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What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers

91Jacob 4y ago
Some 'neobanks' like Revolut help deal with this type of thing - you can create a temporary card to sign up and scramble it whenever you please. Great for trials or indeed annoying subscriptions.
MrDresden 4y ago
I've had the habit of only ever subscribing to news outlets if they allow me the option of paying via PayPal. If the cancellation process is a deep hole of dark patterns and anti consumerist behaviour then at least I can simply go and delete the token inside PayPals management portal. Though due to this kind of annoying behaviour, I've become jaded and have given up on subscribing to news outlets all together.
zx8080 4y ago
Wow, ~1/3 subscriptions hard to cancel is a lot. Obstacles while cancelling subscriptions are obvious. That's easy money. Probably, unless regulated, the issue will not be fixed, in general.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  It's something that's always struck me as prime ground for regulation when the contentious topic of Apple's control over their platform comes up. One of the most often repeated points from Apple customers is the ease of use and trust they have in Apple's payment and cancellation system that all apps are forced to go through and how much they'd hate to lose it. There is an obvious failure here, we shouldn't rely on companies to force other companies to undertake obviously good, pro-consumer behaviour.
pers0n 4y ago
I'd say about 15-25% of Meetup's revenue comes from people who don't know they are still paying for a group, because its a subscription that only gets billed once every 6 months. So many groups are dead. Before the pandemic it might of been maybe 5-10% but afterwards its much much higher. Odds are anyone you unsubscribe from will spam you in a newsletter. Even if you opt out, you'll be re-added a year or 2 later. I've learned to use certain gmail for certain sites/services to prevent them spamming up my personal domain emails. I really hope they make it 1 click to cancel as a law, I've had to call in my CC as stolen at least 2 or 3 times to end something or to prevent some trial period from charging me.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  I switched to using a custom domain + catchall email setup. So when I go to a retail store that requires an email to get a receipt, I just give them STORENAME@mycustomdomain.com and it will get delivered into my inbox. Retailers that don't honor the unsubscribe button just get the email address created and then set to bounceback as undeliverable. This also does a great job of catching data leaks or willful sale of client and customer data.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Yeah but you look really weird trying to give this email in person or over the phone. I used to do that but these days I just set up a filter rule to move emails from their domain to junk. Most stuff that comes from email leaks gets caught but the spam filter already.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      An email address is an email address. Who cares if it looks weird? It's far more weird to sell someone's data or not respect if they wish to be contacted. If necessary, blag it. Walmart? `wallace.martin@yourdomain.suffix`.
      - londons_explore 4y ago
        There are more and more sites that now demand you use a hotmail/outlook/bigco email address. If you try to use your own domain, they'll say "sorry, you need to use your personal email for this - for business use contact our sales department".
        hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Then use the `+` system on them and forward your emails wherever you want them to ultimately be stored. https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html?m=1 https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-mo... Works on outlook.com addresses too.
Ralfp 4y ago
This crap is what prevents me from subscribing US press. I would love to some of their titles but I am a foreigner and there's no way I am going to call a number in US to cancel. I am also not desperated to create burner cards for paying for those.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I use a virtual debit card and cancel that when I want to end a subscription. I've had about 5 emails from Microsoft this week about my Xbox ultimate ending.
- shaky-carrousel 4y ago
  Some online banks allow you to easily create virtual cards. I use revolut, which is free.
  - Ralfp 4y ago
    This is what burner card is, and I don’t want to bother with.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  This crap hurts an awful lot of good actors. I used to work for a small startup in the education sector. We offered trial subscriptions, but because of the 'cancel before your trial expires' anti-pattern that so many companies adopt, potential customers were suspicious. To the extent that they thought they might be charged on trial expiry, despite the fact that they didn't even provide a means of payment at any time during the process.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    Sometimes you find a very underrated comment here, and this is one of those instances. I NEVER subscribe to free trial offers simply because of the number of negative posts about how hard it is to cancel, and the pain involved. It absolutely does hurt "good actors".
psychphysic 4y ago
Bloomberg is shocking here. You have to go several links to get to a ChatBot. To ask to cancel to click links. To cancel. What on earth? Why?
- safety1st 4y ago
  Because they don't have a lot of competition. They publish a very specific type of journalism for a very specific audience. Why shouldn't they fuck you? What are you gonna do about it? Quit doing business with Bloomberg? This is really what a lot of bad customer service issues boil down to, telecom is a classic example (I'm looking at you Comcast). There has been a lot of consolidation in American media in recent years and it doesn't really take a formal cartel, it just takes these guys at the executive layer looking at their competitor who is not much different, looking at their giant cash hoards, maybe buying each other a few nice dinners in New York City, and shrugging their shoulders as they light up another Cuban. When it's having a populist moment the political class especially in the EU will take the issue du jour and talk about crafting a law to deal with it. But in a lot of cases we would be better off if they just enforced antitrust laws that are already on the books and got more zealous about that topic in general.
dmm 4y ago
It's interesting how these companies seem to optimize for retention by making it hard to unsubscribe but that's probably not optimal for acquiring customers. I would probably subscribe to the nytimes but I've been discouraged by the stories of how hard it is to cancel.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  If you change your address to a California address you can enable click to cancel online for NYT.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    Which tells you how much any statement about caring for their customers is an outright lie. If they'll happily inconvenience you because the law doesn't specifically say they shouldn't, then they aren't being a good company but just a minimally compliant one.
athenot 4y ago
Another option would be to mail a physical letter to their billing department stating that you are cancelling your subscription 30 days from now and any subsequent charges to the credit card will be disputed.
- brookst 4y ago
  I'd rather keep paying than figure out how and where to buy stamps and envelopes.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    ... the post office, and most large grocery stores. I live in the middle of nowhere (population around 200) and i can buy stamps with a 10 minute walk; envelopes, labels, boxes, etc as well. And if that post office is closed, there's another one 10 minutes up the road, and if that one is out, i can drive a triangle to get to another one in about 10 minutes. Larger cities may require more time to get to a post office, but there's probably 5 places between you and the post office that also sell stamps and envelopes.
the_snooze 4y ago
Still waiting for the high-tech innovation of being able to unilaterally cancel subscriptions by blocking charges.
- criley2 4y ago
  Various credit cards give you the ability to create per-store cards that can be shut-off or have shutoff dates. When I sign up for a trial now, I use a temporary card that is locked before the payment kicks in. My card actually has a nice browser extension that automatically gets or generates a per-store card when I hit a payment form. Very convenient.
- alsodumb 4y ago
  I always thought privacy.com let’s you do essentially this but I could be wrong.
  - the_snooze 4y ago
    It does. I've used it myself, but I'm mainly talking about that functionality being the default on all credit cards. I can protect myself from sketchy unsubscribe roadblocks, but the fact that you have to go out of your way to set up Privacy.com means the business practice will persist.
Raed667 4y ago
Why aren't we lobbying for an onboarding/offboarding parity law (looking at you EU !) If I sign up with 3 clicks, it should be (at most) the same to unsubscribe.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I would lobby for it at the state level, and pass something like California did. That will be much likelier than federal action.
- codedokode 4y ago
  This is not a complete solution because you might not remember about the subscription. The list of subscriptions should be displayed on bank's website and there should be a button for unsubscribing.
mihaaly 4y ago
I am reluctant to subscribe to anything nowadays. I contemplate hard and long before deciding to go ahead, more likely not going ahead. And this is mostly due to the rubbish client relationships many providers allow for themselves. Most times it does not worth the effort.
- wanderingstan 4y ago
  This is me as well. I wonder if as the subscription landscape gets more “toxic”, it’s a net negative for the whole industry. Even above-board offerings will get ignored by would-be customers that no longer trust.
  - digging 4y ago
    For sure. I don't want to "subscribe for offers and new products" even if I like the company because I already get too much clutter and I expect that I will ignore/delete 9/10 of their emails.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Guybrush_T 4y ago
  It's tough because everything is a subscription now. In the early days of steaming products like Netflix was great because you had access to so much for a small price. Now subscriptions services are so granular so you really have to pick and choose.
  - digging 4y ago
    And because it's so easy for everything to be a subscription now, most of them are of negative value to the subscriber. That is, the subscriber gets nothing useful from the email subscription and has to deal with the useless emails taking up decision space (do I delete it now? what if there is something valuable inside? maybe I save it for someday because I might use that coupon?) when they come in. In other words, they are clutter, or litter.
  - 4y ago
codedokode 4y ago
> In March, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a “click to cancel” rule that would make it as easy for consumers to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. Unsubscribing (and cancelling any other recurrent payments) should be made from bank's website. It is noteworthy that banks allow companies to charge you but do not display list of subscriptions and do not allow to easily cancel them. There is no hope that banks will change, so I hope cryptocurrency wallets will fix this problem.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  PayPal is a great go-between for this sort of thing. They track your recurring payments and allow you to cancel them in the dashboard. It's the best thing since sliced bread.
fortran77 4y ago
I'm glad California has a law against some of the practicies, and our entire Nation will soon follow. I hope they enforce this law.
jmbwell 4y ago
A thoughtful article, not run of the mill kvetching. It includes comments from some of the newspapers about the thinking behind their cancellation processes and some considerations of the reasoning, which, regardless whether I agree, is enlightening. As a side note, there’s hardly any outrage, which I find somehow refreshing reading an article on this or any other topic.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > there’s hardly any outrage Perhaps because it wasn’t his money or time being taken by these websites. It was his employers.
  - jmbwell 4y ago
    That, and/or the employer isn’t strictly in the business of monetizing outrage clickbait. Kinda makes me want to … subscribe to it…
gumballindie 4y ago
You really don't need to read more than 1-2 newspapers. They all publish the same stories about the same topics, rarely anything different. To reduce time wasted just summarize their content with an ai bot of your choice. Happy life.
- booleandilemma 4y ago
  I had the same thought, but the article is about how he was given the job of unsubscribing from 22 newspapers that his employer had been subscribed to.
sagebird 4y ago
The Boston Globe, for example, first introduced online cancellation in fall of 2020 to a portion of its subscriber base after it received an influx of tens of thousands of new subscribers at the beginning of the pandemic, Tom Brown, Globe vice president of consumer revenue, said. “We wanted to make sure that didn’t clog up the phone lines and create a poor experience for any subscriber calling for any reason,” Brown said in an email. “We then started making it available to more subscribers based on market research that we conducted that showed subscribers wanted this.” ~~~ Reads like: After I hired a market research firm to gather opinions from my brother, I decided to stop poking him with a stick.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  “We hired a market research firm to tell us that people like sunlight. So we started building homes with windows. It was win-win all around.”
- duxup 4y ago
  I'd certainly like everything to be easily canceled online. Having said that I wonder if that example with the Boston Globe is sort of the old "Be Radiohead" example. In that situation Radiohead sold their album online for whatever you want to pay. It was touted as a good way to do business, because Radioheads sold a lot. Later someone wrote satirical article telling other bands how they could do the same. Step 1 was "Be Radiohead". In reality the reason for all the sales were ... they were Radiohead. I wonder if the Boston Globe is at that scale where they can do that, while other places might not see any new subscribers.
  - unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
    The Boston Globe was notorious for years as the primary offender in the "impossible to cancel" list. Offering them as a positive example for ease of cancellation past, present or future eliminates all credibility. It's like offering ... Joseph Stalin for a humanitarian prize.
    - robobro 4y ago
dspillett 4y ago
> I was pleasantly surprised to find that about two-thirds of the newspapers on my list were easy or moderately easy to cancel I was surprised by only ⅓ making things difficult until the rest of the sentence… > requiring fewer than five minutes to discontinue and presenting few, if any, obstacles Considering you can sign-up in a minute (except typing in CC details if you aren't using a stored payment method stored in your browser or a service like PayPal) I would class anything close to five minutes rather excessive, and I'd be less forgiving of any obstacles (an “are you sure, we can offer you a discount” I might accept, but not multiple nags or properly dark patterns). I'd like to see a breakdown where easy and moderately easy are split. I know five minutes is hardly excessive, but being able to sign-up a couple of times faster that cancel I find irritating. > As a valued subscriber… That annoys me, perhaps overly I must admit, as much as “we value your privacy” and “your exclusive code”. Attempting to butter me up with a lie just makes them look scammy IMO. I know I'm no more valued than someone who signed up yesterday and someone who subscribed a while before me is no more valued either, just like I know that while the code is indeed unique (as everyone got a different random one) the pretence that I'm somehow getting special treatment when in fact everyone has been sent a code, again, feels scammy. > phone calls with customer service representatives I had this one when unsubscribing from New Scientist, a publication that at the time I felt was more reputable than to be deliberately inconvenient (I say “at the time” as they are now owned by the same parent company as the Daily Mail so these days I'd expect bad behaviour!). Signed up with a simple web form years before, had to cancel on the phone. In fairness the call was fairly short, lacking in hard-sell (there was an offer of a few months discounted IIRC), and I wasn't on hold for too long, so it could have been much worse. One mild concern was that I didn't get any confirmation by email/other so if they somehow kept taking money I had no evidence that I'd cancelled – but I made sure to cancel payments from my side to stop that from happening.
anthk 4y ago
On Spain I just use the RSS feeds from the state news agency (EFE and the ones for my province), The Conversation (Spanish Edition) and Slashdot. Everything else is too much to read.
anthk 4y ago
For Americans, if you use Lynx or any Gopher client on desktop or Lagrange under Android, you can head to gopher://magical.fish to read the news.
eimrine 4y ago
I have slightly similar example with subscribing to mail letters. I did it when I was young because they say that young programmers are better to be involved in mail discussion but I have never read it. Now my mail has more than million letters which I can not even delete because this is just letters from some dudes which are not tied by anything I can select them all and now my email is 99% full.
anupj 4y ago
It resonates with my own experience. It seems rather counterintuitive that, in an era of growing digitalization and consumer-centric services, some newspapers continue to employ tactics that hinder the cancellation process. I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. While it's understandable that newspapers would want to retain subscribers, making the cancellation process a nightmare only tarnishes their reputation and, in the long run, may result in even more subscribers seeking alternative sources of information. A better approach would be for newspapers to invest in improving their digital offerings, making the subscription process more flexible, and providing subscribers with value-added services. This could include offering customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. By focusing on the needs of subscribers and creating a seamless user experience, newspapers would be better positioned to maintain their relevance and grow their subscriber base. It's high time that newspapers prioritize customer satisfaction and transparency. A frustrating cancellation process does nothing but alienate subscribers and contribute to the decline of the print media industry.
- jagged-chisel 4y ago
  > ... invest in improving their digital offerings ... providing subscribers with value-added services ... customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. These things are costs and antithetical to maximizing shareholder value (in the short term) and increasing executive bonuses.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  > I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. If the industry is in its death spiral, it makes sense to hold on to subscribers with reputation destroying practices for as long as possible.
ianvisits 4y ago
A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you. When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one. If it's hard to unsubscribe - then their last memory is a bad one, and it's even harder to persuade that person to resubsubscribe again. This is admitedly more applicable to industries with a lot of annual churn between suppliers - such as insurance, internet providers, power suppliers etc -- but it should be a rule of thumb for all companies.
- gs17 4y ago
  Yep, when I switched away from Sprint, it was a huge pain, switching from T-Mobile was so easy I felt a little bad for them being so helpful. Of course, the choice doesn't really exist anymore, but I was only interested in going back to one of them.
- ziml77 4y ago
  Good lord yes. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a bit, but then ended up low on cash and needing to cut back on spending. Of all the subscriptions I stopped at that time, they were the most annoying. Because, even though I was able to sign up easily online, there was no way to cancel other than calling them. That disparity in ease between starting and stopping my subscription is why I will never pay them again.
  - dev_tty01 4y ago
    NYTimes used to be like this, but last time I looked they had fixed it. Making unsubscribing hard is just such a slimy dark pattern. Immediately creates anger and hatred from users. I guess someone has demonstrated math that shows it is more profitable in some cases, but it is still disgusting.
    - mikestew 4y ago
      Can confirm that the NYT has fixed it, as I recently went to go see how much of a pain in the ass it was to cancel. I was at least considering cancelling because I just don't read NYT enough to really justify the expense. Since it's such a huge PITA, I chose a day when I had some time, because by golly I'm sticking with the process to the end, no matter how long I sit on hold with "customer retention". Oh, you can just click a few "are you sure?" buttons, and that's it? All done online? Well, it isn't that much money every month, and I do read the NYT. If I can easily cancel, then...oh, what the heck, let's keep the subscription. But I had to pick up a phone that day...
betimsl 4y ago
This brings forward the question: What were you thinking when you subscribed to 22 different newspapers in the first place?
- dspillett 4y ago
  Most likely that this would make a fine article. No doubt those subscriptions were paid for on an expense account or company card, and the time subscribing and unsubscribing being company time too. It doesn't make the article any less valid that most people wouldn't have that many subscriptions to care about.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  from TFA: > So, when I was asked earlier this year to unsubscribe The Lenfest Institute from 22 digital newspaper subscriptions left over from a past project, I was prepared to face confusing subscriber portals, unhelpful phone calls with customer service representatives, and worse.
mgkimsal 4y ago
I understand that reminding people of dormant subscriptions might prompt cancellations, but I'd think the following test might be worth trying. Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them. I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting. I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play. Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.
- digging 4y ago
  I fully agree. I am much more inclined to stay with services that give me free upgrades, even if I don't use the gifts (as long as I am mildly interested in still using the service). And I know nothing is free, but it's pretty cheap to give someone a free week or month of a digital subscription.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    Not the exact same example as the "randomly give upgrades", but mintmobile just upped our plan a bit. I realize they did this across the board, but they did also ping us to let us know that a) we're getting upgraded data, b) it's not a one-off thing, and c) we're getting the same deal as new users. Often when you see upped/higher data rates, it's "new customers only". This wasn't one of those cases. Recently switched car insurance. I check every so often. Never bothered when the delta was $15/$20 over a 6 month period. Last week, there was a $200 delta, with better rate for lower deductibles. I bought new policy, went to cancel old one. Took 10 minutes of friendly text chat to keep saying "no, just cancel". At one point, the agent said "is there any possible thing I can do to keep you?". I said "no", then it went faster after that, but they'd tried "let me look for better rates" angle. WTF? You have some internal "better rates" that you don't give me up front? Makes me not want to go back in future.
ilamont 4y ago
Boston Globe forced you to call a boiler room call center as recently as 2021 (when I cancelled) where you had to talk with harried, demoralized staff hurriedly reading through retention scripts. Glad to see they’ve done away with it. NYT still does it, though.
stodor89 4y ago
Some years ago, I was subscribed for The Economist. You needed to call support in order to cancel. Every 3 months I'd do the same ritual: call support; tell them I want to cancel; they offer 50% discount for 3 months sub; I tell them I've reconsidered. Every. Goddamn. Three. Months. And what about all the people who don't know about this? Why can't magazines treat their subscribers... you know... fairly?! Why do I have to be a terrible human being and lie my lay to the actual price?
- suslik 4y ago
  That changed. It is now possible to unsubscribe through the website (or at least, there is a gui to do that). I did that, but my subscription is active until next January, so we'll see. Last year, I asked their support to unsubscribe me and rejected all the 50% discount offers. They said, 'sure, bro', and, needless to say, early this year I was hit by a (50% discounted) bill for a yearly subscription.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    It's worth pointing out that for this issue in particular (unsubscribing online), different customers may get different experiences, even if they went to unsubscribe at the same time. Some states (notably California, but I believe there are a couple more) have passed legislation in the last few years that requires sellers of subscriptions to make it as easy to cancel as it is to sign up in the first place. NYT was, at least for a while, looking at your billing address to decide whether they'd let you unsubscribe online or not.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  An economist would say this is price discrimination, similar to coupons. If you're too busy to hassle with cutting out coupons, you pay regular price. If you really want to pay less, you can save with coupons. This sounds like roughly what I've been through with Comcast for the last decade, calling every year so they give a not-outrageous price. But quarterly calls does seem a bit more extreme!
brozaman 4y ago
For this reason I use a virtual debit card for each subscription and only use it for that. If a subscription is hard to cancel I will just cancel my card instead.
Yizahi 4y ago
Every year in December I start seeing these nice ads from Economist, FT, NYT and all others and I'm really tempted to subscribe to one of them. But then I go to Reddit and look up reviews about unsubscribing, and see things like "simply call some international USA phone number, wasting a lot of money in the process and when/if you'll get to a human on the other end just dictate them an obscure number not visible anywhere except during the new subscription process" and I nope the fuck out of this idea. The Economist alone lost probably a thousand dollars from me only, which I would have wasted in a recurring sub, like I already do with video streaming services or MMOs. If only they had a sane unsubscribe option online. And the longer I avoid expensive online press, the more I will probably avoid it altogether, since now I know that I'm really not missing much in the very long run, over several years.
waylandsmithers 4y ago
To me this is the true value of Apple Pay as a customer. I have all my subscriptions in one place, which says exactly when they expire, and they can all be canceled or resumed with one tap. Sorry to the providers that they have to pay Apple their 30% cut or whatever, but it's the only way to fight back against the "hope you'll forget to cancel" model.
deleted 4y ago
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WaitWaitWha 4y ago
>[...]delivery service issue, [...] confusion about billing Are these really the two big reasons people cancel? I cancel because the subscription is too expensive for what they offer, be it the quality slid or the content focus changed too much from the original. It is a cost to benefit analysis in my mind.
graupel 4y ago
Forget newspapers, lets talk about SiriusXM and trying to cancel that; it makes the worst newspaper look like they are doing it perfectly.
- genewitch 4y ago
  you reminded me i had to cancel mine, and it took 5 minutes. They did offer "streaming only" for $4 a month, but i've had that on my phones for years and used it no times, so i said "i don't use it". i got an $8 refund and a confirmation number, and that was it.
jccalhoun 4y ago
Some of the responses from the newspapers are hillariously tonedeaf: >the length of the process is not intended to be deceptive, but instead meant to mimic the experience of contacting customer service. So you are saying it is a pain in the ass to unsubscribe when you call? >After contacting the AJC for comment, I learned that most people just turn off AutoPay "i know we suck but we don't care enough to do anything about it."
ben7799 4y ago
Funny he talks about the Boston Globe. I canceled before they rolled out the online cancellation. I had subscribed early during the pandemic to try and have something high quality and local to follow. The online version of the paper is a lot worse than the old paper version was years ago when I got it. Lots of clickbait articles and articles intended to rile up online subscribers and drive engagement in the comments. When I went to cancel the process was absolutely horrific. And it also revealed just how scammy the pricing is. The globe would be happy to let you have a subscription for $1 a month. But if you just go in and subscribe they will charge you 10x, 20x, or 30x that amount. You only get access to the cheaper prices once you tried to cancel and had to fight it out with the representatives on the phone. It sounds like the new online cancellation process is something everyone should do to lower their prices even if they don't intend to cancel. If you just sign up they might charge you $30/month, but as soon as you try to cancel they'll give you a way better deal.
cafard 4y ago
"Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!", collected in Joel Spolsky's Joel on Software covers just this.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
So, the best way save is to subscribe, try to unsubscribe, take the second, cheaper offer, and after the discount is done, try to unsubscribe again.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  It is well-understood that attempting to stop service from someone like my very large ISP is a nightmare of retention hoops to jump through. It's like in Islam, the man has to repeat three times "I divorce you" to prove that he really, really, really means it. Imagine what the Islamic Marriage Retention Office is like. But it's also true that the self-same ISP often has many discounts and offers available, and it turns out that they are there for the picking, if you only ask for them. So (before I got on a dirt-cheap paid-for ACP plan) the routine would be to call in, grope around for discounts or offers that could be applied, and then set a reminder for the expiration of that discount so that you could call back in and do the same dance with them. With many products and services, it really is folly to pay full price. I don't know how many times I've regretted bypassing the little box that says "enter discount code here" because I didn't have one in hand. Often times, if you are shopping in a web store, they'll flash a banner with a code, and you want to write that code down because, chances are, they won't remind you when time comes to check out.
lephty 4y ago
This the same pattern as retail stores making it hard or easy to return a purchased item. If the return process is simple and straight-forward for the customer, they will not hesitate making future purchase decisions even if there is some uncertainty. I know there is some pain involved for the retailer, but it should part of the cost of doing business.
rootusrootus 4y ago
What I learned a while ago was that both NYT and Economist will never get another dime from me, because both made me angry when I tried to unsubscribe. As a side effect, I'm far more suspicious of subscriptions now and especially suspicious of newspaper subscriptions, so my default answer is just 'no.' And certainly not until I can prove that the cancellation is just as easy as the initial subscription.
INeedMoreRam 4y ago
I cancelled the WSJ but I still get physical mail highlighting their NEW deals Once you're in their system, it becomes near impossible to prevent them from bombarding you with solicitations to rejoin their service
deleted 4y ago
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paultopia 4y ago
Now do gyms
jbverschoor 4y ago
And this is exactly why I want apple to manage my subscriptions
jtlienwis 4y ago
I have one firm rule these days. No rent seeking behaviors. This avoids talking to phone centers in India or some other foreign country, where the person on the other end of the phone barely speaks English to try to get the service cancelled or to fight aggressive billing.
stbenjam 4y ago
I used to subscribe to the Boston Globe and it was torturous to cancel, I’m glad they made it easier now. They charge almost $30 a month for the subscription full price but you can always negotiate it down to like five dollars for 3 to 6 months. The game is stupid, I’d gladly pay them 100 bucks a year for the next few decades of my life without messing around with this fake try to cancel and get a discount thing. It’s so shady. So I subscribe to the Washington post instead who do offer exactly that kind of subscription.
no-reply 4y ago
I use privacy.com cards with a non existent street address. When I want to cancel and the website doesn't allow/help, I just pause the card. They don't get anything.
kylecazar 4y ago
Are there any banks that offer subscription cancellation natively? I feel like it's a feature that could live at that level rather than deal with these patterns. Within the bank's app, a list of recurring payments or 'subscriptions' with a cancel button. Cancelling results in a failed payment authorization response to the merchant psp the next time they hit you for $, who can then treat it as a cancellation. Or does it not exist because incentives.
- astura 4y ago
  PayPal. Well, sorta. You can revoke authorization for a subscription, you can't actually cancel. Some (most?) companies will auto cancel you if they can't bill you.
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  There are services like privacy.com like that have fine grained controls like this. One thing to remember though is that not paying is not the same as not owing. Most online services will do you the favor of cancelling if you don't pay, but there are definitely businesses that will keep your service going, and refer you to collections.
rurp 4y ago
I started to subscribe to The Economist online and when I got to the payment info thought to check how hard it would be to cancel, and it turns out there's no online way to cancel, you have to talk to customer service rep. I read a number of reports about the process and some were absolutely livid about getting the runaround trying to cancel. I contacted support to check if this had changed and not only did they confirm that there is no way to cancel online, I was told that this is actually for my benefit! This was conveyed with a lot of corporate-speak trying rationalize the decision (or just confuse me). An organization being greedy is one thing, but I really don't appreciate being gaslit about it. It's too bad because I like their work, but I won't support these kinds of business practices.
- stainablesteel 4y ago
  i think i would tell my credit card company that they refused to stop charging me so both they can stop the charges passive aggressively and they get a bad rep with payment processors
- licyeus 4y ago
  Canceling The Economist was the worst experience of any periodical, by far. You were right not to continue. Recently canceled and (from transcript) it took 18+ minutes chatting with an online rep. They made sure I knew all the various benefits (newsletters, podcasts, etc), offered me multiple price discounts, and insisted that I try a slimmed down experience ("Espresso") for a month before truly canceling. I'll never consider re-subscribing.
  - vitaminj 4y ago
    Completely agree - I love the Economist as a magazine, but will never be a subscriber again after how much time it took to cancel.
bedobi 4y ago
Audi have some very recent cars that are completely screen free - they have a screen which completely retracts into the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F2dpj5Kas&t=42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F2dpj5Kas&t=42s and if you have analog gauges too, there are no screens. (except the tiny one between the gauges which doesn't count imo) They're also completely piano black free. Best car interior maybe ever. Thread here https://old.reddit.com/r/Audi/comments/w9dkcm/what_models_had_the_retractable_screen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Audi/comments/w9dkcm/what_models_ha...
- kshacker 4y ago
  Posted in the wrong thread? I just read the touchscreen thread and then came here and saw this ... found it quite amusing since for a moment I was transported back to the other thread.
  - bedobi 4y ago
    oops, my bad :X
mastazi 4y ago
It's not just newspapers. Try and delete your Amazon or Disney+ account...
guet__hub 4y ago
When I cancelled my le monde subscription they asked that you write a letter.

Some 'neobanks' like Revolut help deal with this type of thing - you can create a temporary card to sign up and scramble it whenever you please. Great for trials or indeed annoying subscriptions.

MrDresden 4y ago

I've had the habit of only ever subscribing to news outlets if they allow me the option of paying via PayPal. If the cancellation process is a deep hole of dark patterns and anti consumerist behaviour then at least I can simply go and delete the token inside PayPals management portal. Though due to this kind of annoying behaviour, I've become jaded and have given up on subscribing to news outlets all together.

zx8080 4y ago

Wow, ~1/3 subscriptions hard to cancel is a lot. Obstacles while cancelling subscriptions are obvious. That's easy money. Probably, unless regulated, the issue will not be fixed, in general.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
It's something that's always struck me as prime ground for regulation when the contentious topic of Apple's control over their platform comes up. One of the most often repeated points from Apple customers is the ease of use and trust they have in Apple's payment and cancellation system that all apps are forced to go through and how much they'd hate to lose it. There is an obvious failure here, we shouldn't rely on companies to force other companies to undertake obviously good, pro-consumer behaviour.

pers0n 4y ago

I'd say about 15-25% of Meetup's revenue comes from people who don't know they are still paying for a group, because its a subscription that only gets billed once every 6 months. So many groups are dead. Before the pandemic it might of been maybe 5-10% but afterwards its much much higher. Odds are anyone you unsubscribe from will spam you in a newsletter. Even if you opt out, you'll be re-added a year or 2 later. I've learned to use certain gmail for certain sites/services to prevent them spamming up my personal domain emails. I really hope they make it 1 click to cancel as a law, I've had to call in my CC as stolen at least 2 or 3 times to end something or to prevent some trial period from charging me.

shiftpgdn 4y ago
I switched to using a custom domain + catchall email setup. So when I go to a retail store that requires an email to get a receipt, I just give them STORENAME@mycustomdomain.com and it will get delivered into my inbox. Retailers that don't honor the unsubscribe button just get the email address created and then set to bounceback as undeliverable. This also does a great job of catching data leaks or willful sale of client and customer data.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Yeah but you look really weird trying to give this email in person or over the phone. I used to do that but these days I just set up a filter rule to move emails from their domain to junk. Most stuff that comes from email leaks gets caught but the spam filter already.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    An email address is an email address. Who cares if it looks weird? It's far more weird to sell someone's data or not respect if they wish to be contacted. If necessary, blag it. Walmart? `wallace.martin@yourdomain.suffix`.
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      There are more and more sites that now demand you use a hotmail/outlook/bigco email address. If you try to use your own domain, they'll say "sorry, you need to use your personal email for this - for business use contact our sales department".
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Then use the `+` system on them and forward your emails wherever you want them to ultimately be stored. https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html?m=1 https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-mo... Works on outlook.com addresses too.

Ralfp 4y ago

This crap is what prevents me from subscribing US press. I would love to some of their titles but I am a foreigner and there's no way I am going to call a number in US to cancel. I am also not desperated to create burner cards for paying for those.

psychphysic 4y ago
I use a virtual debit card and cancel that when I want to end a subscription. I've had about 5 emails from Microsoft this week about my Xbox ultimate ending.
shaky-carrousel 4y ago
Some online banks allow you to easily create virtual cards. I use revolut, which is free.
- Ralfp 4y ago
  This is what burner card is, and I don’t want to bother with.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
This crap hurts an awful lot of good actors. I used to work for a small startup in the education sector. We offered trial subscriptions, but because of the 'cancel before your trial expires' anti-pattern that so many companies adopt, potential customers were suspicious. To the extent that they thought they might be charged on trial expiry, despite the fact that they didn't even provide a means of payment at any time during the process.
- kennend3 4y ago
  Sometimes you find a very underrated comment here, and this is one of those instances. I NEVER subscribe to free trial offers simply because of the number of negative posts about how hard it is to cancel, and the pain involved. It absolutely does hurt "good actors".

psychphysic 4y ago

Bloomberg is shocking here. You have to go several links to get to a ChatBot. To ask to cancel to click links. To cancel. What on earth? Why?

safety1st 4y ago
Because they don't have a lot of competition. They publish a very specific type of journalism for a very specific audience. Why shouldn't they fuck you? What are you gonna do about it? Quit doing business with Bloomberg? This is really what a lot of bad customer service issues boil down to, telecom is a classic example (I'm looking at you Comcast). There has been a lot of consolidation in American media in recent years and it doesn't really take a formal cartel, it just takes these guys at the executive layer looking at their competitor who is not much different, looking at their giant cash hoards, maybe buying each other a few nice dinners in New York City, and shrugging their shoulders as they light up another Cuban. When it's having a populist moment the political class especially in the EU will take the issue du jour and talk about crafting a law to deal with it. But in a lot of cases we would be better off if they just enforced antitrust laws that are already on the books and got more zealous about that topic in general.

dmm 4y ago

It's interesting how these companies seem to optimize for retention by making it hard to unsubscribe but that's probably not optimal for acquiring customers. I would probably subscribe to the nytimes but I've been discouraged by the stories of how hard it is to cancel.

shiftpgdn 4y ago
If you change your address to a California address you can enable click to cancel online for NYT.
- dspillett 4y ago
  Which tells you how much any statement about caring for their customers is an outright lie. If they'll happily inconvenience you because the law doesn't specifically say they shouldn't, then they aren't being a good company but just a minimally compliant one.

athenot 4y ago

Another option would be to mail a physical letter to their billing department stating that you are cancelling your subscription 30 days from now and any subsequent charges to the credit card will be disputed.

brookst 4y ago
I'd rather keep paying than figure out how and where to buy stamps and envelopes.
- genewitch 4y ago
  ... the post office, and most large grocery stores. I live in the middle of nowhere (population around 200) and i can buy stamps with a 10 minute walk; envelopes, labels, boxes, etc as well. And if that post office is closed, there's another one 10 minutes up the road, and if that one is out, i can drive a triangle to get to another one in about 10 minutes. Larger cities may require more time to get to a post office, but there's probably 5 places between you and the post office that also sell stamps and envelopes.

the_snooze 4y ago

Still waiting for the high-tech innovation of being able to unilaterally cancel subscriptions by blocking charges.

criley2 4y ago
Various credit cards give you the ability to create per-store cards that can be shut-off or have shutoff dates. When I sign up for a trial now, I use a temporary card that is locked before the payment kicks in. My card actually has a nice browser extension that automatically gets or generates a per-store card when I hit a payment form. Very convenient.
alsodumb 4y ago
I always thought privacy.com let’s you do essentially this but I could be wrong.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  It does. I've used it myself, but I'm mainly talking about that functionality being the default on all credit cards. I can protect myself from sketchy unsubscribe roadblocks, but the fact that you have to go out of your way to set up Privacy.com means the business practice will persist.

Raed667 4y ago

Why aren't we lobbying for an onboarding/offboarding parity law (looking at you EU !) If I sign up with 3 clicks, it should be (at most) the same to unsubscribe.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I would lobby for it at the state level, and pass something like California did. That will be much likelier than federal action.
codedokode 4y ago
This is not a complete solution because you might not remember about the subscription. The list of subscriptions should be displayed on bank's website and there should be a button for unsubscribing.

mihaaly 4y ago

I am reluctant to subscribe to anything nowadays. I contemplate hard and long before deciding to go ahead, more likely not going ahead. And this is mostly due to the rubbish client relationships many providers allow for themselves. Most times it does not worth the effort.

wanderingstan 4y ago
This is me as well. I wonder if as the subscription landscape gets more “toxic”, it’s a net negative for the whole industry. Even above-board offerings will get ignored by would-be customers that no longer trust.
- digging 4y ago
  For sure. I don't want to "subscribe for offers and new products" even if I like the company because I already get too much clutter and I expect that I will ignore/delete 9/10 of their emails.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Guybrush_T 4y ago
It's tough because everything is a subscription now. In the early days of steaming products like Netflix was great because you had access to so much for a small price. Now subscriptions services are so granular so you really have to pick and choose.
- digging 4y ago
  And because it's so easy for everything to be a subscription now, most of them are of negative value to the subscriber. That is, the subscriber gets nothing useful from the email subscription and has to deal with the useless emails taking up decision space (do I delete it now? what if there is something valuable inside? maybe I save it for someday because I might use that coupon?) when they come in. In other words, they are clutter, or litter.
- 4y ago

codedokode 4y ago

> In March, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a “click to cancel” rule that would make it as easy for consumers to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. Unsubscribing (and cancelling any other recurrent payments) should be made from bank's website. It is noteworthy that banks allow companies to charge you but do not display list of subscriptions and do not allow to easily cancel them. There is no hope that banks will change, so I hope cryptocurrency wallets will fix this problem.

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
PayPal is a great go-between for this sort of thing. They track your recurring payments and allow you to cancel them in the dashboard. It's the best thing since sliced bread.

fortran77 4y ago

I'm glad California has a law against some of the practicies, and our entire Nation will soon follow. I hope they enforce this law.

jmbwell 4y ago

A thoughtful article, not run of the mill kvetching. It includes comments from some of the newspapers about the thinking behind their cancellation processes and some considerations of the reasoning, which, regardless whether I agree, is enlightening. As a side note, there’s hardly any outrage, which I find somehow refreshing reading an article on this or any other topic.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> there’s hardly any outrage Perhaps because it wasn’t his money or time being taken by these websites. It was his employers.
- jmbwell 4y ago
  That, and/or the employer isn’t strictly in the business of monetizing outrage clickbait. Kinda makes me want to … subscribe to it…

gumballindie 4y ago

You really don't need to read more than 1-2 newspapers. They all publish the same stories about the same topics, rarely anything different. To reduce time wasted just summarize their content with an ai bot of your choice. Happy life.

booleandilemma 4y ago
I had the same thought, but the article is about how he was given the job of unsubscribing from 22 newspapers that his employer had been subscribed to.

sagebird 4y ago

The Boston Globe, for example, first introduced online cancellation in fall of 2020 to a portion of its subscriber base after it received an influx of tens of thousands of new subscribers at the beginning of the pandemic, Tom Brown, Globe vice president of consumer revenue, said. “We wanted to make sure that didn’t clog up the phone lines and create a poor experience for any subscriber calling for any reason,” Brown said in an email. “We then started making it available to more subscribers based on market research that we conducted that showed subscribers wanted this.” ~~~ Reads like: After I hired a market research firm to gather opinions from my brother, I decided to stop poking him with a stick.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
“We hired a market research firm to tell us that people like sunlight. So we started building homes with windows. It was win-win all around.”
duxup 4y ago
I'd certainly like everything to be easily canceled online. Having said that I wonder if that example with the Boston Globe is sort of the old "Be Radiohead" example. In that situation Radiohead sold their album online for whatever you want to pay. It was touted as a good way to do business, because Radioheads sold a lot. Later someone wrote satirical article telling other bands how they could do the same. Step 1 was "Be Radiohead". In reality the reason for all the sales were ... they were Radiohead. I wonder if the Boston Globe is at that scale where they can do that, while other places might not see any new subscribers.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  The Boston Globe was notorious for years as the primary offender in the "impossible to cancel" list. Offering them as a positive example for ease of cancellation past, present or future eliminates all credibility. It's like offering ... Joseph Stalin for a humanitarian prize.
  - robobro 4y ago

dspillett 4y ago

> I was pleasantly surprised to find that about two-thirds of the newspapers on my list were easy or moderately easy to cancel I was surprised by only ⅓ making things difficult until the rest of the sentence… > requiring fewer than five minutes to discontinue and presenting few, if any, obstacles Considering you can sign-up in a minute (except typing in CC details if you aren't using a stored payment method stored in your browser or a service like PayPal) I would class anything close to five minutes rather excessive, and I'd be less forgiving of any obstacles (an “are you sure, we can offer you a discount” I might accept, but not multiple nags or properly dark patterns). I'd like to see a breakdown where easy and moderately easy are split. I know five minutes is hardly excessive, but being able to sign-up a couple of times faster that cancel I find irritating. > As a valued subscriber… That annoys me, perhaps overly I must admit, as much as “we value your privacy” and “your exclusive code”. Attempting to butter me up with a lie just makes them look scammy IMO. I know I'm no more valued than someone who signed up yesterday and someone who subscribed a while before me is no more valued either, just like I know that while the code is indeed unique (as everyone got a different random one) the pretence that I'm somehow getting special treatment when in fact everyone has been sent a code, again, feels scammy. > phone calls with customer service representatives I had this one when unsubscribing from New Scientist, a publication that at the time I felt was more reputable than to be deliberately inconvenient (I say “at the time” as they are now owned by the same parent company as the Daily Mail so these days I'd expect bad behaviour!). Signed up with a simple web form years before, had to cancel on the phone. In fairness the call was fairly short, lacking in hard-sell (there was an offer of a few months discounted IIRC), and I wasn't on hold for too long, so it could have been much worse. One mild concern was that I didn't get any confirmation by email/other so if they somehow kept taking money I had no evidence that I'd cancelled – but I made sure to cancel payments from my side to stop that from happening.

anthk 4y ago

On Spain I just use the RSS feeds from the state news agency (EFE and the ones for my province), The Conversation (Spanish Edition) and Slashdot. Everything else is too much to read.

anthk 4y ago

For Americans, if you use Lynx or any Gopher client on desktop or Lagrange under Android, you can head to gopher://magical.fish to read the news.

eimrine 4y ago

I have slightly similar example with subscribing to mail letters. I did it when I was young because they say that young programmers are better to be involved in mail discussion but I have never read it. Now my mail has more than million letters which I can not even delete because this is just letters from some dudes which are not tied by anything I can select them all and now my email is 99% full.

anupj 4y ago

It resonates with my own experience. It seems rather counterintuitive that, in an era of growing digitalization and consumer-centric services, some newspapers continue to employ tactics that hinder the cancellation process. I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. While it's understandable that newspapers would want to retain subscribers, making the cancellation process a nightmare only tarnishes their reputation and, in the long run, may result in even more subscribers seeking alternative sources of information. A better approach would be for newspapers to invest in improving their digital offerings, making the subscription process more flexible, and providing subscribers with value-added services. This could include offering customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. By focusing on the needs of subscribers and creating a seamless user experience, newspapers would be better positioned to maintain their relevance and grow their subscriber base. It's high time that newspapers prioritize customer satisfaction and transparency. A frustrating cancellation process does nothing but alienate subscribers and contribute to the decline of the print media industry.

jagged-chisel 4y ago
> ... invest in improving their digital offerings ... providing subscribers with value-added services ... customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. These things are costs and antithetical to maximizing shareholder value (in the short term) and increasing executive bonuses.
BurningFrog 4y ago
> I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. If the industry is in its death spiral, it makes sense to hold on to subscribers with reputation destroying practices for as long as possible.

ianvisits 4y ago

A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you. When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one. If it's hard to unsubscribe - then their last memory is a bad one, and it's even harder to persuade that person to resubsubscribe again. This is admitedly more applicable to industries with a lot of annual churn between suppliers - such as insurance, internet providers, power suppliers etc -- but it should be a rule of thumb for all companies.

gs17 4y ago
Yep, when I switched away from Sprint, it was a huge pain, switching from T-Mobile was so easy I felt a little bad for them being so helpful. Of course, the choice doesn't really exist anymore, but I was only interested in going back to one of them.
ziml77 4y ago
Good lord yes. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a bit, but then ended up low on cash and needing to cut back on spending. Of all the subscriptions I stopped at that time, they were the most annoying. Because, even though I was able to sign up easily online, there was no way to cancel other than calling them. That disparity in ease between starting and stopping my subscription is why I will never pay them again.
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  NYTimes used to be like this, but last time I looked they had fixed it. Making unsubscribing hard is just such a slimy dark pattern. Immediately creates anger and hatred from users. I guess someone has demonstrated math that shows it is more profitable in some cases, but it is still disgusting.
  - mikestew 4y ago
    Can confirm that the NYT has fixed it, as I recently went to go see how much of a pain in the ass it was to cancel. I was at least considering cancelling because I just don't read NYT enough to really justify the expense. Since it's such a huge PITA, I chose a day when I had some time, because by golly I'm sticking with the process to the end, no matter how long I sit on hold with "customer retention". Oh, you can just click a few "are you sure?" buttons, and that's it? All done online? Well, it isn't that much money every month, and I do read the NYT. If I can easily cancel, then...oh, what the heck, let's keep the subscription. But I had to pick up a phone that day...

betimsl 4y ago

This brings forward the question: What were you thinking when you subscribed to 22 different newspapers in the first place?

dspillett 4y ago
Most likely that this would make a fine article. No doubt those subscriptions were paid for on an expense account or company card, and the time subscribing and unsubscribing being company time too. It doesn't make the article any less valid that most people wouldn't have that many subscriptions to care about.
gnicholas 4y ago
from TFA: > So, when I was asked earlier this year to unsubscribe The Lenfest Institute from 22 digital newspaper subscriptions left over from a past project, I was prepared to face confusing subscriber portals, unhelpful phone calls with customer service representatives, and worse.

mgkimsal 4y ago

I understand that reminding people of dormant subscriptions might prompt cancellations, but I'd think the following test might be worth trying. Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them. I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting. I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play. Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.

digging 4y ago
I fully agree. I am much more inclined to stay with services that give me free upgrades, even if I don't use the gifts (as long as I am mildly interested in still using the service). And I know nothing is free, but it's pretty cheap to give someone a free week or month of a digital subscription.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  Not the exact same example as the "randomly give upgrades", but mintmobile just upped our plan a bit. I realize they did this across the board, but they did also ping us to let us know that a) we're getting upgraded data, b) it's not a one-off thing, and c) we're getting the same deal as new users. Often when you see upped/higher data rates, it's "new customers only". This wasn't one of those cases. Recently switched car insurance. I check every so often. Never bothered when the delta was $15/$20 over a 6 month period. Last week, there was a $200 delta, with better rate for lower deductibles. I bought new policy, went to cancel old one. Took 10 minutes of friendly text chat to keep saying "no, just cancel". At one point, the agent said "is there any possible thing I can do to keep you?". I said "no", then it went faster after that, but they'd tried "let me look for better rates" angle. WTF? You have some internal "better rates" that you don't give me up front? Makes me not want to go back in future.

ilamont 4y ago

Boston Globe forced you to call a boiler room call center as recently as 2021 (when I cancelled) where you had to talk with harried, demoralized staff hurriedly reading through retention scripts. Glad to see they’ve done away with it. NYT still does it, though.

stodor89 4y ago

Some years ago, I was subscribed for The Economist. You needed to call support in order to cancel. Every 3 months I'd do the same ritual: call support; tell them I want to cancel; they offer 50% discount for 3 months sub; I tell them I've reconsidered. Every. Goddamn. Three. Months. And what about all the people who don't know about this? Why can't magazines treat their subscribers... you know... fairly?! Why do I have to be a terrible human being and lie my lay to the actual price?

suslik 4y ago
That changed. It is now possible to unsubscribe through the website (or at least, there is a gui to do that). I did that, but my subscription is active until next January, so we'll see. Last year, I asked their support to unsubscribe me and rejected all the 50% discount offers. They said, 'sure, bro', and, needless to say, early this year I was hit by a (50% discounted) bill for a yearly subscription.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  It's worth pointing out that for this issue in particular (unsubscribing online), different customers may get different experiences, even if they went to unsubscribe at the same time. Some states (notably California, but I believe there are a couple more) have passed legislation in the last few years that requires sellers of subscriptions to make it as easy to cancel as it is to sign up in the first place. NYT was, at least for a while, looking at your billing address to decide whether they'd let you unsubscribe online or not.
gnicholas 4y ago
An economist would say this is price discrimination, similar to coupons. If you're too busy to hassle with cutting out coupons, you pay regular price. If you really want to pay less, you can save with coupons. This sounds like roughly what I've been through with Comcast for the last decade, calling every year so they give a not-outrageous price. But quarterly calls does seem a bit more extreme!

brozaman 4y ago

For this reason I use a virtual debit card for each subscription and only use it for that. If a subscription is hard to cancel I will just cancel my card instead.

Yizahi 4y ago

Every year in December I start seeing these nice ads from Economist, FT, NYT and all others and I'm really tempted to subscribe to one of them. But then I go to Reddit and look up reviews about unsubscribing, and see things like "simply call some international USA phone number, wasting a lot of money in the process and when/if you'll get to a human on the other end just dictate them an obscure number not visible anywhere except during the new subscription process" and I nope the fuck out of this idea. The Economist alone lost probably a thousand dollars from me only, which I would have wasted in a recurring sub, like I already do with video streaming services or MMOs. If only they had a sane unsubscribe option online. And the longer I avoid expensive online press, the more I will probably avoid it altogether, since now I know that I'm really not missing much in the very long run, over several years.

waylandsmithers 4y ago

To me this is the true value of Apple Pay as a customer. I have all my subscriptions in one place, which says exactly when they expire, and they can all be canceled or resumed with one tap. Sorry to the providers that they have to pay Apple their 30% cut or whatever, but it's the only way to fight back against the "hope you'll forget to cancel" model.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

>[...]delivery service issue, [...] confusion about billing Are these really the two big reasons people cancel? I cancel because the subscription is too expensive for what they offer, be it the quality slid or the content focus changed too much from the original. It is a cost to benefit analysis in my mind.

graupel 4y ago

Forget newspapers, lets talk about SiriusXM and trying to cancel that; it makes the worst newspaper look like they are doing it perfectly.

genewitch 4y ago
you reminded me i had to cancel mine, and it took 5 minutes. They did offer "streaming only" for $4 a month, but i've had that on my phones for years and used it no times, so i said "i don't use it". i got an $8 refund and a confirmation number, and that was it.

jccalhoun 4y ago

Some of the responses from the newspapers are hillariously tonedeaf: >the length of the process is not intended to be deceptive, but instead meant to mimic the experience of contacting customer service. So you are saying it is a pain in the ass to unsubscribe when you call? >After contacting the AJC for comment, I learned that most people just turn off AutoPay "i know we suck but we don't care enough to do anything about it."

ben7799 4y ago

Funny he talks about the Boston Globe. I canceled before they rolled out the online cancellation. I had subscribed early during the pandemic to try and have something high quality and local to follow. The online version of the paper is a lot worse than the old paper version was years ago when I got it. Lots of clickbait articles and articles intended to rile up online subscribers and drive engagement in the comments. When I went to cancel the process was absolutely horrific. And it also revealed just how scammy the pricing is. The globe would be happy to let you have a subscription for $1 a month. But if you just go in and subscribe they will charge you 10x, 20x, or 30x that amount. You only get access to the cheaper prices once you tried to cancel and had to fight it out with the representatives on the phone. It sounds like the new online cancellation process is something everyone should do to lower their prices even if they don't intend to cancel. If you just sign up they might charge you $30/month, but as soon as you try to cancel they'll give you a way better deal.

cafard 4y ago

"Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!", collected in Joel Spolsky's Joel on Software covers just this.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

So, the best way save is to subscribe, try to unsubscribe, take the second, cheaper offer, and after the discount is done, try to unsubscribe again.

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
It is well-understood that attempting to stop service from someone like my very large ISP is a nightmare of retention hoops to jump through. It's like in Islam, the man has to repeat three times "I divorce you" to prove that he really, really, really means it. Imagine what the Islamic Marriage Retention Office is like. But it's also true that the self-same ISP often has many discounts and offers available, and it turns out that they are there for the picking, if you only ask for them. So (before I got on a dirt-cheap paid-for ACP plan) the routine would be to call in, grope around for discounts or offers that could be applied, and then set a reminder for the expiration of that discount so that you could call back in and do the same dance with them. With many products and services, it really is folly to pay full price. I don't know how many times I've regretted bypassing the little box that says "enter discount code here" because I didn't have one in hand. Often times, if you are shopping in a web store, they'll flash a banner with a code, and you want to write that code down because, chances are, they won't remind you when time comes to check out.

lephty 4y ago

This the same pattern as retail stores making it hard or easy to return a purchased item. If the return process is simple and straight-forward for the customer, they will not hesitate making future purchase decisions even if there is some uncertainty. I know there is some pain involved for the retailer, but it should part of the cost of doing business.

rootusrootus 4y ago

What I learned a while ago was that both NYT and Economist will never get another dime from me, because both made me angry when I tried to unsubscribe. As a side effect, I'm far more suspicious of subscriptions now and especially suspicious of newspaper subscriptions, so my default answer is just 'no.' And certainly not until I can prove that the cancellation is just as easy as the initial subscription.

INeedMoreRam 4y ago

I cancelled the WSJ but I still get physical mail highlighting their NEW deals Once you're in their system, it becomes near impossible to prevent them from bombarding you with solicitations to rejoin their service

deleted 4y ago

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paultopia 4y ago

Now do gyms

jbverschoor 4y ago

And this is exactly why I want apple to manage my subscriptions

jtlienwis 4y ago

I have one firm rule these days. No rent seeking behaviors. This avoids talking to phone centers in India or some other foreign country, where the person on the other end of the phone barely speaks English to try to get the service cancelled or to fight aggressive billing.

stbenjam 4y ago

I used to subscribe to the Boston Globe and it was torturous to cancel, I’m glad they made it easier now. They charge almost $30 a month for the subscription full price but you can always negotiate it down to like five dollars for 3 to 6 months. The game is stupid, I’d gladly pay them 100 bucks a year for the next few decades of my life without messing around with this fake try to cancel and get a discount thing. It’s so shady. So I subscribe to the Washington post instead who do offer exactly that kind of subscription.

no-reply 4y ago

I use privacy.com cards with a non existent street address. When I want to cancel and the website doesn't allow/help, I just pause the card. They don't get anything.

kylecazar 4y ago

Are there any banks that offer subscription cancellation natively? I feel like it's a feature that could live at that level rather than deal with these patterns. Within the bank's app, a list of recurring payments or 'subscriptions' with a cancel button. Cancelling results in a failed payment authorization response to the merchant psp the next time they hit you for $, who can then treat it as a cancellation. Or does it not exist because incentives.

astura 4y ago
PayPal. Well, sorta. You can revoke authorization for a subscription, you can't actually cancel. Some (most?) companies will auto cancel you if they can't bill you.
dghlsakjg 4y ago
There are services like privacy.com like that have fine grained controls like this. One thing to remember though is that not paying is not the same as not owing. Most online services will do you the favor of cancelling if you don't pay, but there are definitely businesses that will keep your service going, and refer you to collections.

rurp 4y ago

I started to subscribe to The Economist online and when I got to the payment info thought to check how hard it would be to cancel, and it turns out there's no online way to cancel, you have to talk to customer service rep. I read a number of reports about the process and some were absolutely livid about getting the runaround trying to cancel. I contacted support to check if this had changed and not only did they confirm that there is no way to cancel online, I was told that this is actually for my benefit! This was conveyed with a lot of corporate-speak trying rationalize the decision (or just confuse me). An organization being greedy is one thing, but I really don't appreciate being gaslit about it. It's too bad because I like their work, but I won't support these kinds of business practices.

stainablesteel 4y ago
i think i would tell my credit card company that they refused to stop charging me so both they can stop the charges passive aggressively and they get a bad rep with payment processors
licyeus 4y ago
Canceling The Economist was the worst experience of any periodical, by far. You were right not to continue. Recently canceled and (from transcript) it took 18+ minutes chatting with an online rep. They made sure I knew all the various benefits (newsletters, podcasts, etc), offered me multiple price discounts, and insisted that I try a slimmed down experience ("Espresso") for a month before truly canceling. I'll never consider re-subscribing.
- vitaminj 4y ago
  Completely agree - I love the Economist as a magazine, but will never be a subscriber again after how much time it took to cancel.

bedobi 4y ago

Audi have some very recent cars that are completely screen free - they have a screen which completely retracts into the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F2dpj5Kas&t=42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F2dpj5Kas&t=42s and if you have analog gauges too, there are no screens. (except the tiny one between the gauges which doesn't count imo) They're also completely piano black free. Best car interior maybe ever. Thread here https://old.reddit.com/r/Audi/comments/w9dkcm/what_models_had_the_retractable_screen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Audi/comments/w9dkcm/what_models_ha...

kshacker 4y ago
Posted in the wrong thread? I just read the touchscreen thread and then came here and saw this ... found it quite amusing since for a moment I was transported back to the other thread.
- bedobi 4y ago
  oops, my bad :X

mastazi 4y ago

It's not just newspapers. Try and delete your Amazon or Disney+ account...

guet__hub 4y ago

When I cancelled my le monde subscription they asked that you write a letter.