It's your obligation to cancel, not their obligation to guess when you want to cancel.You have a remarkably apologetic attitude towards a scumbag industry.
Just to be clear, here's the modus operendi for the retention industry-
1) Trick or outright scam people into recurring subscriptions. I never told Consumer Reports I wanted my subscription to recur, and it provides absolutely zero value to me that they did so. If they hid text somewhere for this, it is a clear and obvious example that the industry desperately needs onerous rules and restrictions prohibiting this, such as a customer yearly opt in and double-positive recurrence opt-in (rather than some hidden subtext that oh by the way we have your credit card so have fun cancelling sucker).
2) Hide methods of cancelling said subscription behind as many layers as possibly: It is shocking how easy it is to sign up for many things versus what is needed to cancel the same (as if charges on my credit card are less of an issue for me than the possibility that online access might be temporarily delayed). In Consumer Reports case, you could not email or fill out an online form -- the single and only option was a limited hours telephone number that required lengthy wait times. They know that many people will avoid the time sucking tax. Xbox Live had a particularly hilarious system where not only did you have to phone a call center and sit on hold, your cancellation had to be immediate (despite the fact that all payments were for future services, when you disabled recurrence they immediately downgraded your account) which of course is meant to delay people from jumping through the hoops until the last day when they might forget or give up and boom, another month.
While much noise was raised about Apple shaking down the subscription industry on the iOS platform, they will have to simply eat that cost because people like me have absolutely zero trust in the industry, and I greatly respect how Apple not only constantly reminds me of subscriptions, they make cancelling any of them the easiest thing in the world, so those services that want subscribers need to actually work
Recurrence is a tax on the world. It is inefficient and obnoxious companies that turn their business model towards unsavoury tactics rather than actually providing value that keeps people from wanting to be their customer.
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