9 ms·

Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zon

• xdfgh1112 5y ago
  I used online chat to do it. It took several attempts to get connected. They offered me a really good deal to stay but I declined on principle because I don't want to support such practices.
• docdeek 5y ago
  I had that exprience with the NYT - I had to time my call right to hit the office hours on the US east coast. That said, when I last had an interaction with them about a subscription, I did the whole thing via a 24/7 online chat. A far better and more convenient experience, if one that still lacks the simplicity of a simple ‘unsubscribe’ button.
• hajhatten 5y ago
  Now I just wish this was implemented in my country/EU. NYT set the precedence for our national newspapers.
• wheels 5y ago
  At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or, amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.
  • sorokod 5y ago
    Was cancelling my cell provider and was required to send a fax - hello Vodafone.de
    • littlecranky67 5y ago
      Cancellation by mail is always fine, no company can opt out of it in a legal way. You don't even need to get the address right, you can mail it to any subsidiary of the company - it is the companys responsibility to correctly route it internally. You can even directly address it to the CEO and at "persönlich" to it. My favorite.
      • pantulis 5y ago
        You would need proof of receipt and proof of content in case contract termination does not happen, though.
        • littlecranky67 5y ago
          In theory yes, in practice I had multiple disputes over contract termination and in 100% of those cases the counterparty with happy with the photo. And also compare it to any "phone calls" where you basically have nothing as a proof (dunno about your jurisdiction, but in Germany it is illegal to record phone calls without prior consent and also would require technical means to do so). Also, if you ever worked in a large corporation, they have a lot of means to track incoming mail ("Posteingangsbuch") and for an enterprise to try to pretend not to have received a letter would require maldoing by a lot of employees (who usually are not commited to giving false statements in court for their employer).
  • hnbad 5y ago
    This is true for traditional "contracts", e.g. phone, apartments, gyms, etc, but these generally also involve paperwork when signing up (though in some of these cases you can sign up online and then have the confirmation mailed to you). This is definitely not the case for websites or apps and I'm pretty sure what the NYT is doing wouldn't amuse German consumer protection agencies.
  • joeberon 5y ago
    Germany operates on way more paper systems than the US though
  • Faaak 5y ago
    In general I write an e-mail saying "please don't make us waste more time by requiring me to send a letter and please revoke my current subscription". Works somewhat
    • wheels 5y ago
      There are third party services that handle cancellation (e.g. Aboalarm) that are more reliable, and don't require any more time. I honestly just have an online fax account where I can upload a PDF to send a fax for like 20 cents, and that almost always works. It's still a dark pattern though.
  • imtringued 5y ago
    Stupidly enough, you have to cancel SEPA direct debit mandates with a written document to the merchant.
  • whazor 5y ago
    In The Netherlands there are companies that will fill in, print, and send cancellation letters for you as a service. They rank very high in Google search.
• deleted 5y ago
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• rich_sasha 5y ago
  A few times I found it was easier to cancel a card than to cancel a subscription. I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods and services is to pass full details of your payment card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it. It thankfully is now more of a thing of the past, but it used to be the case in the UK at least that places would take a telephone card payment, where you recite your card number, expiry date etc. So not only can they make any future payment they like, there is even no durable record of them having these details.
  • viknesh 5y ago
    I once had a paper/digital subscription, and at some point I had cancelled the card linked to it. Unbeknownst to me (my parents were receiving the subscription), they had kept sending the paper despite the card being cancelled. When NYT eventually realized the card had been cancelled, they claimed that I owed them for the ~year or so that I had been receiving the paper after the card was cancelled, and attempted to send this to collections. Completely outrageous business practices if you ask me.
    • manigandham 5y ago
      That's not outrageous at all. Your failure to pay doesn't invalidate your contract that you will pay for their services. It's definitely frustrating to cancel, and this is a good ruling that will help make it easier, but it's still your responsibility to do so.
      • matheusmoreira 5y ago
        How could it not invalidate the contract? Services are provided after payment is made. If no payment is made, no service is provided.
        • soco 5y ago
          Have you ever read your contracts? Maybe it would be time to do so now, before you run into troubles with collectors.
• nivenkos 5y ago
  It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
  • texasbigdata 5y ago
    Which is ironic from what I understand to be a mobile phone operator. Clearly they don’t trust their own network
    • shp0ngle 5y ago
      No, they just want it to be as hard as possible. Although I was surprised how relatively big faxes are in Germany. I never had sent a fax before I was in Germany.
      • nivenkos 5y ago
        From nuclear power, to card payments, to online shopping - Germany is extremely conservative with regards to modern technology.
      • ahartmetz 5y ago
        Faxes aren't that big either. I never liked them, never owned one, and I remember sending two faxes in my life. Maybe a few I don't remember. The last one was... to cancel a mobile phone contract.
  • Aardwolf 5y ago
    Still better than waiting hours on a "support" phone line
    • nivenkos 5y ago
      It's not, because there's no real receipt confirmation. They ended up chasing me for 3 years over 20 euros when I moved to the UK. At least here in Sweden, credit checks aren't really a thing thankfully.
• melomal 5y ago
  Wall Street Journal does the same thing. It's completely mad.
  • insaneirish 5y ago
    Tip: when you’re ready to cancel, change the physical address in your account to one in California. Magically, a cancel button appears (to comply with California law). I did this the last time WSJ decided to jack my rate to something obscene.
• makach 5y ago
  THIS. I am thinking that I can finally cancel my nytimes subscription^^ I mean, I really appreciate the articles but I haven't been able to follow as closely as I wanted.
• nasir 5y ago
  I immediately instructed my bank to block the upcoming payments and on the renewal day the subscription was cancelled. This is pretty much a flow of their cancellation.
• quitit 5y ago
  It’s why they hate people that sign up via IAP - literally one click and the subscription is gone.
  • vojvod 5y ago
    What's IAP?
    • montag 5y ago
      In-App Purchase
    • quitit 5y ago
      IAP for in app purchase. There are currently two ways to sign up for the New York times online, one is via the website and the other is via a subscription from the various app stores(an in-app-purchase). To unsubscribe from the website-based subscription requires a call to NYT’s customer service based in New York which have limited operating hours- here they’ll try their best to convince you not to unsubscribe after waiting in a phone queue. However if you chose to subscribe through an IAP then you simply browse to your active subscriptions and press a button - far simpler and on par with how easy it was to sign up. Making subscriptions difficult to cancel is not new in any industry, NYT’s behaviour here isn’t unique, or even the worst example. I use it as a demonstration that even reputable companies use these tactics. This is one of the reasons why certain businesses loathe IAPs, (regardless of the cost). When providing your details to a business there is a lot of added potential for lock in, follow-on marketing, increasing the cost at irregular intervals and selling your information to 3rd parties. I say "regardless of the cost" because many types of digital goods have minimal costs to provide them. For example a 15% or 30% cut of such purchases is negligible when selling an in-game currency because there is no genuine cost for providing that currency. Even if the app store charged 0% instead of the 15% or 30%, the business would still be missing out on using your personal details for all of the other valuable ways they can extract money from you/your data. To use Amazon as an example - I receive extreme levels of spam for the custom email address that I use with Amazon, many vendors I have purchased from have immediately on sold my contact information.
• Manozco 5y ago
  I got this issue with the newspaper "Le Monde" in France a couple of months ago. Had to send them a 8Euros letter to cancel the subscription.
• ddek 5y ago
  Had a similar issue with a US publication recently. They emailed to say "Your subscription of $120 has automatically been renewed, please check your card details or contact us to alter it." Fortunately the card they have expired last December.
• kashyapc 5y ago
  Yeah; I've had this "send us a letter via snail mail to cancel" recently. Saying "it's unreal" doesn't capture the absurdity.