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

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

imgur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 845 posts

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

#561

Post by arnoooooo »

tallanvor wrote: post #438
chmod600 wrote: post #278

I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of prin…

NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.

They at least subscribe to the leftist version of identity politics, which has admittedly become very mainstream, but is still the number one rallying point of the left today.

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

#563

Post by ilaksh »

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 bet there are one or two executives who decided it would be this way. They should be named and removed. This is a prime example of an issue with simple hierarchies: the single point of failure.

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

#564

Post by dcolkitt »

thinkingemote wrote: post #466
tallanvor wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.

Looking at the USA from European eyes, there are no leftist publications, nor any left mainstream politicians there!

We can just as easily say that from an African perspective there are no right wing publications or politicians. After all in most of Africa homosexuality is still criminalized. In many places, witchcraft and apostasy still is.

And Africa has about triple the population of Europe. So what makes Europe the default point of comparison? (More reporters having done a semester abroad at Barcelona than Lagos is not a valid answer.) Heck why restrict ourselves to the present? How about by the standards of all of human history? Even Fox News would be left wing in 1750.

The simple answer is that it’s very dumb to arbitrarily compare against a different society, with a different history and different culture. American institutions should benchmark on American mores, not grasp at politics from entirely different continents.

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

#565

Post by scythe »

chmod600 wrote: post #278

I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of prin…

>It feels more like they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions (which shifts rapidly), rather than informing me and letting me form my own. "Persuade" is even the wrong word; more like "pressure" or "coerce".

It's a little amusing to see liberals trying to describe this for the first time. Harper's is unequivocally further left than NYT. It's also less grating.

To me, that's because the "left-ish" bias of NYT takes the form of telling the reader to be afraid of certain people or groups of people, whether it's Tom Cotton who wants to "send in the troops" or some little-known blogger. Which stands in direct contradiction to the ideals of what most people think of as leftism.

Bias is tolerable and probably inevitable; a politics of fearmongering is not.

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

#566

Post by ansible »

neop1x wrote: post #451
samcheng wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is notoriously generous here. They allegedly auto-cancel accounts that don't use the service for too long! https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/net...

Interesting. I cancelled Netflix account 7 months ago and haven't used it since. A few days ago I received "Action needed: Reset your password" due to allegedly "suspicious sign-in". After changing the password and looking into the Recent activity, I couldn't see any suspicious recent login there. So I contacted the support and they said cancelled accounts are deleted after 10 months since cancellation. So now, with…

Did you use Netflix on any devices? Maybe one of those was trying to connect.

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

#568

Post by motohagiography »

Who would pay $50 to have a registered legal letter cancelling your subscription or service physically mailed to these organizations, and then with a registry of case numbers for credit reporting so that when collections buys the "debt" from the company, they can reference whether the person has executed this cancellation or not?

If it saved you a couple of hours on the phone, was legally compliant and protected your credit, and forced the company to stop, and was just "point and shoot," would you use it?

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

#569

Post by atonse »

knorker wrote: post #483
asxd wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think any of the parent commenters were trying to say this phenomena didn’t happen on the right as well. Obviously we’ve seen a huge swell of right wing media trying to coerce the viewer into a certain set of opinions. If anything that’s all the more reason to be very mindful of the same effect occurring in other media publications.

The quote "It's harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left" sounds to me like patronizing "I'm simply right, whereas you are fooled by your media". It shows a strong assumption that while that commenter is able to see the difference between bias and misinformation, the left cannot. And I don't buy it. Neither people who watch Fox News nor people who watch NBC News buy it hook line and sinker. So considering th…

Although my side (the left) often says things like “reality has a left leaning bias”

And it’s totally true when you’re countering the real charlatans of the right like Tom Cotton or Ted Cruz (to focus on American politics) But not a valid blanket statement whatsoever.

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

#570

Post by Hnrobert42 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #526
chmod600 wrote: post #278

I just cancelled and it was relatively painless, to their credit. When they asked the reason, I said that political coverage was unfair. Left is OK, unfair is not. I don't consider myself "on the left" but I really don't mind a publication being left of center or right of center. If it's good, I will pay for it (I subscribed tp The Atlantic at least twice, and the New Yorker once, and probably others in a mix of prin…

Journalists are pretty honest about what they do if you listen to them talk candidly about their profession. It's not really about reporting reality or facts it's more they see themselves are a class above the regular people who have a moral obligation to make sure we think and believe the right things we're supposed to for what they consider the greater good. Not saying if that's the right thing to do or not but per…

This generalization seems overly broad.
Post reply on HN