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Same thing with The Guardian. Subscribed online and was then told I can’t cancel via email and have to endure a pushy sales call if I want to cancel. Similar ex

• 3guk 5y ago
  I was kinda shocked by The Guardian to be honest with you - I had a similar experience when I came to cancel my subscription to The Guardian Weekly, which is an excellent magazine. In the end I just told my bank to stop the direct debit - I had a few what seemed like automated payment emails from The Guardian telling me that my payments had failed and to update my payment choices - but other than that I considered my subscription over.
  • Spoom 5y ago
    Careful; if you don't go through their unsubscribe process, they can consider the contract still valid, and collect on the legally-still-valid subscription through liens and paycheck garnishments.
    • heartbreak 5y ago
      I had to stop payment via Amex to cancel WSJ. I have copies (and a receipt) of me informing WSJ that I was cancelling my subscription. Now I’m intrigued though. I’d love to see them try to claim there’s documented debt and collect on it.
• csee 5y ago
  Don't subscribe again. You can read all these articles for free via archive. If they're going to be doing abusive things to you like that, you have a duty to pirate their content.
  • cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    I agree. And we should also apply this ethic to even more important things society withholds from people as an act of violence: housing, food, etc.
• Reason077 5y ago
  Same with the UK subscription craft beer service, beer52.com [1]. Subscribe easily with a few clicks, but they make you call during office hours and endure 10+ minutes on hold to cancel. Sadly in the UK I guess we won't get the benefit of any new EU legislation to address this. [1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F
  • sodality2 5y ago
    Sometimes I wonder what little things differ between countries. But this is new to me. Is it true that you find that hold time to be annoying/out of place in the UK? I once was on hold with an insurance company for ten hours... I began to wonder if 1. something happened that got me stuck in the queue, or 2. if they even had a single person working the lines.
    • ookware 5y ago
      Not OP but also from the UK. Whilst a 10 minute hold time isn't too unusual for large companies, especially if you call at a busy time like midday when everyone takes a lunch break, anything over 20 minutes would certainly warrant complaining about to anyone unfortunate enough to ask how your day is going. A big selling point for companies for a while was quick answering of calls. My bank has genuinely answered faster than 999 (our 911 equivalent) on occasion. Although during COVID hold times have gone up dramatically for some reason.
  • bodge5000 5y ago
    This is the FTC, not the EU (as far as I'm aware theres no EU legislation planned or in place for this). Of course you could argue that the EU might do it one day, but you could say the same about the UK. That being said I thought it already was against UK law. Maybe I got that wrong, or there are loopholes around it, or its just not heavily enforced. Who knows
    • kuschku 5y ago
      The EU regulation on this was already passed several years ago, and is already enforced in some countries, it should be universally enforced by the end of the year.
• 0898 5y ago
  Fun fact: The Guardian's owner has £1 billion in assets.
  • 0des 5y ago
    That is not relevant. Perhaps on Reddit people are likely to find that to be a persuasive negation of the topic you're not addressing with this remark.
    • flyingfences 5y ago
      > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
• emdowling 5y ago
  Having dealt with The Guardian and others like them to cancel, I say "I will not explain why I wish to cancel nor will I reconsider my decision. Please cancel my account. My account number is x, my email is y and my address is z." I usually have to repeat it 3-4 times before they finally give in and do it.
  • criddell 5y ago
    In the past when I've had to deal with a retention person and they ask why I'm leaving, I usually just say personal reasons. I've had pretty good luck with that.
    • LanceH 5y ago
      In the good old days of paper delivery I used, "I'm moving to Zimbabwe." They never had a checkbox for Zimbabwe and the call ended there. Now, I guess they'll just pitch the online edition. Maybe I'll try, "I'm about to winter over in Antarctica and won't have the internet bandwidth for your paper. Do you guys deliver there?"
      • smilespray 5y ago
        Tough luck, they've got decent semi-decent bandwidth down there these days. Perhaps Mars?
        • bluGill 5y ago
          There are several different stations down there, by different countries. I wouldn't assume they all have good connection.
  • rndgermandude 5y ago
    Very prisoner-of-war-esque. I might try that if I ever get into such a subscription trap. I am just not sure if I could maintain my composure enough to keep saying "please".
• aliher1911 5y ago
  When I had to deal with "customer retention dept" as a part of cancellation I was saying that I'm moving to another country and that immediately killed their interest.
• ghaff 5y ago
  The Economist I just didn't renew. Nothing beyond that. What is true is that, with a lot of magazines, to get the best rate you have to select an autorenew option and then they make it difficult to cancel. (That may be the case with The Economist; don't know.) In general, you're better off just paying a bit more and passing on autorenew unless you're sure you want to keep on subscribing.
  • belval 5y ago
    Can confirm that The Economist requires you to chat with a human to cancel. The representative will basically try to get you a "new" deal to prevent cancellation and the whole process took about 5 minutes (with me just saying no to everything). Still better than the Globe and Mail though, had to call and talk with them for 10 minutes while they tried to sell me a different subscription.
• algesten 5y ago
  I'm subscribed digitally using apple app subscription. That means I can just end it whenever and The Guardian wouldn't be involved.
  • Someone1234 5y ago
    But can also only read your newspaper subscription using Apple's walled garden rather than a web browser.
• dspillett 5y ago
  Similar with New Scientist, needed to phone during office hours and was on hold a while, which would put me off subscribing again in future¹ though in fairness they were very quick to follow my cancel request, not hard sell on staying, etc, once I got through. [1] of course that is now a moot point as they've been bought by DMGT and I refuse to give any money at all to those in any way responsible for, or benefiting from, the Daily Fail.
• barbazoo 5y ago
  The difficulty cancelling Economist one time put me off from subscribing to a paper ever since. I don't get it, their content is good, let me cancel easily and I'll come back easily. How desperate are those services that they implement measures like that, counting on people to not follow through the cancellation process, forgetting to cancel altogether, etc. And then doing the absolute minimum necessary, e.g. offering the easy cancel button for California residents only because they have to. It'll be the same with this piece of legislation. Sure they'll do it for US residents but they'll continue to pull the same crap for us here in Canada and elsewhere. They deserve to go out of business in my opinion and I hope they do.
  • jffry 5y ago
    I don't know if this is the case, but these are exactly the sort of awful "customer retention" strategies I would expect from an organization where somebody is being judged/rewarded based on minimizing customer turnover metrics below some threshold.
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    As a WSJ subscriber I'm so used to their blunt "to the point" editorial style that I find Economist articles too long winded and short-storyish. I always get 5 paragraphs in and still can't figure out what the article is getting at. Ain't nobody got time for that.
    • heartbreak 5y ago
      Similar to OP, the WSJ was the newspaper whose cancellation process caused me to stop subscribing to newspapers.
  • scruti 5y ago
    The Economist reached the point of calling me to ask if I knew someone who would be interested into a subscription. I love the magazine but their marketing is really invasive and annoying. Last time I cancelled they were a nightmare calling me every other day.
  • aurumpotest 5y ago
• joveian 5y ago
  They must have changed recently since I subscribed and unsubscribed online earlier this year with no trouble (I unsubscribed because they signed me up to new email lists without my permission, something another newspaper I'm subscribed to (but will likely be canceling) just did as well :(). The one newspaper I've had no issues at all with is Indian Country Today. They use qgiv and while you can make an account with qgiv to edit payment details, they also send you an email every time they bill your card with a link that lets you unsubscribe in one click with no account (so it is easy to just cancel and resubscribe if you need to make changes rather than needing yet another account). All around excellent experience with ICT and qgiv. https://indiancountrytoday.com/news https://indiancountrytoday.com/news https://qgiv.com/ https://qgiv.com/
• askesisdev 5y ago
  I told the person at the The Economist's live chat that I was unsubscribing due to that dark pattern. The other reason is that even if the content is great their app isn't. The saved articles feature isn't shared between different devices. Another reason is that you need to get into an article and then get out instead of doing continuous reading. Ended up reading/annotating downloaded PDFs because it was a better experience than using their app.
• TheTrotters 5y ago
  I had very good experience with The Economist but, despite that, I'm still hesitant to re-subscribe because I just don't want to bother e-mailing them if I want to suspend or cancel my subscription (or add/remove print etc.).
• chiefgeek 5y ago
  Same with the New York Times. Having gone through calling to cancel, I vowed never to subscribe again. Now I simply scan the front page to make sure the end of the world isn’t upon us. (Many days, reading it, it appears as though it is!)/s
• conductr 5y ago
  Newspapers are awful. I had one thrown in my yard DAILY, that the previous homeowner had signed up for. I couldn't figure out what the publication even was, or how to contact them. I ended up flagging down the delivery guy (4am), he doesn't know who the publisher is and so I just tell him to stop throwing in my yard (put in trash for all I care). It worked for a while, but probably the turnover happened and the next delivery guy started throwing in my yard again. So I wake up, flag him down, and ask for his bosses info. Call them, they're confrontational about it so I basically went on to say I feel they are littering on my property and I will report them to police if it keeps happening (yep, Karen move). That led to them telling me who the publisher was, they had a corporate holding company website, with an image of text instructing how to cancel (not SEO friendly). I had to call. After calling, I had to write a letter to some PO Box. It was insane. Meanwhile, I signed up for a magazine 20 years ago for $8/year and still get it monthly as well. I haven't paid since, they send me an annual reminder pay which I ignore. I suppose they like including me in their readership numbers to sell print ads, so they keep sending me magazines. Luckily, I enjoy the magazine. Monthly in my mailbox (not wet out in my yard). I would not want to even think about trying to stop the deliveries, they follow me wherever I live.