581–590 of 845 posts
I’m a strong believer in not paying any bills that don’t make financial sense for me to pay; worst case with enough disputes and drama almost anything can get taken off a credit report.
I've never been able to cancel any subscription with ease, so nowadays I always use Privacy to get temporary credit cards. When I want the subscription cancelled, I try the provider's website, if it doesn't work, I just cancel the card all together.
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…
Which other paid news publications do you prefer over the NYT?
I also just canceled my NYT subscription (or, more accurate: I am in the process of doing that) and it is just terrible. I am in Germany, and basically they do not accept your cancellation via writing to the customer support, but require you to call a callcenter, which is extremly hard to reach (either they do not pick up, or the connection quality is so bad that they don't understand what you're saying). In short, I…
Deepl translation of the law: Even to the extent that a deviation from the statutory provisions is permissible, the following shall be invalid in general terms and conditions: [...] 13. (Form of notices and declarations) A provision by which notices or statements to be given to the user or to a third party are bound a) to a form more stringent than the written form in a contract for which notarization is required by law; or b) to a form more stringent than textual form in contracts other than those referred to in point (a); or c) to special access requirements
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone in China could say the same thing about Europe. There’s hardly any communist mainstream politicians and publications there!
One of them is a authoritarian regime where the press is controlled by the state and the others are a collection of countries with some of the highest democracy ratings in the world, by most scales, including for freedom of the press.
It's all relative. From a communist perspective, most of Europe is a laissez faire free market. Private control of the press!? Hah!
From Europe's mildly-socialist perspective, America is a laissez faire free market. Private control of healthcare and education!? Hah!
I'm not making value judgements. Just pointing out its a spectrum.
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…
This is what throwaway credit card numbers are for. I'd like to see that concept become more mainstream. If you make it hard for me to cancel a service, fine. It's a single click in a well-designed financial app: delete card.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't the first time I've seen NYT cancellation process in my social feeds. It has to be a negative feedback loop cycle. People that read HN are absolutely the type that would consider paying for NYT (or at least the two cohorts have great overlap). This cancellation process never considered the impact of internet cancel culture and rage reactions. It's far easier to damage a brand than it is to build it up.
> People that read HN are absolutely the type that would consider paying for NYT (or at least the two cohorts have great overlap). ?? I automatically assume that articles that are written by NYT, NewYorker, and The Guardian are complete BS and should be ignored. 0 journalism found there. Wanna spend money somewhere? Spend it on The Atlantic or Bloomberg.
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…
This is what throwaway credit card numbers are for. I'd like to see that concept become more mainstream. If you make it hard for me to cancel a service, fine. It's a single click in a well-designed financial app: delete card.
I think the primary feature is limiting the damage of a compromise.
It sounds great to also use this as a way for the customer to cancel service with an unwilling company, but I think in practice they may come after you with a collection agency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't the first time I've seen NYT cancellation process in my social feeds. It has to be a negative feedback loop cycle. People that read HN are absolutely the type that would consider paying for NYT (or at least the two cohorts have great overlap). This cancellation process never considered the impact of internet cancel culture and rage reactions. It's far easier to damage a brand than it is to build it up.
> People that read HN are absolutely the type that would consider paying for NYT (or at least the two cohorts have great overlap). ?? I automatically assume that articles that are written by NYT, NewYorker, and The Guardian are complete BS and should be ignored. 0 journalism found there. Wanna spend money somewhere? Spend it on The Atlantic or Bloomberg.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they want to persuade me to hold a set of opinions Glad more people are realizing this. It's harder to spot/acknowledge for people on the left since the biased coverage feeds into their worldview...in my opinion it's artificially solidified their confidence on how "correct" they feel they are about political topics. The next step in this realization is nothing to do with one-sided reporting, it's the massive scale…
I'm an outsider to US politics (in that I'm Australian), but I'm really interested to know what widely held "left" views you think are "incorrect"? The topics I understand as being pushed by the left in the US just seem so centerist to me, based on the political landscape that I'm living in. Single payer health care, minimum wage increases, increases in social support nets... So many topics I'd love to hear the argum…