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Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs
- PaulHoule 4y agoEverybody who sends email notifications wants to send me about 10x as many as I can handle. It's one reason I hate substack.
- bombcar 4y agoSubscribe and cancel is what I do with anything that doesn’t let me turn off auto-renew.
- dboreham 4y agoI'm missing something about this. What benefit do you receive? You performed work to subscribe then more work to cancel. What did you receive in return? Not service, I assume since you canceled immediately.
- hef19898 4y agoSubscriptions have trials, or fixed periods. You take the trial, cancel to prevent auto renew and still use the trial / subscription until the period runs out.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoIn my experience, you buy the service in billing-cycle-length increments. E.g., if Hulu's auto-renew charges you monthly, then even if you cancel, you still have Hulu access until the next time they would have billed you.
- zinekeller 4y agoMost subscriptions are fixed-periods: this means that once you pay, it is non-refundable. Doesn't matter that this is illegal in Australia, NZ and EU: they only sporadically enforce it anyways. In practice, this means that you cancel for the future subscription, not the current period.
- brk 4y agoBecause almost nobody offers refunds once the payment goes through, you can cancel immediately but retain access through whatever the subscription period is (usually 1 month).
- bombcar 4y agoExactly as the others mentioned. Subscribe to Disney + for a year, cancel immediately - now I have it for a year and don’t have to think about it at all. And when it stops working, if I notice, I can resubscribe. If I don’t notice - well then I didn’t need it anyway.
- shishy 4y agoI am surprised this isn't higher... I always cancel immediately for auto-renewals.
- badpun 4y agoI think the subscribtions are just too expensive for a lot of people. For example, $7 a month to listen to somebody's paywalled podcast is $84 a year, just to hear that one person alone. For some people that's a drop in the bucket, but, for many, it's just too expensive. Makes more sense to subscribe once a year for a month, go through all the content, come back in a year and repeat the process.
- Victerius 4y agoSome newspapers require subscribers to call a phone number to cancel their subscription. I refuse to subscribe to any service I can't unsubscribe from in a few clicks, regardless of the content.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoHad that happen with the WSJ, will never subscribe to them again. Plus they had limited hours in one time zone.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoI wonder if we can (legally) fight using the same methods that the companies use. E.g., suppose their phone system can handle 1000 people in queue + 20 live conversations. Companies keep the callers waiting, with no regard to the cost to the caller, so the company can minimize their customer-service costs. So how about we even things up? Create company-specific automated services that call in using customer-oriented robots. Have logic that knows how to navigate each company's phone system to reach an appropriate real person. And once they reach a live customer service rep, play the message, "Thank you for your business. We value you as a vendor, and will connect you with your customer as soon as possible! Your expected wait time is...", and have them wait while this middle-man service gets your attention.
- salawat 4y agoYour Call Center workers would be instructed to hang up immediately, and systems would be programmed to try to recognize that system. You have hit on something important though: Customer call centers are generally one of the first places to be aggressively ootimized, and if you hace a call center that has long queue times, this is a powerful signal about what management really thinks is important.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago> Your Call Center workers would be instructed to hang up immediately, and systems would be programmed to try to recognize that system. I'm curious if this has the potential to become an arms race similar to email spam generation / detection. Although perhaps in the U.S., STIR/SHAKEN would mean more creativity is required.
- jwie 4y agoThis is just lack of auto renew protections. Consumers are wise to this, and they’re not really canceling. I bet if you could turn off auto-renew they wouldn’t cancel. But, to nobody’s surprise, the MBAs don’t like options where the user doesn’t give away money by accident. Auto renew is one of those things that should be illegal to default users into.
- brigandish 4y agoI'm currently subscribed to something for a year because of auto renew. The subscription is something useful but was going to use a competitor but once I'd paid it they made it so painful to back out I let it go, turned off auto renew properly, and will never use them again once this one lapses.
- registeredcorn 4y agoWhat's the service, if you don't mind saying? I'd like to avoid them if I can help it.
- brigandish 4y agoI'd tell you if it was in person, sorry. Just watch out for those settings! I wonder if there's a service that handles this kind of thing, it would be worth a subscription.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoHow do things play out if you call your credit card company and say, "Please don't allow any more charges from this vendor. I'm trying to cancel but they're making it hard."?
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI wish I could cancel a credit card recurring payment as easily as a standing order or direct debit. But guess what - it's in the interests of the business and the credit card company for me to keep paying
- pelagicAustral 4y agoWhat I hate about subs for news media these days is the trend to have hidden tiers for subscribers. Basically, you pay a monthly/yearly fee and then all of the sudden you realize that are certain publications that are Exclusive for 'Gold' members or whatever! what a scam. They took a page from the SaaS business-space.
- ctxc 4y agoReminds me of Amazon Prime where many movies have an extra paywall ("rent?") even if you own a subscription. So annoying.
- auggierose 4y agoWould you prefer the movies you can rent were not there at all?
- registeredcorn 4y agoI'd prefer a higher subscription rate for the service. The sensation of paying for something, then paying on top of that thing is infuriating. It's like paying admission to enter a theme park, then having to pay a fee for each ride: either let me enter for free, and pay for each ride, or pay to enter, and ride for free. Assuming a higher subscription rate would be prohibitively expensive, then yes, I would prefer no option at all.
- PaulHoule 4y agoI think you can pay to watch movies a la carte on Amazon even if you don't have a prime subscription. Personally I've enjoyed paying for individual movies on Amazon because the selection of free movies on Prime is underwhelming. (e.g. they have all the "C" sci-fi movies)
- colinmhayes 4y agoYou can change Amazon video to only show free options. A subscription that made all the rentable movies free would be prohibitively expensive. You should basically be thinking of prime video and the movie rental service as different businesses.
- tinyhouse 4y agoOf course. Every time I signed up for a new publication it was to be able to read one article I cared about. I didn't need the subscription after that until the next article... Which doesn't happen often.
- DaSHacka 4y agoThis is almost certainly it, surprised I'm not seeing it brought up more often in this thread. Of the 6 or so news publications I've signed up for this past year, I only actually wanted to be sent updated from one of them, signing up for all the rest just to get access to an article.
- charlescarver 4y agoI’d like to see the same stat for LinkedIn premium…
- annoyingnoob 4y agoThey signed up to read one interesting article. The experience of news subscriptions, and especially cancellations, is terrible. Where are the pay as you go plans? I'll give your site $20, then you can debit my account some fee per article that I actually read. And no auto-renew.
- markus92 4y agoBlendle tried this, but it didn't really work out for them.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoHmm, never heard of it. I was thinking more of a per-publication offering, in the same way there are per-publication subscriptions, rather than a separate aggregation service that wants to be in my Inbox all the time. I think not every article has the same value either, not sure how one gauges the value of a given article exactly. My point really is that I'm willing to pay a reasonable price, but I'm not willing to sign up in perpetuity and I'm not willing to go through an onerous cancellation process. Treat me like a valued customer and let me buy the pieces I want. I don't really care to support parts of the paper/news I don't consume - which is what a subscription does.
- globalreset 4y agoThe real puzzle is why anyone subscribes in the first place.
- LegitShady 4y agoexactly this. I'm surprised 2/3 of subscribers don't cancel as well.
- Lendal 4y agoI feel like news is an example of something that actually did work better 30 years ago. Is that just because I was young and everything seemed better?
- Someone1234 4y agoI'd argue that you're objectively correct because: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States#History_of_FCC_regulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U... Specifically the "Cross ownership rules of 1975" were fantastic. The "Telecommunications Act 1996" started the downward trend.
- derbOac 4y agoI have a family member who still gets the paper and I swear it's better than the online equivalent. The layout is better, and the ads are actually useful, in the sense that they are placed with the understanding that "someone looking at this content might also be interested in this", and nothing is popping up or stealing clicks. My sense is newspapers have been totally lost in the internet era for some reason, and never figured out the basic "provide these services in this way and be nice to customers." I think these problems then trickled back to some extent with the paper versions too. There's entire content categories (local event calendars for instance) that have essentially vanished locally in the way they used to be there. I think it's possible to run a news organization well and my guess is there are some out there being run well but I don't think it's just your age.
- ssully 4y agoAre there any publications that have tried to recreate the experience of buying a physical paper? Like pay a one time fee of $2-3 dollars and get access to all of the news from this past week? Or maybe get an additional 10 articles?
- spicymaki 4y agoI would not mind a more à la carte purchase of individual articles or perhaps a set articles released for the day. Access to that particular/set of article(s) would need to be permanent.
- mywacaday 4y agoThis is not surprising, I got a deal with the NYT and attempted to cancel through a phone call where they extended the offer. 12 months later same call, they asked what would I need to stay and I said same offer indefinitely, 1$ a month is worth it but not much more as a European when its not my main source of news. For some reason I still prefer dead trees when I can find the time.
- kmbfjr 4y agoI prefer dead trees because they're not reporting what I'm reading, for how long nor where the cursor travels on the page. I find people recording my reading habits and preferences to be extremely dangerous given the current political climate. The Wall Street Journal still publishes a PDF of the print version. If all papers did this, I'd have a lot less problem subscribing. Instead, they want you to use their app or log into the site.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoThe reason being: a single publication gives a vary narrow perspective
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhat publications are you subscribed to? Which publications do you read? I find that high quality publications give quite an honest and objective view.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoRight, AN objective view...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhat publications are you subscribed to? Which publications do you read?
- ec109685 4y agoThis is unethical: “It makes sense that sleepers churn: They aren’t getting much value from their subscription. Yet they don’t churn right away. In any given month, 90% of sleepers will simply continue to stay inactive. It’s only when they wake up again and come back that their cancellation rates soar, generally accounting for about 30% of active churn. This makes re-engaging sleepers difficult. How do you bring them back into the fold and “wake them up” without prompting them to cancel?” They are advising to trick users into continuing their subscription by not reminding them they are subscribed. I am sure they are also against reminding folks when it is time to auto renew. These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.
- nerdponx 4y ago> These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice. Tragedy of the commons. See also: taxis. Uber succeeded in part because taxi cartels had become so incredibly unlikable.
- banannaise 4y agoAnd now Uber is its own unlikable taxi cartel, and so the cycle continues.
- travisjungroth 4y agoI've seen the hazards of "raise the dead" campaigns before. You send out a campaign to your inactive users and get 20% engagement. Half of those are cancellations. With 30% sleeper rate, you just immediately 3% of your users. Not fun. What I haven't seen is an analysis of the effect on retention rate. That's going to play out over time. Some of the users who cancelled were going to anyway and some people you reactivated were saved. It would be very handy to have a formula of what values make sense to send out these campaigns so you can stomach the short term loss for the long term gain.
- 4y ago
- chiefalchemist 4y agoWhat's needed is a credits system that works across multiple sites on the order of pay as you consume. I don't mind paying. In fact, I want to pay. Gladly. What I don't want is to overpay and/or take on a payment agreement (i.e., subscription) that's too easy to forget about, or too difficult to cancel (i.e., dark pattern).
- phailhaus 4y agoIt's wild to me that the default payment plan for publications is a subscription-based model. The audacity! I'm just trying to read an article every so often, that is not worth whatever you're charging per month. It feels like microtransactions are the appropriate model to use here, but it will likely have negative incentives (e.g., prioritize clickbait even more.) The Apple News model is also fairly promising, but unclear if publications can support their businesses with it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI think news might be the only exception here- newspaper subscriptions have been around a very long time.
- phailhaus 4y agoI think that's a vestige of the non-digital era when you had to actually get a paper delivered to your door. Now, I'm spoiled for choice and I can read 100 articles across 100 sources easily. No way I'm paying a monthly subscription for each one!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI get a paper delivered to my door as well as magazines like Atlantic, New Yorker, and Economist. Worth every penny.
- phailhaus 4y agoCool! Anyways, most people don't do this because they don't read articles frequently enough, or they read from too many sources.
- 1123581321 4y agoI think you're misunderstanding. You're getting less from your scattered reading than he is from investing in a few, well-packaged publications, assuming you spend the same amount of effort reading. A regular reader of a publication gains an expertise that saves a lot of time and allows for much more reading between the lines. That's a big part of what people are paying for. It wouldn't make sense to pay for more publications than you can master, even if they cost what you'd consider a fair per-article rate. It's not really about minimizing cost per article by buying articles in bulk, especially in the digital age, as you previously noted.
- ykevinator2 4y ago
- Markoff 4y agoThis just shows banks don't offer enough virtual single use bank cards for protection against renewing.
- cletus 4y agoSom eyears ago I was thinking of joining my local Equinox. A few of us went for a tour and here's what I remember most. In the lobby there were 5 "membership consultants" for signing people up. None of them were doing anything at that point. While there one of them answered a phone call. The person on the other end clearly wanted to cancel. "I'm sorry, no one can help you with that right now. You should come in tomorrow." In my case at least it would've been a payroll deduction so I'd never have to deal with cancelling. I'd just cancel the payroll deduction (as in it was a corporate rate). A lot of people don't like Adobe having subscription services. I actually think subscriptions are a better fit for software. You never really "own" your software as much as you think you might. You've just created an incentive for the company to bump the major version and sell you an "upgrade" while abandoning your version. Adobe did this cameras they'd support with their RAW plugin. The RAW plugin just had completely nnnecessary minimum versions to force people to upgrade. But Adobe's subscription model sucks. You have to purchase a year minimum. There are lots of dark patterns to auto-renew. Actually cancelling is difficult. Compare this to Jetbrains (which I pay for). When you cancel you get to use any version you've paid for in perpetuity. They send you advance notice about renewals. I'm happy to pay it. There are a number of news publications I'd like to support but I just don't want to deal with an opaque "introductory pricing" and having to call someone to cancel. I'm not supporting such practices with my money. I realize some MBA somewhere has done the math on new subs lost vs continuing subs they'd lose but this is a classic example of short-term thinkin gyour way into extinction.
- encryptluks2 4y agoMost news should be free. People don't want to pay to hear about current events.
- SaulJLH 4y agojust a heads up Re this comment of mine directed to you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32076788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32076788 TY/BR
- encryptluks2 4y agoIf you want me to respond then can't you comment directly on that submission?
- SaulJLH 4y ago@encryptluks2 I did, have a look at the link to that submission...
- AlbertCory 4y agoThe headline is misleading; it's not just news publications. >Email newsletters, a welcome letter from the editor, a mobile app download, podcasts, subscription benefits reminders and/or a series of reminder emails over the first week and month have all proven successful with audiences. Nope, nope, nope to all of that. Annoying me has the opposite effect to what the MBAs want. As someone below notes: you can go to privacy.com and set up temp credit cards, with a limited $$$ amount. They can try to auto-renew all they want, but they'll just get declined.
- josephcsible 4y ago> you can go to privacy.com and set up temp credit cards, with a limited $$$ amount. They can try to auto-renew all they want, but they'll just get declined. Doesn't your credit report (unfairly) take a hit if you do that, the same way it (fairly) does if you don't pay your electric bill?
- AlbertCory 4y agoGood question. I should check. Of course, privacy.com will say Yes to any name & address you give with your credit card, so you don't have to use your real PII. Or your regular email. How would that show up on your credit report? It's easy to imagine that everything you provide is checked, but it's not true. Just the credit card number, expiration date, and security code.
- welfare 4y agoI "almost" cancel my subscriptions periodically, they usually have a "wait before you cancel" offer in the last step
- DavideNL 4y agoThe first thing i do right after buying a subscription on the AppStore, is cancel it. It's the only way to stay in control and avoid accidentally paying for things i don't use; I bet many people do this, for any type of subscription.
- theonlybutlet 4y agoMy last few news subscriptions also let me sign-up online and required an email to cancel. I don't know why someone hasn't done it yet but offer auto-renew on/off at the onset and when you log on the 1st time after expiry a popup with onceoff "top-up", with out any nagging emails or notifications along the way.
- arrozconcosas 4y agoDidn't the FTC make it illegal to "click to subscribe, call to cancel"? The issue is just that it is not enforced at all. https://boingboing.net/2021/11/17/ftc-says-click-to-subscribe-call-to-cancel-is-illegal.html https://boingboing.net/2021/11/17/ftc-says-click-to-subscrib...
- njharman 4y ago40% are "sleepers". Meaning nearly half of their subscription revenue is from people who forgot they had it, don't use it, and will keep getting auto-renewed until something reminds them they're paying for this thing they don't want. When your product is so worthless and uncompelling on nearly half customers don't use it and your business model relies on them forgetting they're paying for it, then your industry is DONE. Mainstream/Legacy newstainment is absolute garbage. Not worth your time if it is free.
- kippster 4y ago> When your product is so worthless and uncompelling on nearly half customers don't use it and your business model relies on them forgetting they're paying for it, then your industry is DONE. I think this is the model most commercial gyms operate on.
- dymk 4y agoAnd with that let me plug the YMCA. It might vary by region, but the ones around here (PNW) are month to month payment, no sign up fees, far larger and cleaner than any LA Fitness or Planet Fitness. All around a wonderful gym option.
- anigbrowl 4y agoSo many newspapers want a subscription to read anything. I mean get real, if I visit your news site to get information about some unusual newsworthy event I'm not going to subscribe.
- awinter-py 4y agoI mean if it's me I'm trying to read a single wsj or FT article, and there's no way to do that, so I'm unsubscribing asap as a signal to the publication to be less shitty not entirely their fault -- the entire electronic payments system has evolved to make non in person micropayments difficult also possible pubs aren't confident enough in the value prop of individual articles to price them I hate virtual economies + in-game currencies but for newspapers specifically, as an alternative to subscription-gating, it might be an improvement anonymity is also a consideration; KYC fine, but the payment processor can know who I am without telling the content vendor
- gumby 4y ago> “You’ll need a thought-out plan using proven tactics to start forming habits early. Email newsletters, a welcome letter from the editor, a mobile app download, podcasts, subscription benefits reminders and/or a series of reminder emails over the first week and month have all proven successful with audiences.” I don’t want any of that crap. I just want the articles you used to produce in print, except now through my RSS feed. The energy you put into hiring podcast consultants or generating auto play video would be better spent on reportage.
- es7 4y agoI would pay a decent chunk of money per month if I could get access to all news sources. But my news consumption is never done by going to a source. I just want to read articles linked from HN or Google News or Reddit, etc. I need something like Spotify for news sources. Ad-free access to any content. I’ll pay for that. But I’m not going to subscribe to each source individually. Edit: I would want a way to avoid paying for clickbait that I accidentally click on. Maybe sources could be paid per active-viewing-minute and definitely not for clicks.
- popcube 4y agobut people collected best article and published on HN, this is difficult to have a competitive prices when best part of your products had been stolen.