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It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
Still better than waiting hours on a "support" phone line
They ended up chasing me for 3 years over 20 euros when I moved to the UK. At least here in Sweden, credit checks aren't really a thing thankfully.
Living 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 ...
At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or, amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.
This is definitely not the case for websites or apps and I'm pretty sure what the NYT is doing wouldn't amuse German consumer protection agencies.
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Which is ironic from what I understand to be a mobile phone operator. Clearly they don’t trust their own network
No, they just want it to be as hard as possible. Although I was surprised how relatively big faxes are in Germany. I never had sent a fax before I was in Germany.
In Portugal the law makes it so you can cancel any service using the same means that you used to subscribe it, so if they support subscribing online, unsubscribing also has to be doable the same way; same goes for via phone, personal or whatnot. It makes sense, prevents service providers from making it too difficult to terminate a contract.
I have noticed of other EU countries that a response against abuse may exist, but severely delayed and only partial (e.g. about sale of misrepresented services and other contractual scams, especially when carried out over the phone).
Living 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 ...
A few times I found it was easier to cancel a card than to cancel a subscription. I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods and services is to pass full details of your payment card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it. It thankfully is now more of a thing…
Completely outrageous business practices if you ask me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still better than waiting hours on a "support" phone line
It's not, because there's no real receipt confirmation. They ended up chasing me for 3 years over 20 euros when I moved to the UK. At least here in Sweden, credit checks aren't really a thing thankfully.
Also 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 troubl…
One day, I found a loophole. I would email them requesting a cancellation for my record and initiated a chargeback against them via my credit card company. I had no hopes of getting the money back, but then I also had evidence that I tried to reach out to them via calls and emails to make them cancel my subscription and the chargeback went through and I got a full refund. I really enjoyed that feeling knowing that the NYT lost more than they made from me as for every chargeback, the credit card company would penalize the merchant with a fixed fee - usually anywhere from $20 to $50 per chargeback if I'm not wrong.
I wish all those who had been scammed by NYT raises a chargeback and burn them to the ground. God, I never realized how passionately I could hate a company like this.
Living 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 mean, I really appreciate the articles but I haven't been able to follow as closely as I wanted.