[HN Gopher] What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers
___________________________________________________________________
What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 154 points
Date : 2023-04-26 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lenfestinstitute.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lenfestinstitute.org)
| blcknight wrote:
| 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.
| rurp wrote:
| 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.
| paultopia wrote:
| Now do gyms
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| zx8080 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| no-reply wrote:
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| 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.
| INeedMoreRam wrote:
| [dead]
| jmbwell wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > there's hardly any outrage
|
| Perhaps because it wasn't his money or time being taken by
| these websites. It was his employers.
| jmbwell wrote:
| That, and/or the employer isn't strictly in the business of
| monetizing outrage clickbait.
|
| Kinda makes me want to ... subscribe to it...
| Yizahi wrote:
| 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.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > WTF? You have some internal "better rates" that you don't
| give me up front?
|
| They might have complicated contracts with re-sellers that
| prohibits them from advertising the cheaper rate. That's
| why you should always ask for a discount with every
| purchase.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Progressively cheaper subscriptions to reward loyal customers
| would be great. Like a $10 per month subscription becomes $9
| per month after a year and $8 per month after 3 years - as an
| example (ignoring inflation etc).
|
| I toyed a bit with this idea when I was working with
| subscriptions, but there are no systems that accommodate for
| this unless you make your own.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Like the JetBrains model. $99 first year, then $79 second
| year, then $59/year going forward. No doubt some companies
| offer discounted-for-loyalty pricing, but yeah, never seen it
| addressed in billing systems I've seen. You'd likely just
| move someone to a new subscription ID, and there's likely
| some gotchas to deal with, but obviously it can be done :)
| [deleted]
| quickthrowman wrote:
| There are several newspapers I would subscribe to if it wasn't
| for the hostage situation you find yourself in if you try and
| cancel, so I just bypass paywalls instead.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| >[...]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.
| sagebird wrote:
| 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.
| glxxyz wrote:
| They may have considered difficulty cancelling as a feature. It
| would probably look good in the retention metrics. Companies
| often hire consultants to tell them things that they already
| know but don't like to admit to themselves.
| mkmk wrote:
| I think a more charitable read is "we ask our subscribers what
| 10 things really annoy them; this was one of them we could
| afford to fix so we did. "
| noobcoder wrote:
| Man, the Boston Globe is way too expensive, but I'm still
| subscribed. After the marathon bombing, it hit me how crucial
| it is to have local reporters who aren't just on TV. Even
| though they get on my nerves sometimes, I keep shelling out the
| cash. I've lived in places where the last real paper shut down,
| and it's a massive loss that never gets replaced.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Definitely pretend you want to cancel and you'll get a
| reduced price.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| ben7799 wrote:
| The globe defaults to everyone gets a really high price, then
| if you try to cancel they immediately start offering you
| better deals until you agree to not cancel.
|
| It's a stepped thing.. you start at $30/month. Try to cancel
| and they offer you $20/month. Say you still want to cancel
| and they go through a series of discounts till it's <
| $5/month, maybe as low as $1/month.
|
| When I went through this before online cancellation the
| process was so gross every new offer made me more determined
| to cancel even though the better offers were cheap enough to
| want to keep it. The whole process made me feel like I'd been
| ripped off.
|
| Not really the same as Radiohead offering to let you name
| your price from the beginning.
| gnicholas wrote:
| How long do these prices last? Seems like the super-high
| price would reduce their top of funnel, since people like
| me (who end up on the site infrequently) would never
| consider it at the listed price.
| dualityoftapirs wrote:
| Usually if you somehow end up in this kind of sales
| funnel, you get offered a ridiculously cheap first year
| subscription. Say $20 for first year, but then it's $12 a
| month after that. You call to cancel, and they'll keep
| dropping the price until it's back to that $2 or $3 a
| month.
| gnicholas wrote:
| You're right -- they also have low-price options at the
| beginning. I just tried loading an article and, what do
| you know, I was "selected" to be able to subscribe for
| just 99C/!
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| A more apt comparison : offering Barack Obama the Nobel
| peace prize!
| genewitch wrote:
| Two words for you: predator drones
| brk wrote:
| _Step 1 was "Be Radiohead"_
|
| I think that much of the importance of that step might have
| been lost in the satire.
|
| The lesson is "create something that people truly want to pay
| for". If you manage to that goal, then cancellations should
| naturally decrease and/or sales should increase (depending on
| your revenue model).
|
| Companies with an abusive cancellation policy are essentially
| saying that their product sucks and they need to try and hold
| customers hostage to maintain revenue. That is not long run
| sustainable.
| digging wrote:
| > The lesson is "create something that people truly want to
| pay for".
|
| No, that's not the entire lesson. If an unknown indie band
| had created an identical album, it would not have made
| anywhere near the same amount. If we're going to distill it
| down to "what people want to pay for," people usually want
| to pay for something they think other people like.
| brk wrote:
| We are saying the same thing from two different
| perspectives.
|
| Yes, a small indie band would not have the same following
| as Radiohead at first. They need to build up a series of
| highly valued releases over time. Which is really all
| distilled into the "be Radiohead" line.
|
| Or to make it less vague, your pricing and billing
| strategy may need to change over time. When/if you
| develop a history of delivering highly valued products
| and releases you will have the opportunity to explore
| alternate pricing models.
|
| However, I still think you can distill much of this down
| to "create something that people really want". If you can
| do that the pricing part gets a lot easier.
| digging wrote:
| Well, ok, but if your definition of "create something
| that people really want" is "build up a series of highly
| valued releases over time [until you are as popular as
| Radiohead]", then it seems like you're just saying "be
| Radiohead" in a more confusing way. So I'm not really
| sure what the point is. Step 1 is still "be Radiohead"
| because smaller bands can't do the same thing without
| first following many other difficult steps.
| renewiltord wrote:
| But then that pricing model applies to, what, like 20
| bands? Okay, so those 20 bands should do that and every
| other band should do what Radiohead did until they sell
| 30 million albums worldwide.
| ilamont wrote:
| 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.
| pers0n wrote:
| 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.
| ru552 wrote:
| Many institutions allow you to issue yourself a digital card
| via your online banking/mobile app. You can turn it off
| whenever you want. I have digital cards for all my
| subscriptions in the event I have the problem you had. The
| digital cards all tie back to your physical one, but it allows
| you to give a different card number to the vendor that is not
| your actual plastic card number.
| OJFord wrote:
| You can also just cancel a direct debit, and ignore them when
| they ask you to please setup a new payment method.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's alarming how many people just in general don't have a clue
| where their money is going.
| posix86 wrote:
| Pro tip: You can add a `+anything` to your gmail address, and
| it will still be sent to you (so e.g. `foo.bar+wsj@gmail.com`,
| when your email address is `foo.bar@gmail.com`). Most websites
| don't know this and treat it as a different email address, too,
| if you ever need to sign up twice.
| D-Coder wrote:
| GMail may understand this (it is a standard, I believe) but
| many sites reject a "+" in an email address.
|
| My ISP is panix.com, which allows me an unlimited number of
| addresses like "STORENAME@myemail.users.panix.com". This is
| almost always accepted by websites, works just like the "+"
| version, and only once has anyone ever been surprised by it.
| ("Is this a joke???" "No, etc.")
|
| Disclaimer: Just a happy customer.
| OJFord wrote:
| You can also use `.`s arbitrarily, so your
| 'foo.bar@gmail.com` is 'really' (you might say)
| `foobar@gmail.com` but also equivalently
| `f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com` and whatever else.
| mpawelski wrote:
| isn't this gmail specific?
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes I believe so, which is the domain I used in examples
| and that the comment I replied to was about? While
| `+anything` is per RFC, it's not widely implemented
| either.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you try to use your own domain, they'll say "sorry,
| you need to use your personal email for this
|
| Are these companies really unaware that lots of
| individuals have their own domains for personal use?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Can you even register a domain without an existing email
| address in 2023?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I have no idea. All of my domain names are ones I
| registered decades ago. But, in the US anyway, I don't
| think there is an ISP that doesn't give you an email
| address as part of the service. You could use that to
| register your domain.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| You certainly could use it to register your domain, but
| then, arguably, the default "personal" email address is
| the one that isn't on your own domain, even if that's
| what we consider "personal" as you could forget to set
| automatic renewal, the payment method could fail, and
| somebody could register your domain and gain access to
| the accounts and setup catch-all email, and parse
| database leaks for @domain.suffix addresses.
|
| I do understand where you're coming from though. I
| remember the days of setting up my first ever domain via
| post in the UK! I still have the letter lmao.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the default "personal" email address is the one that
| isn't on your own domain
|
| I don't follow. That reasoning would mean that if you use
| a gmail account, for instance, that isn't a "personal"
| email address either. It seems to me a personal email
| address is an email address you use for personal
| communications as opposed to business communications.
|
| Where that address is hosted, or what domain its on,
| isn't relevant to the question.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I have never used any bigco email address, and I have
| never encountered this.
|
| I almost _want_ to experience this, now, just so I can
| give them a hard time about it.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| 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-mo...
|
| Works on outlook.com addresses too.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That would require you to get an account on the big name
| mail providers, though.
| dspillett wrote:
| While this generally works as a way of filtering that one
| company if needed, it doesn't protect against spam when
| if they have their mailing lists stolen (or selling them
| is BAU), and many spammers know about this and will send
| to the base address instead.
|
| Unless you automatically file anything without +something
| as junk, of course.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I apply labels and `skip inbox` via Gmail filters
| automatically. It's probably the one redeeming quality of
| Gmail at this point and is what keeps me using it so that
| email can be processed prior to it sending a push
| notification to my devices.
|
| With that said, it's a niche use anyway, stick to the
| catch-all on your own domain whenever possible, and for
| anything else, it's a fringe case anyway.
| dspillett wrote:
| I can't say I've ever seen this, and I've used my own
| domain for decades, I think it is unlikely to really
| happen. I can imagine services refusing known temporary
| address domains and giving that response as a "fake"
| error message rather than honestly saying they don't
| accept temporary addresses because they have less value.
|
| Do you have any specific examples if it has actually
| happened for a non-throw-away address? I'll make sure I
| don't waste time even trying to subscribe to their
| services!
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Banks and utility companies aren't an uncommon one. When
| your method of account recovery is email, it's far more
| trustworthy to trust a major email provider than it is to
| trust Joe Schmoe running his mailserver at home to keep
| it secure, or to trust that someone isn't going to be
| abusive.
|
| Example: scorned employee or spouse, they redirect or
| copy email to x address, and they gain access to accounts
| via that.
|
| "That could never happen."
|
| It's happened plenty of times that it's a consideration
| for a lot of major institutions, and it's happened enough
| that the radio and bus stops in the UK have ads warning
| people of the signs of financial abuse.
|
| That's without even getting into people not having
| automatic renewal set on their domain and losing the
| domain.
| digging wrote:
| I've had it happen infrequently because my TLD is an
| unusual one (not .com, .net, .org, etc). I am told I have
| not entered a valid email address.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| I use a .name address (a .name domain with a catch-all
| address), and have only once had it rejected by any
| automatic process. I've had a couple of humans question
| it, though.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't believe you. I'm sure a couple of examples of
| this exist, but they're the exception, and certainly not
| a case of "more and more".
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| And you are very welcome not to believe the commenter
| because both of your experiences are anecdotal n+1.
|
| I have seen this happen with increasing frequency, but I
| am admittedly terminally online, and of all the sites I
| visit, it's probably 2 in 10 that don't allow me to use
| my own domain, but this is again completely anecdotal and
| based on the sites that I visit and I am not
| representative of the average user whatsoever.
| genewitch wrote:
| give some examples, so those of us with personal domains
| can test it and see why it's failing.
|
| "not having a gmail account" smacks of "lol you have
| compuserv? everyone else is on AOL!"
| whitemary wrote:
| I use Fastmail's masked emails all the time and nobody
| minds at all. I just used another one at H&M yesterday,
| which I do every single time because you get 15% for
| creating a new account with them. I don't even read it out
| to them. I just hold up my phone and show it to them, which
| they appreciate.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Just remember that misrepresenting your identity as a way
| to get a benefit (like a discount) is technically wire
| fraud. You're unlikely to get prosecuted till the day you
| do it to the wrong company...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Just remember what? Unless he claims to be somebody else
| he is hardly committing any fraud. If they don't remember
| him or if their system doesn't remember him - isn't that
| their own problem?
|
| But the steps people take to get a discount... He could
| probably just straihgt ask for a discount and get it
| anyway without making a new registration.
| ipaddr wrote:
| No it's wire fraud. I invite you to back that somehow.
|
| Using different emails or addresses or different cards is
| not illegal
| whitemary wrote:
| Lmao having multiple email addresses or H&M accounts is
| definitely not "wire fraud."
| Vvector wrote:
| That works 99% of the time. But that one unscrupulous
| company sells your email to their "partners" and now you
| have to block dozens of domains.
| genewitch wrote:
| yes, this is the reason to use email on your own domain,
| it doesn't matter if a company sells the email address,
| you just spambox all the email to that address after
| cancelling or whatever.
|
| everyone is hip to the dot separation and + of google et
| al. it does nothing. good luck getting me to look at
| genewitch@mydomain emails, since i have used that exactly
| zero times.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Yeah but you look really weird trying to give this email
| in person or over the phone.
|
| Less often than you'd think. Though I had one legal
| department write me, and a confused music label owner with
| a by-mail order process ;)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Yeah but you look really weird trying to give this email
| in person or over the phone.
|
| That's not a problem. I look weird anyway.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Yeah but you look really weird trying to give this email
| in person or over the phone._
|
| I really don't care about that. If anyone questions it I'm
| honest: "it lets me filter messages into folders/tags so I
| can prioritise easily, and it lets me easily block your
| company if it sends too much or sell my details on". I once
| had someone (an in-physical-store "signup and we'll send
| you some vouchers" deal) refuse to accept such an address
| to which my response was "Fair enough, but if you won't
| take that I'm not signing up, you aren't getting other
| contact details out of me". Other than that one example
| I've had no trouble in this regard, the only other
| significant reactions I've had being something along the
| lines of "I might have to start doing that".
|
| Never let commercial interests embarrass or guilt you into
| behaving in their favour!
|
| I used a sub-domain for the catch all which has one or
| twice over the years caused an issue due to bad validation,
| not liking the extra "." unless it is near the end like in
| .co.uk, at which point I step away because a company that
| can't deal with a perfectly valid email address domain part
| probably can't store _anything_ securely!
|
| _> Most stuff that comes from email leaks gets caught but
| the spam filter already._
|
| It isn't just leaks, it is when the company itself sends
| too much or gives your details to its parent/child/partner
| companies (most likely there was a non-optional, or at
| least default-on, checkbox that give them permission to do
| this). That sort of thing is less likely to be caught by
| general spam filters, though admittedly the volume or that
| is likely rather lower so the irritation likewise.
| bombcar wrote:
| Samsung is onto this - you can't signup with an email that
| has the word Samsung in it. So slamsung@ it is.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> STORENAME@mycustomdomain.com_
|
| I regretted using the main domain for that, as some junk
| mailers either cotton on to there being a catchall or just
| chance that many domains have many users with common names,
| so sometimes I would get several messages for
| andrew@domain.tld, brian@domain.tld, carl@domain.tld, etc.
|
| These days I use STORENAME@sub.domain.tld which seems to
| attract a lot less junk, practically none, by the above
| manner. The catchall on the main domain was replaced by large
| forwarding list of the addresses I'd got legitimate emails
| from, with anything else now bouncing as usual.
|
| _> Retailers that don 't honor the unsubscribe button_
|
| It also protects against when retailers are hacked and their
| mailing list taken, or them selling it on either as BAU or
| during the fire sale as they go out of business.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > I would get several messages for andrew@domain.tld,
| brian@domain.tld, carl@domain.tld, etc.
|
| I read about that sometimes (or well, rather the less
| specific one where you'd get generally random spam to your
| domain), and in over 7 years of doing website@exmaple.org I
| never had this happen. I wonder what the difference between
| people like me, and people like you is?
| digging wrote:
| I have this setup as well for the past 4 years and I
| always worry about the GP's problem popping up, but it
| hasn't yet. I am also very curious.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Check out Privacy.com, they let you make virtual cards that you
| can limit or cancel whenever if things get fishy. I had to use
| this recently with a merchant who, after being unable to sell
| from their e-store on weekends left me wondering if I was going
| to be charged for this unprocessed order or not. The person I
| spoke to at the business had a 'gotcha' flair to their response
| about this, so I just cancelled the number before the
| conversation was over.
| KomoD wrote:
| * US only
| pc86 wrote:
| Privacy.com is a godsend and I know they make their money
| other ways but I'd gladly pay as a user.
| anupj wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _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.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > ... 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.
| ianvisits wrote:
| 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.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| And not just that person, but everyone else as word gets
| around. Another commentor mentions Wall Street Journal; I've
| often considered subscribing to WSJ, but the horror stories
| I've heard about unsubscribing have pushed me away.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| The Economist's unsubscription process is also terrible:
| looong hold on the phone and then many minutes of repeating
| to the person on the other end, no I'm not going to
| reconsider, cancel my subscription. It's a great magazine but
| heaven help you if you decide to stop getting it.
|
| And, as suggested above, this has actually kept me from re-
| subscribing again later.
| gs17 wrote:
| 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.
| petee wrote:
| Exactly. My personal example: wanting to cancel due to shady
| advertising practices, my newspaper said i owed them money for
| an additional subscription I didn't make, and then threatened
| to send it to a collection agency.
|
| I hate to turn my back on local news, but its owned by Gannett
| now who've ruined it, so I guess I'm ok with it failing. Sad
| though...
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I was waiting for "so that's why we re-subscribe customers
| after a 6-month hiatus / every time we update our mail delivery
| service". At least that's what some companies have done to
| me...
| mhardcastle wrote:
| This is a great way to think about it, and upon reflection I
| definitely operate in this way.
|
| I'd love SiriusXM at the promo rates they offer, or even at
| full price in a month where I know I'll be on the road for a
| while. I will never re-subscribe because they make cancelling
| so hostile.
| MaintenanceMode wrote:
| They've (SiriusXM) made cancelling a lot easier as of late.
| They even give partial refunds and let you pause. I wouldn't
| say it's perfect, but I have been able to hop on and off over
| the last year without major heartburn.
| amelius wrote:
| But what if their strategy makes more sense because most people
| give up and keep their subscription in the first place?
| ziml77 wrote:
| 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.
| some_random wrote:
| Exact same experience, I signed up for them as part of a
| class in college and honestly liked their reporting. If they
| hadn't made me call them and sit through a call center
| lecture I would probably be paying for them now that I have
| money.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Both the WSJ and the NYT used to be awful. But now, in
| California, this sort of thing is no longer a problem. We
| have a rule here that subscribing online means you should be
| able to cancel online.
| genewitch wrote:
| I checked the date on the linked article and it's from
| yesterday. online "geo-ip" stuff always says i live in
| georgia, dallas, or oklahoma - and one time tacoma!
|
| I'm not sure this is as solved as you envision.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Huh, that's interesting. I suppose I'm lucky my IP shows
| me as being in SJ. TIL.
| tomrod wrote:
| My worst is a similar financial institution, which bills
| monthly and contracts annually.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| 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.
| feoren wrote:
| > I guess someone has demonstrated math that shows it is
| more profitable in some cases
|
| Don't underestimate how deeply, fundamentally, mind-
| bogglingly incompetent most decision-makers are at most
| companies. Not only do these people have no evidence to
| suggest it's more profitable (long-term, anyway), they
| literally _do not care_. The vast majority of decisions
| made at the vast majority of corporations in the U.S. today
| are driven by the Principal Agent Problem, made by people
| who will never be held account for any of their decisions,
| nor suffer any consequence for any downstream or long-term
| effects of anything they do. It 's all just a game of who
| can suck the most blood out of the company short-term
| before finding another host. These virulent parasites will
| never give a shit about such mundane concepts as
| "supporting data".
| mikestew wrote:
| 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...
| vinaypai wrote:
| I cancelled my NYT subscription a couple of years ago and
| had to chat with customer "service" to cancel. One of the
| things they asked me about was keeping the crossword
| subscription ($20/year), which I might have done. But I
| was so irritated by the annoying process that I just
| wanted to cancel everything. So they definitely lost
| money thanks to their "customer retention" tactics.
| saulpw wrote:
| Same here. And you have to call on East Coast business
| hours (I'm west coast). I am a crossword aficionado and
| would enjoy having the NYT crossword puzzle fresh each
| day. No way am I keeping a subscription that was so hard
| to cancel.
| neilparikh wrote:
| It was changed because of a California law IIRC.
| jrockway wrote:
| The Wall Street Journal lets you cancel your subscription
| if your address is in California, but not if it's in
| another state. If I wanted to cancel my subscription, I'm
| just going to pretend to move to California for a day or
| two. Maybe that's fraud and I'll go to prison for the
| rest of my life, but it's still better than calling them.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I was low on money and cancelled my Audible subscription for
| a month only to realize I lost all my tokens. I never
| resubscribed because of that.
|
| I later learned that they have some special limited "pause
| subscription" mode that retains tokens, but I didn't see that
| when I was cancelling, and I shouldn't have to research
| different ways to cancel a subscription.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I _just_ cancelled audible this morning, and did not see
| any pause subscription. It may have been there, but I was
| annoyed with other dark patterns. "no! i want to stay
| subscribed!" as a bright orange button, and "continue
| cancellation" as a muted grey button, for example.
| criddell wrote:
| This is why I like subscribing to things through iOS (and
| iPadOS). There's one place I can check to see all my
| subscriptions and stop any of them with a click or two.
|
| When I want to subscribe to something on my iPad, I don't think
| about it very long because I know it's going to be easy to
| quit. It will sometimes cost more but I've been happy to pay it
| because that's what easy quitting is worth to me.
| Razengan wrote:
| And this is why the most clamor for sideloading etc on iOS is
| from other companies, not users: They would love to fleece
| the users with as few interventions in between as possible.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Sideloading would absolutely benefit users. Even just being
| able to choose and install your own web browser would have
| enormous benefits. Android users know.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| This perfectly describes why I refuse to ever re-subscribe to
| the New York Times.
| brewdad wrote:
| This is why I keep coming back to Netflix. It's a simple
| process to subscribe or unsubscribe. I don't find enough
| interesting content to fill 12 months of use but I love that I
| can watch for a couple months, go away for the summer, and then
| pick it up again as the days get colder and darker from my sofa
| with just a remote or a click of the trackpad.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost
| customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you.
|
| I'm really surprised that so many companies don't understand
| this. It's just the old wisdom of "don't burn your bridges".
| TheFreim wrote:
| > 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.
|
| When I purchase a new subscription the first thing I do is
| cancel renewal so I can do it manually. When a site makes this
| easy I'm actually much more likely to end up re-subscribing and
| leaving it on automatic since I know I'll be able to have peace
| of mind and cancel any time.
| Ralfp wrote:
| 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.
| ptsneves wrote:
| The issue with burner cards is that if you do not actually
| cancel the subscription and just fail to pay, I _think_ can be
| liable for payment delinquency and accumulate charges and
| possibly interest.
|
| I used a burner for Financial Times and they were pretty clear
| that my subscription was active but pending payment. I still
| did not have access to the articles while in that status. They
| eventually cancel the subscription though. The reason I did not
| actually cancel was that the cancel page failed with an error.
| lazybreather wrote:
| Would you like to use an aggregator service which gives you
| credits? You can use those credits to 'buy' an article from any
| paid news sites. Maybe a browser addon which activates articles
| you want to read.
| rch wrote:
| Close, but I'd rather have a portion of my aggregator
| subscription be dispersed consistently, not just when I
| consume articles.
| pif wrote:
| > This crap is what prevents me from subscribing US press.
|
| I know this issue is not limited to the USA.
| psychphysic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Some online banks allow you to easily create virtual cards. I
| use revolut, which is free.
| Ralfp wrote:
| This is what burner card is, and I don't want to bother with.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| 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_.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Yeah some companies try to make it more obvious by writing
| 'no credit card required' as a subtitle on the 'sign up'
| button itself.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm also in the edtech sector, and we purposely offer our
| free trial without requiring an email or credit card, for
| this reason. This limits our ability to ensure that each
| person only does one trial though; for years, anyone could
| get unlimited free trials by uninstalling/reinstalliing. But
| it was better than the alternative, which you note!
| kennend3 wrote:
| 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".
| digging wrote:
| I do sub to free trials, if I have the time/energy to
| immediately cancel afterward. I never leave it until later
| for the above reasons.
| brewdad wrote:
| More and more I've been seeing the pattern where if you
| cancel a 7 day trial on day 3, it ends immediately.
| digging wrote:
| Still solved by my approach. If you sign up and cancel
| immediately and the trial is over before you start, you
| just move on from that service.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| 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.
| gumballindie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| graupel wrote:
| Forget newspapers, lets talk about SiriusXM and trying to cancel
| that; it makes the worst newspaper look like they are doing it
| perfectly.
| genewitch wrote:
| 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.
| psychphysic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| 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."
| lephty wrote:
| 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.
| dmm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If you change your address to a California address you can
| enable click to cancel online for NYT.
| dspillett wrote:
| 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.
| stodor89 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| athenot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'd rather keep paying than figure out how and where to buy
| stamps and envelopes.
| genewitch wrote:
| ... 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 wrote:
| Still waiting for the high-tech innovation of being able to
| unilaterally cancel subscriptions by blocking charges.
| criley2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I always thought privacy.com let's you do essentially this but
| I could be wrong.
| the_snooze wrote:
| 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.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| And this is exactly why I want apple to manage my subscriptions
| Raed667 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I would lobby for it at the state level, and pass something
| like California did. That will be much likelier than federal
| action.
| codedokode wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| corbet wrote:
| The pain I went through to stop The Economist has made me
| reluctant to subscribe to anything too - and I run a
| subscription publication business. I wouldn't be surprised to
| learn that this approach hurts revenue overall.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Oh! I thought about re-subscribing to The Economist. I was
| subscriber several years ago. I like their content and buy
| the paper version occasionally. You made me think again.
|
| And yes, unluckily those toxic 1/3 being hostile to
| subscribers hurt everyone else. : (
| brewdad wrote:
| I've had good luck subscribing through third party
| resellers. I can set the subscription to auto-renew at the
| same price I had the year before or If I want to cancel, I
| notify them and they do the cancellation for me. Currently,
| I have my Economist subscription through
| https://www.discountmags.com. It's cheaper than the
| Economist site and easier to manage. There was about a 4
| week delay in starting my subscription though, so that's
| one drawback.
| Guybrush_T wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It's tough because everything is a subscription now
|
| Eh, it's not so tough. I just don't subscribe. It's their
| loss more than mine.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| betimsl wrote:
| This brings forward the question: What were you thinking when you
| subscribed to 22 different newspapers in the first place?
| dspillett wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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._
| dspillett wrote:
| _> 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 1/3 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.
| brozaman wrote:
| 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.
| codedokode wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| anthk wrote:
| 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.
| cafard wrote:
| "Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!", collected in Joel
| Spolsky's _Joel on Software_ covers just this.
| [deleted]
| anthk wrote:
| 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.
| jtlienwis wrote:
| 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.
| fortran77 wrote:
| 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.
| kylecazar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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