword, which is still orders of magnitude better than any other.
  • spikels 6y ago
    Prepare for the crossword to go down the tubes too. One of the crossword editors was a big proponent of firing their longtime science reporter for dubious reasons. I bet they are already censoring "problematic" words and clues.
• room271 6y ago
  Checkout also Amazon Prime cancellation (which I did recently), and 3 mobile cancellation in the UK. Both terrible.
• sequoia 6y ago
  Just chiming in to add that I also had a terrible experience cancelling my NYT subscription. I signed up online with a credit card & didn't realize that that automatically causes your subscription to autorenew (it was hundreds of dollars per year, no small amount of money). I called them they told me that because I signed up with cc I opted into auto renew which I am 100% sure I did not "opt-in" to consciously, I wouldn't autorenew something that expensive. They initially refused to issue any refund and eventually gave a prorated one after a long time on the phone. It was a nightmare. (I had subscribed to magazines in the past and they do not autorenew as a rule, I was used to getting "you have 2 issues left! Last issue!" reminders and I thought newspaper was the same). Anyway their "using credit card = opt in to autorenew" was sleazy in my opinion. I certainly will never do business with them again.
• kizer 6y ago
  I mean, it wasn't THAT bad. But that's still annoying and you should be able to cancel via their website. They likely have metrics on how effective their attempts to prevent cancellation are. If it's worth it (save more $ by preventing cancellation than it costs to pay these chat workers), they'll continue to do it. Though, I also have been very irritated with some companies' cancellation hurdles. I could see some law where cancellation can't take longer than 5 min or something on average (that was just an arbitrary criterion). It's anti-competitive to obscure cancellation for sure.
• DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, does anyone know what's legally required to cancel a typical subscription or membership? For example, are companies like the NYT permitted to force you to go through a red-tape gauntlet of their design? Or, e.g., does the law ensure that once you tell one of their agents that you're canceling, they're legally barred from attempting to charge you for the service? It seems to me that the burden of red-tape / bureaucracy navigation is an under-discussed battlefield for consumer rights, at least in the U.S.
  • Maximus9000 6y ago
    Somewhat related, the GDPR regulations do explicitly spell out that unsubscribing from an email list should be clear and simple. Ideally, the same kind of regulation could be put in place for stopping a service on the internet (like NYT).
• ghostpepper 6y ago
  I hate to say it but this is really tame compared to some companies. Wall Street Journal is much worse, where you literally can’t cancel via chat, only phone. This rep asked why the person the cancelling and suggested an alternative to alleviate their pain points, and when the customer declined they cancelled it anyway. The only thing they could have done better is reading the previous transcript so the customer wasn’t forced to repeat themselves.
  • Maximus9000 6y ago
    Same with "The Globe & Mail" here in Canada. You can only cancel via phone.
• iancmceachern 6y ago
  I just stopped paying them, my card expired, and I didn't give them an updated one. It's a shame, I was going to reinstate my subscription (because I love their paper!) But don't want to support this.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mh8h 6y ago
  Protip: Change your payment method to Paypal. Then cancel the subscription from paypal.
• shanecleveland 6y ago
  At least you could do it over chat. WSJ requires you to call with long hold times. The only reason, of course, is to make it as difficult as possible and ensure they read you all of the "are you sure?" scripts. I would love to subscribe to the WSJ, but I cannot justify the cost at the moment. Here is a free workaround for many periodicals. Get a library card. Access ProQuest through the library's website and find the RSS feed for the newspapers you like. Plug it into an RSS reader and get a daily feed of all news stories. It is not as good as a digital subscription. No images or interactive features. But it is pretty good for $0. Similarly, most popular magazines are available with a library card through apps like Libby.
• pms 6y ago
  FT and WSJ are both worse than NYT in this respect -- they require a phone call at a specific period of time and there is a waiting time. I'm not going to subscribe to FT and WSJ ever again. If I really need to read them, Bypass Paywalls does the job. I much prefer Guardian/Bellingcat/Wikipedia's model, which is based on donations. I donate regularly to all three.
• Termiux 6y ago
  Just had to do this yesterday, its ridiculous they make it harder to discourage you, this only made me want to cancel it even more
• sshekh 6y ago
  I got a NYT subscription in 2019. Last year in September my credit card expired, and my bank sent me a new one. This one had the same card number but a different expiry date. NYT just wouldn't accept it. I don't know how credit cards are renewed in the US but this was the new card I got and it worked everywhere except NYT. They just kept saying that it was an expired card so they could not accept it. I tried contacting customer support, no use. They just said they'd manually enter the card details from their side which showed the same result. After a month my subscription was automatically cancelled. Well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• thiagocsf 6y ago
  This could’ve gone smoother if you didn’t give them a reason. When you tell them you have a problem with distraction, I can’t blame them for offering you a solution. You rejected their solution but I don’t blame them for offering you one. It is actually a good thing. If you are intent on canceling, just say so and skip the part where they legitimately try to fix your issue.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• antipaul 6y ago
  So far, they haven’t given any Fs - subscribers keep growing: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-t... Maybe HN and other crowd activism will make them change?
• tssva 6y ago
  It isn't even just for profit companies which have this dark pattern. My local PBS station, WETA, allows you to start monthly donations, increase the amount of your monthly donation and update your form of payment online, but to reduce your donation or stop your donation you must call them.
• s_m 6y ago
  FYI if you set PayPal as your payment method, you can cancel your subscription in a couple clicks. Obviously it'd be preferable to NOT have a ridiculously difficult cancellation process, but that's one way to make it easier.
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  I usually just threaten litigation and they do what I ask
• neycoda 6y ago
  NYT is so unconfident in their product that they've focused more on preventing people from cancelling than fixing the reasons people are cancelling.
• NetOpWibby 6y ago
  I discovered the same thing myself but opted to use Privacy to generate a card and then pause said card so NYT can’t charge me again. https://twitter.com/NetOpWibby/status/1362567006797537280 https://twitter.com/NetOpWibby/status/1362567006797537280
• chagrilama 6y ago
  In terms of tonedeafness they only compete with Ted "Pleasure Cruz" Cruz... How about WIX tonedeafness AND stupidity: offer 1: get "this" and enjoy 10% off. Next week: get same "this" for 25% off. The next week: get the same "this" for 50% off. How would you feel if you bought in week one? Then saw week 2 offer, and realize in week 3 you were just rickrolled by WIX? Tonedeaf idiots...
• foxyv 6y ago
  Just cancelled my NYT subscription in less than a minute. They may have changed it recently or something, but it's not bad at all.
• htunnicliff 6y ago
  This is why I use a card from Privacy.com to pay for my NYT subscription. Want to cancel? Just pause the Privacy card.
• unsignedchar 6y ago
  Seems like there is a potential business model for providing a service that will cancel a subscription on behalf of you