Great - please inform the NYT immediately so they can stop this incredibly sleazy practice for their own business.
“Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
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Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#12Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
I used online chat to do it. It took several attempts to get connected. They offered me a really good deal to stay but I declined on principle because I don't want to support such practices.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#13Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
I had that exprience with the NYT - I had to time my call right to hit the office hours on the US east coast.
That said, when I last had an interaction with them about a subscription, I did the whole thing via a 24/7 online chat. A far better and more convenient experience, if one that still lacks the simplicity of a simple ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#14Also a common practice in Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland...), but frequently even worse: click to subscribe, send a fucking letter to cancel it. Le Monde and Der Spiegel both do it. I'm a news junkie, I think paying for news is important, but I don't have even 1/4 of the subscriptions I would have if it wasn't for scummy tactics and/or the fear that I will be subject to them in the future.
>[...] and Der Spiegel both do it.
They might have changed. When I checked just now, they offer a phone number and an E-Mail address to cancel a physical paper subscription (there's no account, so that makes sense).
An online "Spiegel+" subscription can be cancelled via their website.
https://abo.spiegel.de/de/c/abo-service/spiegel-abo-kuendige...
It may be different for their non-German publication, but I had trouble finding any English information - which may be saying something...
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#15I vowed never to pay the NYT another dime after the hassle they gave me about unsubscribing from their crossword subscription a few years ago. It was such a pain, I told to actually cancel my news subscription too. Never looked back. These days I mostly read the WSJ and it meets my needs.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#16Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
Now I just wish this was implemented in my country/EU. NYT set the precedence for our national newspapers.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#17Also a common practice in Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland...), but frequently even worse: click to subscribe, send a fucking letter to cancel it. Le Monde and Der Spiegel both do it. I'm a news junkie, I think paying for news is important, but I don't have even 1/4 of the subscriptions I would have if it wasn't for scummy tactics and/or the fear that I will be subject to them in the future.
Fortunately I have been able to cancel my Le Monde Diplomatique for many years through email. I did not get a confirmation email but they stopped billing me at least.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#18Same thing with The Guardian. Subscribed online and was then told I can’t cancel via email and have to endure a pushy sales call if I want to cancel. Similar experience with The Economist except it was via live chat instead.
These experiences honestly make me want to never subscribe to a newspaper again.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#19If they do something like this, it shows such complete lack of confidence in their product. "The only reason why people would continue to use this product is... if we make it sufficiently difficult to cancel". When signing up for a product, if it uses tactics like this, I assume the product is no good, and even the producers of the product know it...
I also dislike this business practice, but I don’t think the only way it comes about is from lack of confidence in product/service.
Let’s say you were building a startup and had to prioritize limited resources on everything that sucked about it. You’re talking to users, tracking various metrics, trying to get people to use it, and your backlog of things you wished you could do is 3+ years long.
You’d build easy sign up before you built easy canceling. Even if you were the least nefarious business owner in the history of the world, the ctime on your signup page would be older than that of the cancel page. Whether it would be 15 minutes, days, or months later is a question, but I doubt anyone has coded their cancel page first.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#20Also a common practice in Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland...), but frequently even worse: click to subscribe, send a fucking letter to cancel it. Le Monde and Der Spiegel both do it. I'm a news junkie, I think paying for news is important, but I don't have even 1/4 of the subscriptions I would have if it wasn't for scummy tactics and/or the fear that I will be subject to them in the future.
To be picky, at least here in Italy, not "send a letter", but rather "send a registered letter with delivery receipt", which plainly means that you have a non-trivial cost (several Euro, I believe in Italy it is now 10 or 12 Euro) and you have to physically go to the post office to send it.
Recently many companies are (finally) allowing to use the PEC (which is a form of Certified Electronic Mail) which has the same legal value as the registered mail, but that the average citizens do not have (unless they have it for other reasons), which however has a (small) yearly cost, but that may be "dangerous" in the sense that it becomes your "legal address" so it needs to be monitored as anything that arrives there has legal value and is considered delivered to you the moment it arrives in the inbox.