61–70 of 890 posts
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 ...
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.
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…
Folks just don't seem to realize: you make a reasonable effort with the vendor, and then go straight to your credit card company.
I caught a restaurant "helping" themselves to a very healthy tip for delivery; I'd tipped in cash. The owner repeatedly professed that he didn't know how to issue a refund and offered cash.
He was playing stupid because he didn't want to deal with the transaction fee, nor did he want a paper trail of his fraud; I strongly suspect he was doing this to other people, too. Warned him three times and three times he said, gosh, he had no idea how to issue a refund to my card.
I asked for just the fraudulent tip back and my credit card company reversed the entire charge. So not only did he lose the tip, he lost the cost of the food and he got dinged with a chargeback fee. He also lost my weekly pizza order.
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 ...
It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
Someone tell NYT.
Go to Subscription overview, and at the very bottom click "Cancel your subscription".
You can also use this to get a better deal. Just start the cancellation, choose "My subscription is too expensive" as reason, click Continue a couple of times and they'll give you a reduced rate to keep you. I now pay 2 euros a month for a digital subscription.
What would the consequences be of subscribing to something with a disposable card, then deactivating that card instead of formally unsubscribing? Can companies send your information to a debt collector or somehow force you to pay since you didn't cancel? Can it affect your credit score?
Some people above mentioned inconvenient work hours when calling to unsub, but it's not only that. International subscribers must also pay to simply call another country. If will be put on hold for tens of minutes or more, then the price of that call will easily be more than annual sub price.
I suspect that even if FTC will change something in US, international subscribers will still be left out, because this is what usually happens in such cases.
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 ...
It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
In Sweden, sending a fax or physical letter to a government instance or private companies rather than an e-mail is more or less unheard of, unless they for some reason need a physical paper with your signature on it (I've heard this happen with customs, for example), but in almost all areas of society this has now also been replaced with Bank-ID, which is digital.[1]
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.