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

Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

niemanlab.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 183 posts

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#101

Post by phailhaus »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #92
phailhaus wrote: post #81

It's wild to me that the default payment plan for publications is a subscription-based model. The audacity! I'm just trying to read an article every so often, that is not worth whatever you're charging per month. It feels like microtransactions are the appropriate model to use here, but it will likely have negative incentives (e.g., prioritize clickbait even more.) The Apple News model is also fairly promising, but u…

I think news might be the only exception here- newspaper subscriptions have been around a very long time.

I think that's a vestige of the non-digital era when you had to actually get a paper delivered to your door. Now, I'm spoiled for choice and I can read 100 articles across 100 sources easily. No way I'm paying a monthly subscription for each one!

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#102

Post by salawat »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #56
buscoquadnary wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had that happen with the WSJ, will never subscribe to them again. Plus they had limited hours in one time zone.

I wonder if we can (legally) fight using the same methods that the companies use. E.g., suppose their phone system can handle 1000 people in queue + 20 live conversations. Companies keep the callers waiting, with no regard to the cost to the caller, so the company can minimize their customer-service costs. So how about we even things up? Create company-specific automated services that call in using customer-oriented…

Your Call Center workers would be instructed to hang up immediately, and systems would be programmed to try to recognize that system. You have hit on something important though:

Customer call centers are generally one of the first places to be aggressively ootimized, and if you hace a call center that has long queue times, this is a powerful signal about what management really thinks is important.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#103

Post by retcon »

techdragon wrote: post #78
losteric wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do MBAs keep pushing this? Are they TRYING to exchange short term retention for long term viability? Isn't that the stereotype? Join to juice some metric, jump ship while everything looks green, leave the mess to someone else

It’s not just a stereotype it’s often their explicit job description! They get hired or promoted with a performance metric for juicing those metrics either as an expectation of the job or as a requirement for performance incentives and bonus pay… This all of course tends to be set up by fellow MBAs higher up the corporate food chain and since everyone keeps personally profiting no one sees any reason to stop, all the…

I think that corporate sponsorship of education needs of to be outlawed. We've had at least three generations of exponential feedback of antisocial principles dominating business education. Taking much longer to go hockey stick. MBAs can't keep resting on the laurels of bringing the first GI Bill gen from draft to serving technical competence to industrial relevance. For a start the foundation for the qualification is absolutely rooted in post war growth imperatives.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#104

Post by aeruder »

Someone1234 wrote: post #37
jwie wrote: post #6

This is just lack of auto renew protections. Consumers are wise to this, and they’re not really canceling. I bet if you could turn off auto-renew they wouldn’t cancel. But, to nobody’s surprise, the MBAs don’t like options where the user doesn’t give away money by accident. Auto renew is one of those things that should be illegal to default users into.

The harder a service is to cancel, the more unlikely I am to ever re-subscribe. That's something they need to start studying in business/MBA school. That SOME customer churn reduction strategies directly lead to indefinite loss of customers. To give a specific anecdote: Ooma offers a very interesting service, hassle-free "landline" (VoIP) turn-key phone service, the price is reasonable, and they have multiple offerin…

I worked for a company that used A/B testing to justify call-to-cancel; makes me angry every time I think about it. I guess that's one of the tricky things about A/B testing - it is easy to measure that call-to-cancel decreases customer churn, not so easy to measure the number of people that will never sign up for your service or the number of customers that do churn and swear to never use you again.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#105

Post by AlbertCory »

josephcsible wrote: post #99
AlbertCory wrote: post #93

The headline is misleading; it's not just news publications. >Email newsletters, a welcome letter from the editor, a mobile app download, podcasts, subscription benefits reminders and/or a series of reminder emails over the first week and month have all proven successful with audiences. Nope, nope, nope to all of that. Annoying me has the opposite effect to what the MBAs want. As someone below notes: you can go to pr…

> you can go to privacy.com and set up temp credit cards, with a limited $$$ amount. They can try to auto-renew all they want, but they'll just get declined. Doesn't your credit report (unfairly) take a hit if you do that, the same way it (fairly) does if you don't pay your electric bill?

Good question. I should check.

Of course, privacy.com will say Yes to any name & address you give with your credit card, so you don't have to use your real PII. Or your regular email. How would that show up on your credit report?

It's easy to imagine that everything you provide is checked, but it's not true. Just the credit card number, expiration date, and security code.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#106

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

phailhaus wrote: post #101
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think news might be the only exception here- newspaper subscriptions have been around a very long time.

I think that's a vestige of the non-digital era when you had to actually get a paper delivered to your door. Now, I'm spoiled for choice and I can read 100 articles across 100 sources easily. No way I'm paying a monthly subscription for each one!

I get a paper delivered to my door as well as magazines like Atlantic, New Yorker, and Economist.

Worth every penny.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#107

Post by ROTMetro »

koofdoof wrote: post #100
LanceH wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to tell the newspaper I was moving to Madagascar because they wouldn't have that on their script. Now they'll just push the electronic edition. One of the big problems is the CSR's only have incentives to retain people now. There is no extra penalty for alienating someone from ever coming back, it's the same as a non-renew. With the web versions of this, every app that badgers me gets a 1 star review for badge…

Try telling them you're going to prison instead. I can't imagine they'll have an inmate edition.

They're piloting a tablet program in the Feds. The tablet is free. They even offer free books. Nice, right? What they don't advertise is that the system also charges something like a dollar a minute to 'use'. Wonder what those free books actually come out to costing. So far this is only in the womens prisons. I'm sure they will use it as an excuse to get rid of the actually library that inmates donate all the books sent from home to. Wrote way too much to say soon they might.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#109

Post by DavideNL »

The first thing i do right after buying a subscription on the AppStore, is cancel it. It's the only way to stay in control and avoid accidentally paying for things i don't use;

I bet many people do this, for any type of subscription.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#110

Post by theonlybutlet »

My last few news subscriptions also let me sign-up online and required an email to cancel.

I don't know why someone hasn't done it yet but offer auto-renew on/off at the onset and when you log on the 1st time after expiry a popup with onceoff "top-up", with out any nagging emails or notifications along the way.

Post reply on HN