Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by wernercd » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #268

JohnTHaller wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one downside to cable now streaming, is that the answer I used in the past "I don't have a TV" no longer shuts them up. It used to be amazing; it seemingly broke their brains. The two, three times I had to use it, the rep fell silent for a solid 3-4 seconds, then "You...don't have a TV?" "That's right" "...okay, so that's just internet then" "Yes".

We have comcast and finally removed "tv" because the pricing changed from internet+tv = internet prices... to internet + tv = more.

The answer? was a streaming box. I expect to see a monthly rental fee for the streaming box...

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

#322

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #283

vntok wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. If your situation was generalizable, then no one would accept rebates or gifts offered during the cancelation process - yet many do, which is why sales rep continue to offer them.

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Back before prices got better, my parents used to call up the cable company every year to "cancel our service". Why? "It's too expensive." Eventually they would "give in" after shaving $20 off our monthly bill. This of course was their intent the whole time: they saved thousands of dollars over about 10 years as a result. Very few people actually determined to cancel…

> It constitutes a kind of wealth transfer to the people who have the free time, energy, and ability to play the game.

It's price discrimination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Usually, it's not worth the time to haggle over people to figure out the most they are willing to pay for low margin retail goods, so you don't see it at Walmart or the grocery store. But for high margin goods, such as cars, real estate, B2B sales etc, each buyer has a different amount they are willing to pay, and so you want to try and capture as much of everyone's capacity to pay as possible.

Actually, come to think of it, low margin retail and grocery does it too with coupons and whatnot that some people are willing to spend time on and others are not.

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

#323

Post by danielscrubs » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #150

1shooner wrote: post #28

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

When I tell someone I want to cancel a service, the only thing I ever want to hear is, "Yes sir." followed by, "All done, sir." And maybe a, "Have a nice day, sir." Period. I give you money. You give me a service. I stop giving you money. You stop giving me the service. Its just that goddamn simple.

Yes, but the incentives are not strong enough to allow it. Give some companies some heavy fines for this bad behavior and you’ll see the rest start to stand in line quickly.

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

#324

Post by 3np » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #271

3np wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US residents only. Anyone aware if something similar that doesn’t discriminate?

I don't think they're discriminating, probably just massive laws they have to deal with for every new country, and they're still pretty new so probably don't have their resources. Can you use a VPN?

I argue they are discriminating, even if it is indeed regulatory issues at play there.

I'm not going to fraudulently open an account misstating my residence, that's breaking their ToS - you do promise thet you're a US resident when signing up.

Of course it's their choice who they want to take on as customers. They've been providing the service for ~6 years though, which is really not that new in context.

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

#325

Post by astura » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

oconnor663 wrote: post #309

jabberwcky wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst experience I had with this involved 4 customer service representatives simply hanging up (after a 30+ minute wait) after exhausting their script. I simply recorded the final call, stopping paying the bill, and sent the documentation I had to the credit reference agency when the contract went into default At some point they sent a debt collection agency, that was much less stressful than it sounds. They call…

Does this sort of thing still end up hurting your credit score though? I don't know how this actually works, but I feel like I've heard scary things about it.

If that invalid "debt" was still on your credit report you'd just file a dispute to have it removed.

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

#326

Post by AntiImperialist » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

Here was the input necessary to cancel the subscription.

    Cancel my subscription.

    Cancel my subscription.

    No reason, cancel.

    Cancel.

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

#327

Post by tobr » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

I went through this recently. I was also forced to repeat name/email etc so that they could “find my subscription”, despite having had to log in to the account to even reach the chat. After that I basically just kept repeating that I want to cancel immediately, and refused to engage with any of their other questions. It went relatively quickly. The chat operator said that I could have also canceled “through the website”, which as far as I can tell is a blatant lie, unless he meant the very chat I was already using on the website…

It is of course completely unacceptable and dishonest to make it easy to subscribe or upgrade your subscription, but require this procedure to do the opposite, and I’m a lot less likely to ever become a subscriber again. But on the other hand, if you’re spending more than a few minutes in this chat it’s probably because you are engaging with their attempts to keep you subscribed.

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

#328

Post by NiceWayToDoIT » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

I was thinking about a similar experience I have each time I need to do anything with any larger institution in the UK. For instance, if there is a problem let say you have with the bank because of their business policies, and if you get transfer to the agent, talking with the agent is even more annoying than talking with the bot. Employees here are trained to go by the script, so there is no thinking, no logic, no reasoning, if it is not in the script they will just go on and on, in the same loop like a broken gramophone record. Usually, humans should be more helpful, but in quite a number of cases, when things are exceptions to the book, that simply does not work. I personally find that type of behaviour super frustrating, wanting me to stop any kind of business with that organisation, for ... forever. Any similar stories in other countries?

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

#329

Post by ma2rten » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #293

hctaw wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been trending the last couple days.

Last couple days have only one story from NYT with ore than 100 upvotes. I didn't bother with checking further than second page of results, but though there are lots of submissions, rarely they get more than a couple of upvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

Here is an easier way of checking that:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

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

#330

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

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.

My favorite of the telco scams was from the bad old days of long distance companies called "I Don't Care"[0]. Apparently, a lot of people didn't care which carrier it was, so these asshats took it to the bank

[0]https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1998-08-27-98082605...