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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

#151

Post by pottertheotter »

I had a similar issue with the Wall Street Journal a few years back, and despite having spent the majority of my career working on Wall Street, I’ll never buy a subscription again.

I signed up for a really good deal for 6 months of digital + paper delivery, but my paper always arrived a day or two late, so before my 6 months were up I tried to cancel, but couldn’t figure out a way to do so on their website. I messaged support asking them to not renew my subscription, and told them that the paper always arrived late. They responded back that they were going to give me a free subscription until they could figure out the paper delivery. I should have held firm and cancelled, but it seemed lke they were trying to provide good customer service.

Nothing changed with delivery, and I followed up a few times to see what was going on. I was told they were looking into it.

One day, out of the blue, I received a large bill from them. I called to see what was going on and I was told that my trial was up and since I hadn’t cancelled that it had renewed. A proceeded to tell the about my problems with delivery and that customer service was supposedly working on fixing the problem and not charging me until they could. The person on the phone told me that that’s not possible since they don’t provide same-day delivery to my address. I recounted exactly what had happened, and they basically told me I was a liar, and would not refund the charge because the user agreement says they don’t have to, even though I called within a few hours of the new charge and subscription renewal.

The part that really stung was that I was a PhD student and could get an entire year for less than what they charged me for a month. I’ve never had a company treat me so poorly before.

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

#153

Post by JohnTHaller »

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…

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.

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

#156

Post by jmckib »

jrockway wrote: post #21
tambeb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha yes! Right around the time I decided I didn't want the sub anymore was luckily right around when I cancelled (for unrelated reasons) the credit card they had on file. Super easy!

My credit card expired and they sent my account to collections. I still subscribe because I like the work their journalists do, but when I read an article about how they're dying I don't really feel bad for them. (I am also tempted to cancel my Wall Street Journal subscription when I accidentally read an opinion column. Not sure why real journalists let partisan hacks put their opinion columns right next to their rea…

I canceled WSJ a little while ago and it was a total nightmare. Had to call a number, got put on hold for about 45 minutes, then had to answer a bunch of questions and deal with an aggressive sales pitch. Never subscribing again because of that. I'm sticking with Washington Post for now because it's a lot cheaper, has better politics coverage, and the cancelation process is more reasonable (I think, haven't had to do it yet).

When the WSJ rep asked me why I was canceling, one of the reasons I gave was how bad the op-ed section is. A little while ago the news room writers actually put together an open letter complaining about the lack of accuracy in the op-ed section, and also asking for the labeling on the op-eds to be more clear, because it was affecting the news rooms' credibility.

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

#157

Post by rendall »

pkulak wrote: post #64

This is why I use throw-away credit card numbers for everything. I'll give a quick try at cancelling a service (out of respect), but if it takes me more than a few clicks, I just stop the card and send their emails to spam. Done and done.

How do you get a throwaway credit card number?

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

#158

Post by macNchz »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #63
Theory5 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened to me with audible. They didn't have the cancel subscription on the app. Had to hunt for it on the site. Was asked if i was suuuuuuure i wanted to leave, 3 separate times before it canceled. Definitely not thinking of doing that again, or like i do for some streaming services, pay for a couple months, stop, then pay for a few more. Utterly rediculous.

Another related dark pattern: When cancelling a Prime trial, Amazon makes it appear as if you're going to lose the Prime benefits immediately, not at the end of the trial, to keep you from cancelling early. (It seems like you DO keep them until the end of the trial, but you only get told that after cancelling) Together with their decreased support quality (agents barely understanding what I write + the typical "tell…

Same story with a full Prime subscription, not just the free trial, they use several dark patterns to confuse you about what will happen when you actually hit the cancel button.

When I found myself slowly buying fewer things on Amazon a few years ago and decided to cancel Prime after many years as a subscriber, I was so grossed out by the cancellation process that I’ve actively avoided ordering from them ever since.

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

#159

Post by mikepurvis »

astura wrote: post #139
e-clinton wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal? What other business does that? I can’t think of one.

Banks and credit cards cancel inactive accounts.

My experience with this was having a dormant Chase account with like $100 in it, which they chipped away at, withdrawing the $4/mo fee or whatever, until the balance was at $0, whereupon it was immediately closed.

I'm not sure if this really counts for much in their favour.

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

#160

Post by xyse53 »

jwilber wrote: post #81
1shooner wrote: post #28

Most of this chatlog is "you" adding more noise than is necessary for this transaction.

Maybe, but there still remains the issue that such a pointless chat is even required to cancel in the first place.

The interaction didn't seem that bad to me. The business is hurting and valuable. I can kind of see how you'd get there and want "customer retention specialists", who are people that have a job they don't like where they are probably measured on some metric related to how many cancels they let through. Sucks all around, but again I was expecting so much worse.

A single chat interaction? Not horrible.

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