NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.
It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription
I've had to cancel the Times a couple of times over the years. Telling them that I lost my job only got one offer to extend at a discounted rate. But what really worked well was this:
NYT: "Can I ask why you want to cancel your subscription?"
Me: "No."
It's not on their script, so the operator just took care of it immediately.
On the plus side, at least you can speak to a human being at the Times pretty quickly. Good luck getting through to anyone at the Albuquerque Journal in under three days ("It looks like you're calling from a cell phone. Let's continue this conversation by text!").
Wouldn't surprise if it IS on their script. If they do too overtly scummy things bad things will start happening to them. The kind of guy who says "No." is the kind of guy who will chargeback or write a letter to his representative.
Same experience here. I've cancelled all subscriptions that use this tactic and made myself a promise to never participate in implementing such a system.
Whenever I subscribe to any service on Apple I will immediately unsubscribe. If I find myself wanting to use the service again after it expires it's a simple tap to resubscribe. I think I actually end up with more subscriptions this way, but at least I know I'm getting use out of all of them. I wish I could a similar setup for all subscription services.
It took me ages (more than a year I think) to unsubscribe from AWS. Luckily since we've deleted all the contents the fees were pretty nominal but still ...
It might help to set your billing address to some random place in California. It worked for me a few days ago when I canceled my WSJ subscription, a "Cancel subscription" button magically appeared in the settings that wasn't there before.
I actually tried that with NYTimes (I cancelled during the SlateStarCodex debacle) and it didn't work. Ultimately, I had setup payment via paypal and canceled the automatic payments.
I find it absurd that subscription services don't offer a "Cancel Subscription" button somewhere. That being said, it's also absurd that I have to pay Apple a 30% premium for this "feature."
Many local libraries offer NYT subscriptions through their portal. I think they only last for a year, so you have to renew them each year, but it's better than having to worry about cancellation.
In several cities where I've lived, your library card would grant you online access to dozens or hundreds of newspapers from around the world. Some you could even download to your iPad to read later.
Am curious: what made it so difficult to cancel / unsubscribe?
If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)
Chargebacks are way harder in real life than people think. It took me multiple calls, emailing evidence/screenshots, and months to get a $300 charge back processed. That was for a completely fraudulent charge at a bar. The way it was explained to me, banks will only process a chargeback when you have provided evidence of trying to contact the merchant and they refused to provide a refund and couldn’t show a valid contract supporting the charge. So in this case you couldn’t just charge back NYT just because their cancelation policy is slightly burdensome. And they don’t stop that business from charging you again, so even if you can charge back a charge, it doesn’t solve the issue of canceling the subscription.
I've only made a few chargebacks but each time it was really easy. I've never had to provide any sort of documentation and have gotten the money back quickly each time.
The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on their site. Turns out, there wasn't even an option to upload that information when I filed with my credit card, and I won the case without doing anything further.
Where did you get your credit card? Name-and-shame is important when dealing with corporations, but so is name-and-praise for the few that actually work correctly.
USAA credit cards have been fantastic for me over a 31 year period. In that time, I can only recall 3 chargebacks and all were decided in my favor quickly and easily. Other service is also great; cash back levels are just “okay” but I’m not giving up convenience and USAA service for 50bps more cash back.
U-haul charged me three times for the same thing. I spent several hours on the phone with u-haul trying to get them to reverse it. Ultimately they said the agreed I was triple charged but they couldn't reverse it and I had to contact my bank
It took EIGHT MONTHS and SEVEN phone calls with my bank to get them to charge back. And haul fought me every step of the process when they're the ones that told me to go to my bank. U-haul went as far as to straight up lie to my bank. I'm surprised they didn't forge documents with all the shit they were trying
Maybe it depends on your bank? I’ve had to do a couple chargebacks on Chase CC’s in the $200-300 range and I just had to click a button in their web portal.
It was more difficult for me to get reimbursed when I tried depositing $300 in a Chase ATM and then it crashed halfway through. But that just involved a 2 minute phone call to resolve
Chargebacks only delay the inevitable. If the card is still in use they'll simply try again at the next billing cycle.
I had an Amazon subscription charge I could not track down for a year. Every month I would call Amazon, who's CSR couldn't find it, and then my bank to reverse the charge.
Found out I had Amazon Premier still signed up on Amazon IT. The card worked globally but subscriptions displayed locally.
IIRC, each chargeback charges the merchant a nonrefundable $35 fee. So even if you get your $10 back, the person who took your money is out $45. If someone were to keep charging me after a chargeback was won in my favor, I’d just keep issuing more chargebacks to spite them. They also can only lose disputes so many times before Visa or MasterCard looks closer at them.
Had similar problem with The Times in the UK, but it seems it's pretty common for newspapers.
The online subscription could only be cancelled by telephone, on a phone line with small and inconvenient windows of opportunity, with long waits. When you get through, you have the normal retention/upsell attempts, and then are told that it will take at least two months to process your cancellation, and that you will continue to be charged in the meantime.
It was easier to cancel my card, at which point they somehow managed to withdraw access as soon as the first billing failed.
I saw that coming and turned the tables on them by initiating a payment dispute and a merchant block with my CC company after I realized that the NYT is wasting my time intentionally.
You know, this hasn't been my experience. The ability to get CS via chat to work on subscriptions stops/cancels has worked for me, albeit with a non-blocking wait. Edit0: wanted to add that my subscriptions (personal, gift) were done via PayPal (pre-approved payments) so I could cancel via there as well but the NYT chat/cs worked fine for me.
Mine was by credit card. I called the support number, got picked up quickly, told them I didn't have enough time for it and wanted to cancel. I also made it clear that I just wanted to cancel my newspaper subscription, not my crossword subscription, and mentioned that I realized I would no longer get 1/2 off on the crossword puzzle subscription.
He cancelled the newspaper subscription, and then told me that I was mistaken about no longer getting 1/2 off on the crossword puzzle subscription. I'd only go back to full price on that if I let it expire and then re-ordered. As long as I have the subscription on auto-renew and those payments go through, it will stay at 1/2 price.
NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.