Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

imgur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 845 posts

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

#461

Post by vincnetas »

samcheng wrote: post #99
tech-historian wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Netflix is notoriously generous here. They allegedly auto-cancel accounts that don't use the service for too long! https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/net...

Im not native english speaker, so i'm curious is word "notoriously" is used here properly. What i know "notoriously" means "known for something bad".

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

#463

Post by chickenmonkey »

vincnetas wrote: post #461
samcheng wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is notoriously generous here. They allegedly auto-cancel accounts that don't use the service for too long! https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/net...

Im not native english speaker, so i'm curious is word "notoriously" is used here properly. What i know "notoriously" means "known for something bad".

Yes, it's a weird use of notorious. The commenter could have said 'famously generous' instead.

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

#464

Post by wodenokoto »

Spooky23 wrote: post #162
tech-historian wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t understand. If AOL and telcos were scamming people, how did you make money off of their scams?

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

#465

Post by soneca »

vincnetas wrote: post #461
samcheng wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is notoriously generous here. They allegedly auto-cancel accounts that don't use the service for too long! https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/net...

Im not native english speaker, so i'm curious is word "notoriously" is used here properly. What i know "notoriously" means "known for something bad".

That could be “infamously”, no?

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

#466

Post by thinkingemote »

tallanvor wrote: post #438
chmod600 wrote: post #278

I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of prin…

NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.

Looking at the USA from European eyes, there are no leftist publications, nor any left mainstream politicians there!

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

#467

Post by niklasd »

I also just canceled my NYT subscription (or, more accurate: I am in the process of doing that) and it is just terrible.

I am in Germany, and basically they do not accept your cancellation via writing to the customer support, but require you to call a callcenter, which is extremly hard to reach (either they do not pick up, or the connection quality is so bad that they don't understand what you're saying). In short, I did not succeed in that.

Rejecting the written cancellation and requiring to call is both borderline illegal, and an insult to the customer. Everyone involved knows that this is a just a maneuver to nudge you to give up on it, and that this requires me to waste vast amounts of my time trying to call a shady callcenter – that is just an insult to me, and it also destroys the NYT brand.

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

#468

Post by thinkingemote »

string wrote: post #447
bof_ wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://spectator.co.uk is decent

The Spectator is usually classified as centre-right. Amongst my peers ("creative" millennials in London) that makes it a bit of a non-starter, unfortunately. I think it's a mostly respectable magazine with a high degree of journalistic integrity (e.g. the recent High Court case). They have some fantastic contributors. Like any publication there are some that are a bit "out there" for my tastes, Delingpole comes to mi…

How about The New Statesman? Would that be centre-left?

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

#469

Post by gspr »

t_von_doom wrote: post #427
wickedsickeune wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a "credit score" in Europe???

From the UK here: Yes we all have a credit score - it's mainly used to measure your ability to borrow and repay debt and will influence whether a company loans to you and the interest rate on said loan. It's not (yet) as aggressive as the social scoring system in China if that is what you were alluding to... Do you not have a similar system where you are from? How would the above be decided for you?

Well, is it a score based on your current economic situation, or your past use of credit?

Here in Norway you're evaluated/scored based on some metrics like income, job security, job prospects, education, assets, debt, defaulted debt in the past, fixed expenses, etc. I think when Americans talk about "credit score" they talk about something completely different, namely their insane system where your score is (positively) affected by taking on and managing credit card debt. In that fucked up world, two debt-free people with the same income will be "scored" differently if one of them happens to use a CC to buy all his groceries and pays off the card each month, and the other buys the same groceries on debit. Surely you don't have that insanity in the UK, do you?

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

#470

Post by mnw21cam »

Karunamon wrote: post #86
violetgarden wrote: post #4

The marketing/sales talk like, “Am I to understand you’d like to cancel even though our product could be saving you $xx in time and money?” repulses me to no end. I understand they’re trying to keep a customer. I just hate the leading questions. I hate that I feel like they’re trying to outwit me, or trick me into realizing I’m so silly for wanting to cancel something. Even though I might cancel products, the cancell…

Reminds me of the old MCI telemarketers. You'd tell them you're not interested in their long distance service, and the rejoinder would be "You don't want to save money?" I've been witness to a number of cold callers having their heritage and species loudly questioned for using this tactic.

My answer would be "Don't change the subject."
Post reply on HN