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

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

#611

Post by frading »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #52
frading wrote: post #14

This reminds me of the French newspaper lemonde.fr, which I had subscribed to, and then wanted to unsubscribe after a couple months. There was simply no way to do so online, not to reach any customer support. The only option was to send a letter via post. This was during our first lockdown in UK, so no way I would go to the post office for that. I'll simply never be a customer again.

Ha! I had this experience years ago. I subscribed in college to practice my French, but ended up wanting to unsubscribe because I had more important uses for the money. Sure enough, I had to use my rudimentary language skills to write a letter to unsubscribe and mail it off to France.

Glad that worked! I hope that didn't put you off learning French.

Personally, I stopped trying to write such letters after a couple instances where the recipient company claimed they never received any letter from me.

Then I learned you should always send a letter with a signature to have a proof of reception, which is a bit more expensive. And then one kept charging me anyway, and still claimed the letter didn't reach the right department (after more time spent on the phone with them).

Bottom line is if a company wants to make it difficult for you to leave the relationship with them, there are tons of tricks in the books for that. Therefore I blacklist them after any sign of dishonesty.

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

#612

Post by fantyoon »

machello13 wrote: post #594
arnoooooo wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people would consider the "leftist version of identity politics" to be an oxymoron.

Would you say that only the right is engaging in "identity politcs"?

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

#613

Post by wycy »

hn8788 wrote: post #605
wycy wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was astonished by how much NYT was blaming Trump for everything The guy was calling the whole thing a hoax, I don't know what credit he should get for anything.

That was already debunked, but thanks for being an example of people believing whatever narrative the media pushes.

I've seen, with my own eyes, plenty of his tweets and videos of him saying it was a hoax, so debunk it for me.

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

#614

Post by acdha »

pembrook wrote: post #585
oblio wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's my point. The farther left you go the more things the state has control over. 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.

> That's my point. The farther left you go the more things the state has control over.

That’s because you’re using the term incorrectly: right-wing authoritarian states were just as perilous for those who disagreed – imagine being a left-wing business owner under Hitler or Pinochet! You’d much prefer living in “left-wing” Sweden unless you were very right-wing.

The mistake is trying to use a single term to compare multidimensional properties. The degree to which power is centralized in the state is independent from economic and social policies, and you can find examples of many combinations depending on which characteristics you’re interested in (for example, the Soviet Union was good for the perspective of opening career paths for women and terrible for gay rights while Nazi Germany was bad at both, and no single term comparison is going to cover that).

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

#615

Post by ibirman »

I was not able to cancel my subscription about 10 years ago, but I found that I could put the paper on vacation hold. I've been on vacation for all but one week a year ever since, one benefit is that I can still access the digital products all year round during my vacation.

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

#616

Post by bilekas »

This isnt too bad, hell annoying but I have had to deal with worse!

Even with larger companies like YouTube I 'suspended' my subscription thinking it was suspended indefinitely. It is not.

So they went to work charging again, on the day I tried to contact them about it and wow it was easily a good hour of my time just making sure i cancelled correctly this time.

Then they got back to me a couple weeks later saying they didn't know what payment i was reffering to.

I genuinely just gave up. Which is exactly why its designed that way.

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

#617

Post by tobyhinloopen »

andix wrote: post #368
rawtxapp wrote: post #22

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.

It only works if you didn't give them your name and address. At least in Europe some debt collection agencies will track you down and charge an enormous fee, and will leave you with a bad credit score.

Credit score? Europe?

What part of Europe has credit scores?

Also you can’t just send an collections agency with huge fees, there’s laws against that. At least in the Netherlands

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

#618

Post by PeterisP »

Johnny555 wrote: post #131
jimmaswell wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like some kind of fraud, or at least an easy way to tank your credit and get debt collectors after you if caught. For what it's worth I've never had trouble canceling anything I've subscribed to.

What kind of fraud does it sound like? I gave my credit card to the merchant and said they could charge it for auto-renew, but that doesn't seem to put me under any obligation to make sure the card is still valid next year - credit cards expire or get canceled all the time. The merchant is free to cancel the subscription if the auto-renew fails.

Contract law in general does not prescribe that the contract is automatically terminated with no obligations if some payment doesn't arrive. The method of payment is pretty much orthogonal to any obligation to pay and the continuation of the contract.

The contract may stipulate that the merchant is free to cancel the subscription if you don't pay for whatever reason (the card expires, the card does not have money, you chose to pay in cash and didn't have a card, whatever). However, the contract can (and usually does) stipulate that the merchant is not required to cancel the subscription in case of non-payment, and in that case the contract is valid, they owe you service and you owe them the contractually agreed payment.

On the other hand, contract law generally would assume that the subscription is cancelled if you sent them an unambiguous request in writing even if their standard process flow (e.g. requiring a phone call with a sales rep convincing you not to quite) wasn't followed - if you've sent a letter than that and stopped paying, that should be appropriate in most circumstances.

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

#619

Post by knorker »

Shivetya wrote: post #544
knorker wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The implied reverse therefore would be that it's easier for people on the right to see bias in the media. Yeah, that's also what I read. And as evidence to the contrary I pointed out that some people had their world view changed so much that they tried to overthrow the government. Which tells me that they didn't see the agenda they were being pushed. Which contradicts the comment's point. Note that in no way do I d…

Nah, those people just needed an excuse, they were already past the tipping point. They exist on both sides and one side got called out for attacking the capitol while the other is "mostly peaceful protests" because they are only destroying police and private property. As in, both sides are equally bad for similar but different reasons but we only hear about a singular event that some whack jobs on the far right pull…

> but we only hear about a singular event that some whack jobs on the far right pulled off.

Really?

I would invite you to foxnews.com. As an example for the last week the front page has been plasted with Cuomo.

And CHAZ? A complete disaster that was absolutely not a secret.

You say that the line is clear on the right, but I think it's just that it's clear to you. The fake news that the election was stolen is actually mainstream, on the right. Trump had some ordinary people injest bleach, you don't think many more believed the other lies?

Do you think most people on the left supported the 2020 summer riots? Or defund the police? Even polling of black people had a huge majority against that nonsense. Some do. But then some on the right think Biden's about to be arrested when trump returns with the military in two weeks.

My point is that "especially on the left" has no connection in reality. "Also on the left" does.

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

#620

Post by kamaitachi »

The Economist is similar.

You can subscribe online but in order to cancel, you need to chat to a human.

It took several attempts by me to tell them I don’t want to change my subscription plan to a cheaper one - I wanted to cancel.

It’s a really bad process for a magazine that considers itself a reputable news source.

Won’t be signing up again.

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