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Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
161–170 of 845 posts
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#162Imagine 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…
AOL in the 90s was second only to phone companies for being able to scam retention people.
In our college house, we’d always run these rackets and get free plane tickets, CDs, tickets, etc. The phone companies were even better. At peak, we’d farm $300-600 a semester for switching long distance.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#163I'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.
This sounds like some kind of fraud, or at least an easy way to tank your credit and get debt collectors after you if caught. For what it's worth I've never had trouble canceling anything I've subscribed to.
That's not fraud by any stretch of the imagination.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#164That's it? I mean, it IS annoying but that's utterly painless compared to any number of other financial interactions you may be faced with online. Take almost any medical related billing issue, for example.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#165Honestly 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…
They're not a charity or a nonprofit that relies on donations. They're a business selling a product, and the only thing that should rationally factor into giving them money or not is if you want to buy the product. Need doesn't factor into the equation.
Some business and industries do more social good than others. We're all still adjusting to the internet. I'm on the side of leaning towards giving NYT a pass for this. It was a single chat interaction, not so bad.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#166This reminds me of the French newspaper lemonde.fr, which I had subscribed to, and then wanted to unsubscribe after a couple months. There was simply no way to do so online, not to reach any customer support. The only option was to send a letter via post. This was during our first lockdown in UK, so no way I would go to the post office for that. I'll simply never be a customer again.
Can people in the UK not send outgoing letters by putting them in their mailbox and raising the little outgoing mail flag? Is that a uniquely American thing?
As a Canadian who has been in the US close to 10 years, this is the first I've heard of this! I had always assumed the flag was meant to be set by the letter carrier in some bygone era as a courtesy to let residents know they had mail. Thank you, kind internet stranger.
To answer the question, this service doesn't exist in any other country I've lived in -- Canada or Japan, in my case.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#167I'm fine with paying for quality news.
Then why are you subscribing to the New York Times?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
So much for your "paper of record". It's the Paper of the Establishment. And always has been.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you recommend, then?
Substack. Citizen journalism is the future. The MSM solely exist to make every problem your problem through an omnipresent stream of manufactured outrage.
One reason I don't click links that go to Substack is that the founders seem happy to donate free content to alt-right outlets. I don't give traffic to organizations like that.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#169Imagine 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…
I said the phrase "I want to cancel cable but keep internet" 23 times to a Time Warner retention specialist then their supervisor, and I may have talked to her supervisor, too. They get paid to ignore you and read back canned responses like "but what about your favorite channels?", "what about watching sports?", etc. It was the first time my girlfriend had ever seen me angry.
If you ever need to cancel comcast, time warner or similar entirely and quickly, just tell them you're going to prison. No joke, it works.
Re: Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I said the phrase "I want to cancel cable but keep internet" 23 times to a Time Warner retention specialist then their supervisor, and I may have talked to her supervisor, too. They get paid to ignore you and read back canned responses like "but what about your favorite channels?", "what about watching sports?", etc. It was the first time my girlfriend had ever seen me angry.
If you ever need to cancel comcast, time warner or similar entirely and quickly, just tell them you're going to prison. No joke, it works.
"I'm going to prison, but I'd like to keep my internet"