6 ms·

New York Times does this also. As far as I can tell it's literally impossible to cancel a subscription. I had to close the card attached to my account.

astrea 5y ago
My girlfriend and I were both able to cancel. The number worked for us, but we had to say no through a bunch of sales pitches before we got it successfully canceled.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > we had to say no through a bunch of sales pitches Just repeat the phrase "I want to cancel my subscription" to any question they ask. They'll get the message pretty quickly.
lostlogin 5y ago
Nicely timed, thank you. They have a sale on I was contemplating taking up. Nope.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I heard that as far as web cancellation of NYT goes, the Cancel button magically appears if you enter your location to be in California.
  - mekkkkkk 5y ago
    If that's true that is real scummy. Someone should investigate with a VPN.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    This is awful. If anyone from California could verify it would be interesting.
jrockway 5y ago
I'm highly in favor of making this illegal. My credit card expired and I switched my NYT subscription from through their website to through Apple (so I could cancel), and they sent my account to collections! Working with the collections agency to get it removed was easy, however. I guess the law that I would be in favor of is twofold: 1) You must be able to cancel subscriptions from the same website that you created it from. After you cancel, the subscription must last until the end date. (So you aren't forced to set a calendar reminder for the day before.) 2) Sending an account to collections falsely should carry a 100x penalty. If they make a mistake and their billing system sends your account worth $300 to collections, they pay a $30,000 fine. Should motivate someone to write some unit tests for that.
- amluto 5y ago
  I would be in favor of a different approach: a merchant should not, under any circumstances, be able to remove money from an account, charge a credit card, or otherwise take money from someone without the explicit authorization of the customer. In this context, explicit means one of two things: 1. The customer intentionally authorized that specific transaction. A specific transaction means one transaction. If a merchant wants to use this approach, they need to ask for authorization each time they charge. 2. The merchant may register a subscription or other recurring charge arrangement with the customer’s bank or card provider. The customer must explicitly authorize this registration at the time it occurs and may, by contacting their bank, revoke the authorization at any time. The merchant may not recreate the authorization without the customer re-authorizing it at the time of creation. Eventually, the whole pull model of money transfers needs to go away. Taking money from someone by knowing their account number is nonsensical and should not be possible.
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    Though I’m skeptical of cryptocurrencies as a market, I’m very bullish on the technology long-term for use-cases like this. Having programmable money where every party is able to audit something like a smart contract and see how their deposited money will be treated is huge. We could effectively get rid of pull-model money transfers and instead relegate similar functionality to open smart contract pools.
litoorachure 5y ago
I don't think that's accurate today. I recently cancelled my NYT subscription from their website, didn't even need to call them. How long ago was your experience?
- detaro 5y ago
  Do you happen to have an address in California?
  - litoorachure 5y ago
    No.
- dmix 5y ago
  About 10yrs ago
- ncallaway 5y ago
  I ran into this myself 18 months ago. I had subscribed years ago online, but was unable to cancel online. I informed the person who canceled my subscription over the phone that I'd never consider doing business with them again, unless they fixed the problem. I hope it's fixed now! That'd be a great improvement
- snegu 5y ago
  I also was able to easily cancel online a few months ago (not in California). I'm wondering if they changed their policies recently, in which case this complaint is out of date.
offtop5 5y ago
They way to do this is to run the subscription though something like Google Play. Then you cancel it on Google's side. Be wary if a company avoids Google. For example Tinder started forcing users to subscribe directly instead of using Google. This is because most people cancel almost immediately since once you subscribe you find all your matches are bots. The entire purpose is to make it just hard enough so you think ohh it's only 10$ a month. Another trick is to offer a month free. Hulu does this. If you cancel on their website you get several pages which try to convince you to stay. Google also makes it easy to manage all your subscriptions in one place. What is all this crap I'm paying for, I can quickly see what and delete it. Also I'm much more likely to try a service ( I'm studying Chinese right now and have used various apps) if I can do it via Google Play .
- jackson1442 5y ago
  This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. There's virtually no risk with subscriptions in there- they can all be canceled in a few clicks in the Subscriptions section of your Apple ID. And if something's straight up a scam or an accidental (but unconsumed) purchase, you can request a refund from Apple with rather little friction. First-party trials annoy me since cancelation is instant, unlike trials from third-party apps (those cancel after the trial period if you cancel during). Fortunately, you can go to Report A Problem and just say you didn't mean to have the subscription charged and they'll refund it as long as it's a few days from the charge date.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. And yet there are scams that are costing users $5 million a year, or more, on the iOS App Store[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228
    - yladiz 5y ago
      There are also scams costing people money without using iOS, for example where the person is tricked into thinking they have a debt and sending thousands of dollars in cash to a random address[1]. What’s your point? 1: https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g (it’s the Mark Rober phone scammer video)
nobodyandproud 5y ago
I was able to cancel my subscription with minimal fuss. I did have to interact with a chat window, which was of course annoying. I also made damn sure I received a cancellation email. Too many horror stories to not do my due diligence.
andreilys 5y ago
You can also open a temporary credit card linked to your real credit card using www.privacy.com If you have problems cancelling a subscription, you can simply cancel the temporary card that privacy.com created for you
- edoceo 5y ago
  someone upthread got sent to collections after a card-cancel way, so, still some risk
andy_ppp 5y ago
It really does make you wonder that “the paper of record” deals in such immoral actions what else they are willing to compromise on. I seem to remember Pg being completely misrepresented by the same paper [1]. Maybe they are just really unethical people with a good brand. [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152
shubik22 5y ago
NY Magazine too. After renewing my subscription at 2x the original rate I paid, they made it incredibly difficult to cancel. When I called their customer support, they told me I had purchased my subscription through a third party so they couldn’t cancel it for me and I’d have to contact the third party. Me: what’s their contact info? Agent: inquiries@nymag.com Me: This is a third party but they have an NY Mag email address? Agent: Yes. Me: ... How are they a third party then? Agent: One second, I’m transferring you to my supervisor. Nothing turns me off a brand I like and want to support more than 1) autorenewals at 2x your intro price and 2) making cancellations both arbitrarily difficult and insulting.
elithrar 5y ago
If your billing address is in California, the NYT do let you cancel online. They intentionally make it extremely high friction.
- gundmc 5y ago
  I'm in California and was able to cancel online but only after waiting in queue and then "chatting" with a retention specialist for 10 minutes. This was about 2 years ago so maybe they've changed since.
suifbwish 5y ago
Paying for news in 2021 is a lot like paying for porn in 2021. Who does that.
- smolder 5y ago
  People who want quality journalism pay for it. It comes up in the comments here a lot, how journalism has gotten lazy/bad because of the lack of money in doing it well. The solution is to pay those doing it well.
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    The problem is anyone can make a blog and there are a ton of good writers. The media used to be an exclusive club like Hollywood but now anyone can make their own news blog so there’s nothing special about NY times or any of the others except their name and possibly some unique information sources from their contacts. I have read many small news blogs that are better written than the major news outlets. They also don’t choke you down with intrusive ads and pop ups and give you paywalls just to read their version of the same story being reported on other blogs for free. Their days are numbered to be sure.
snegu 5y ago
That's interesting! I recently cancelled my NYT subscription using their live chat with no trouble at all.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Same here. No problems at all. (I’m in Ohio.)
hhjinks 5y ago
You can change your payment option to paypal, remove your card from NYT, then remove your card from paypal. They'll complain to you for a couple weeks, but they'll cancel it for you after a while after that.
- edoceo 5y ago
  you can cancel auto-sub in paypal w/o removing the card
kart23 5y ago
And they recently ran an opinion piece calling attention to dark patterns. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-internet-ecommerce-regulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-inte...
avitous 5y ago
I recently cancelled without any issue... by virtue of paying for it initially with Paypal, which makes it trivial to cancel the recurring payment on my end. When I called them to cancel, and they tried giving me a runaround, I interrupted to tell them I had already cancelled the payment anyway so they literally had no choice; then I hung up. No worries! I will never subscribe to anything that doesn't accept Paypal for payment, thereby giving me the last word in controlling said payment (yes, I know a credit card would allow this, only not as easily.)
harles 5y ago
I ran into this as well with NYT (grabbed a sub for election season only). You can cancel if you chat with someone during business hours - and immediately shoot down any attempt to to extend etc. Related, I really hate Apple taking a permanent 30% cut of iOS subs, but I will use that route whenever possible. Canceling an iOS sub is always a painless single click experience from a known location. In fact I usually subscribe and immediately cancel so I’ll renew only if I actively choose to do so.

astrea 5y ago

My girlfriend and I were both able to cancel. The number worked for us, but we had to say no through a bunch of sales pitches before we got it successfully canceled.

throwawayboise 5y ago
> we had to say no through a bunch of sales pitches Just repeat the phrase "I want to cancel my subscription" to any question they ask. They'll get the message pretty quickly.

lostlogin 5y ago

Nicely timed, thank you. They have a sale on I was contemplating taking up. Nope.

inglor_cz 5y ago
I heard that as far as web cancellation of NYT goes, the Cancel button magically appears if you enter your location to be in California.
- mekkkkkk 5y ago
  If that's true that is real scummy. Someone should investigate with a VPN.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  This is awful. If anyone from California could verify it would be interesting.

jrockway 5y ago

I'm highly in favor of making this illegal. My credit card expired and I switched my NYT subscription from through their website to through Apple (so I could cancel), and they sent my account to collections! Working with the collections agency to get it removed was easy, however. I guess the law that I would be in favor of is twofold: 1) You must be able to cancel subscriptions from the same website that you created it from. After you cancel, the subscription must last until the end date. (So you aren't forced to set a calendar reminder for the day before.) 2) Sending an account to collections falsely should carry a 100x penalty. If they make a mistake and their billing system sends your account worth $300 to collections, they pay a $30,000 fine. Should motivate someone to write some unit tests for that.

amluto 5y ago
I would be in favor of a different approach: a merchant should not, under any circumstances, be able to remove money from an account, charge a credit card, or otherwise take money from someone without the explicit authorization of the customer. In this context, explicit means one of two things: 1. The customer intentionally authorized that specific transaction. A specific transaction means one transaction. If a merchant wants to use this approach, they need to ask for authorization each time they charge. 2. The merchant may register a subscription or other recurring charge arrangement with the customer’s bank or card provider. The customer must explicitly authorize this registration at the time it occurs and may, by contacting their bank, revoke the authorization at any time. The merchant may not recreate the authorization without the customer re-authorizing it at the time of creation. Eventually, the whole pull model of money transfers needs to go away. Taking money from someone by knowing their account number is nonsensical and should not be possible.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  Though I’m skeptical of cryptocurrencies as a market, I’m very bullish on the technology long-term for use-cases like this. Having programmable money where every party is able to audit something like a smart contract and see how their deposited money will be treated is huge. We could effectively get rid of pull-model money transfers and instead relegate similar functionality to open smart contract pools.

litoorachure 5y ago

I don't think that's accurate today. I recently cancelled my NYT subscription from their website, didn't even need to call them. How long ago was your experience?

detaro 5y ago
Do you happen to have an address in California?
- litoorachure 5y ago
  No.
dmix 5y ago
About 10yrs ago
ncallaway 5y ago
I ran into this myself 18 months ago. I had subscribed years ago online, but was unable to cancel online. I informed the person who canceled my subscription over the phone that I'd never consider doing business with them again, unless they fixed the problem. I hope it's fixed now! That'd be a great improvement
snegu 5y ago
I also was able to easily cancel online a few months ago (not in California). I'm wondering if they changed their policies recently, in which case this complaint is out of date.

offtop5 5y ago

They way to do this is to run the subscription though something like Google Play. Then you cancel it on Google's side. Be wary if a company avoids Google. For example Tinder started forcing users to subscribe directly instead of using Google. This is because most people cancel almost immediately since once you subscribe you find all your matches are bots. The entire purpose is to make it just hard enough so you think ohh it's only 10$ a month. Another trick is to offer a month free. Hulu does this. If you cancel on their website you get several pages which try to convince you to stay. Google also makes it easy to manage all your subscriptions in one place. What is all this crap I'm paying for, I can quickly see what and delete it. Also I'm much more likely to try a service ( I'm studying Chinese right now and have used various apps) if I can do it via Google Play .

jackson1442 5y ago
This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. There's virtually no risk with subscriptions in there- they can all be canceled in a few clicks in the Subscriptions section of your Apple ID. And if something's straight up a scam or an accidental (but unconsumed) purchase, you can request a refund from Apple with rather little friction. First-party trials annoy me since cancelation is instant, unlike trials from third-party apps (those cancel after the trial period if you cancel during). Fortunately, you can go to Report A Problem and just say you didn't mean to have the subscription charged and they'll refund it as long as it's a few days from the charge date.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. And yet there are scams that are costing users $5 million a year, or more, on the iOS App Store[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228
  - yladiz 5y ago
    There are also scams costing people money without using iOS, for example where the person is tricked into thinking they have a debt and sending thousands of dollars in cash to a random address[1]. What’s your point? 1: https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g (it’s the Mark Rober phone scammer video)

nobodyandproud 5y ago

I was able to cancel my subscription with minimal fuss. I did have to interact with a chat window, which was of course annoying. I also made damn sure I received a cancellation email. Too many horror stories to not do my due diligence.

andreilys 5y ago

You can also open a temporary credit card linked to your real credit card using www.privacy.com If you have problems cancelling a subscription, you can simply cancel the temporary card that privacy.com created for you

edoceo 5y ago
someone upthread got sent to collections after a card-cancel way, so, still some risk

andy_ppp 5y ago

It really does make you wonder that “the paper of record” deals in such immoral actions what else they are willing to compromise on. I seem to remember Pg being completely misrepresented by the same paper [1]. Maybe they are just really unethical people with a good brand. [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152

shubik22 5y ago

NY Magazine too. After renewing my subscription at 2x the original rate I paid, they made it incredibly difficult to cancel. When I called their customer support, they told me I had purchased my subscription through a third party so they couldn’t cancel it for me and I’d have to contact the third party. Me: what’s their contact info? Agent: inquiries@nymag.com Me: This is a third party but they have an NY Mag email address? Agent: Yes. Me: ... How are they a third party then? Agent: One second, I’m transferring you to my supervisor. Nothing turns me off a brand I like and want to support more than 1) autorenewals at 2x your intro price and 2) making cancellations both arbitrarily difficult and insulting.

elithrar 5y ago

If your billing address is in California, the NYT do let you cancel online. They intentionally make it extremely high friction.

gundmc 5y ago
I'm in California and was able to cancel online but only after waiting in queue and then "chatting" with a retention specialist for 10 minutes. This was about 2 years ago so maybe they've changed since.

suifbwish 5y ago

Paying for news in 2021 is a lot like paying for porn in 2021. Who does that.

smolder 5y ago
People who want quality journalism pay for it. It comes up in the comments here a lot, how journalism has gotten lazy/bad because of the lack of money in doing it well. The solution is to pay those doing it well.
- suifbwish 5y ago
  The problem is anyone can make a blog and there are a ton of good writers. The media used to be an exclusive club like Hollywood but now anyone can make their own news blog so there’s nothing special about NY times or any of the others except their name and possibly some unique information sources from their contacts. I have read many small news blogs that are better written than the major news outlets. They also don’t choke you down with intrusive ads and pop ups and give you paywalls just to read their version of the same story being reported on other blogs for free. Their days are numbered to be sure.

snegu 5y ago

That's interesting! I recently cancelled my NYT subscription using their live chat with no trouble at all.

kayodelycaon 5y ago
Same here. No problems at all. (I’m in Ohio.)

hhjinks 5y ago

You can change your payment option to paypal, remove your card from NYT, then remove your card from paypal. They'll complain to you for a couple weeks, but they'll cancel it for you after a while after that.

edoceo 5y ago
you can cancel auto-sub in paypal w/o removing the card

kart23 5y ago

And they recently ran an opinion piece calling attention to dark patterns. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-internet-ecommerce-regulation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-inte...

avitous 5y ago

I recently cancelled without any issue... by virtue of paying for it initially with Paypal, which makes it trivial to cancel the recurring payment on my end. When I called them to cancel, and they tried giving me a runaround, I interrupted to tell them I had already cancelled the payment anyway so they literally had no choice; then I hung up. No worries! I will never subscribe to anything that doesn't accept Paypal for payment, thereby giving me the last word in controlling said payment (yes, I know a credit card would allow this, only not as easily.)

harles 5y ago

I ran into this as well with NYT (grabbed a sub for election season only). You can cancel if you chat with someone during business hours - and immediately shoot down any attempt to to extend etc. Related, I really hate Apple taking a permanent 30% cut of iOS subs, but I will use that route whenever possible. Canceling an iOS sub is always a painless single click experience from a known location. In fact I usually subscribe and immediately cancel so I’ll renew only if I actively choose to do so.