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Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

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Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#71

Post by aerovistae »

offby37years wrote: post #66
aerovistae wrote: post #17

Honestly only case where I'm willing to overlook it. It's so hard for them to stay in the black. I can't imagine, in this age. For a serious newspaper that does good investigative journalism, I'll accept some desperate measures to keep subscribers and not hold it against them. Any other company and I'd call them garbage, but the NYT does a lot of good. (Same would go for other top investigative journals that have pub…

NYT has been a net negative on society since 2016, rapidly so since 2019.

Elaborate??

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#72

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

zapzupnz wrote: post #61

Got my NYT online subscription via Apple, so I just cancel it via the App Store. Easy-peasy.

This sort of thing is why I’m fine with Apple charging the people I do business with a 30% cut: Apple provides a lot of value making “payments” and “subscriptions” consistent between vendors.

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#73

Post by Spivak »

duxup wrote: post #23

I'm fine with paying for quality news.

That’s not really the point. It’s that once companies have your CC info they make it arbitrarily difficult to stop paying them. This kind of behavior should run afoul of consumer protection laws.

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#74

Post by crispyambulance »

offby37years wrote: post #66
aerovistae wrote: post #17

Honestly only case where I'm willing to overlook it. It's so hard for them to stay in the black. I can't imagine, in this age. For a serious newspaper that does good investigative journalism, I'll accept some desperate measures to keep subscribers and not hold it against them. Any other company and I'd call them garbage, but the NYT does a lot of good. (Same would go for other top investigative journals that have pub…

NYT has been a net negative on society since 2016, rapidly so since 2019.

What would you recommend, then?

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#75

Post by vincentmarle »

Spivak wrote: post #62
rawtxapp wrote: post #22

I've never been able to cancel any subscription with ease, so nowadays I always use Privacy to get temporary credit cards. When I want the subscription cancelled, I try the provider's website, if it doesn't work, I just cancel the card all together.

There is some danger to this since just because your card is declined doesn’t mean that you stop owing them money. Gyms like to take advantage of this.

Getting collections to your door for not paying your internet bill is mostly a European thing. I haven’t seen it in the US.

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#76

Post by tech-historian »

whoisjuan wrote: post #25

Imagine having a business model so fragile that your only line of defense is to obscure the cancellation process through these tactics. Do they really think that they can curve their churn this way? I mean best you’re doing is getting maybe another month or so of revenue from a customer who is just pushing the pain of cancelling because they are busy or lazy. And at the end instead of getting what could be a dormant…

Back in 2006 an AOL subscriber recorded their conversation with an AOL customer service agent while trying to cancel the service. It was really bad, way worse than this NYTimes process. The NYT wrote an article about the debacle [1] and had this to say about Netflix's great customer service and ease of cancellation, compared to AOL's awful service:

"Seeing how Netflix would be so protective of my time were I to leave makes me all the more unlikely to do so."

Maybe the NYT should take their own advice.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/business/yourmoney/02digi...

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#78

Post by ludocode »

shyn3 wrote: post #34

Netflix does something similar. It won't let you remove your credit card so you don't get billed automatically after the first month.

This has not been my experience with Netflix at all. I regularly unsubscribe and resubscribe later. Unsubscribing is always just a click of a button and I've never had to speak to anyone at Netflix for anything.

Incidentally they also appear to honor their data deletion policy. If I stay unsubscribed for more than six months, my account ceases to exist and I need to create a new one to resubscribe.

I would have thought Netflix would be the gold standard for how to do this properly. I'm sure they have lots of people like me who subscribe a few months a year just to check out whatever's new. If I ever ran into a problem like this I would never sign up again.

Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it

#80

Post by xuki »

kgermino wrote: post #32

This is the only reason I’m not a subscriber. I have no interest in starting an open ended subscription that I have to fight to cancel. Shame too because I love the NYT, but I’m mostly able to scratch that itch with the economist, my local paper, and some smaller news outlets.

You can subscribe through Apple/Google and cancellation will be a few clicks away.
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