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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

#731

Post by polote »

colinmhayes wrote: post #722
polote wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pandemic made me realize how much newspapers have impact on people opinions. If they keep telling a vaccine in unsafe, a big part of their readers will believe the vaccine is unsafe. If they keep telling a vaccine is safe a big part of their readers will believe the vaccine is safe. And that no matter what the reality is. I'm not american but reading NYT during the elections, I was astonished by how much NYT was…

Trump refusing to ever wear a mask had a huge impact on how seriously people took covid and what they did to protect society. Trump really is at fault.

You totally missed my point. I didnt say anything about Trump being right or wrong. I just said that for NYT anything that is related to Trump is bad. And I'm pretty sure this is not the case

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

#732

Post by ghostpepper »

I hate to say it but this is really tame compared to some companies.

Wall Street Journal is much worse, where you literally can’t cancel via chat, only phone.

This rep asked why the person the cancelling and suggested an alternative to alleviate their pain points, and when the customer declined they cancelled it anyway. The only thing they could have done better is reading the previous transcript so the customer wasn’t forced to repeat themselves.

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

#733

Post by Maximus9000 »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #730

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what's legally required to cancel a typical subscription or membership? For example, are companies like the NYT permitted to force you to go through a red-tape gauntlet of their design? Or, e.g., does the law ensure that once you tell one of their agents that you're canceling, they're legally barred from attempting to charge you for the service? It seems to me that the burden of red…

Somewhat related, the GDPR regulations do explicitly spell out that unsubscribing from an email list should be clear and simple.

Ideally, the same kind of regulation could be put in place for stopping a service on the internet (like NYT).

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

#734

Post by speby »

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…

As with many things in life, if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it.

So to answer your question, yes, it probably does reduce churn, if only slightly. Is there an occasional person who goes to try and cancel, runs into this byzantine process and then says, ah fuck it, I'll just stay subscribed so they don't have to deal with this bullshit? Yes, but probably only infrequently.

Instead, it infuriates all the rest who DO go thru the byzantine process and add more frustrating to whatever reason they were already intent on canceling from in the first place, as was demonstrated in this OP's chat transcript.

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

#735

Post by Maximus9000 »

ghostpepper wrote: post #732

I hate to say it but this is really tame compared to some companies. Wall Street Journal is much worse, where you literally can’t cancel via chat, only phone. This rep asked why the person the cancelling and suggested an alternative to alleviate their pain points, and when the customer declined they cancelled it anyway. The only thing they could have done better is reading the previous transcript so the customer wasn…

Same with "The Globe & Mail" here in Canada. You can only cancel via phone.

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

#736

Post by xhkkffbf »

eppsilon wrote: post #704
xkeysc0re wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this thought the other day - what was the last big story the NYT broke that wasn't Trump related in some way? Like, actual investigative work whether in local governments or in other countries. I can't think of a single significant story that the NYT itself broke and led the charge on

FWIW, they won a Pulitzer for this investigative story about NYC taxi drivers: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/nyc-taxis-medall...

Good try, but just grep for Trump and you'll find the connection.

"Mr. Freidman, who was partners with Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, disclosed the plan in a 2012 speech at Yeshiva University. "

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

#737

Post by macNchz »

eythian wrote: post #500
macNchz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same story with a full Prime subscription, not just the free trial, they use several dark patterns to confuse you about what will happen when you actually hit the cancel button. When I found myself slowly buying fewer things on Amazon a few years ago and decided to cancel Prime after many years as a subscriber, I was so grossed out by the cancellation process that I’ve actively avoided ordering from them ever since.

Curious, I cancelled mine yesterday because they messed up my billing and wouldn't/couldn't unsuspend it¹, so the CS person suggested to cancel and resubscribe. I did have to confirm about three times that this is what I wanted to do, but in no case was it hidden or not obvious. ¹ it was a bit of a mess, they first tried to bill an empty credit card, but only notified me after several attempts when prime was actually…

I cancelled it a couple of years ago so perhaps things have changed, but afaik I'm not alone in feeling it was intentionally designed to confuse...lots of scrolling, multiple buttons with slightly different wordings, confusing warnings about when exactly the benefits end.

Just the fact that I–a software engineer and longtime Amazon customer–felt compelled to open a new tab and Google questions about the cancellation process, seemed ridiculous to me. Plenty of less tech savvy folks are sure to have been confused, tricked or given up in the process.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55637140

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpEQ4OWNO4Y&feature=emb_titl...

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

#738

Post by dahart »

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…

> I also think they are breaking GDPR by keeping the account for 10 months after cancellation.

Do you live in the US? GDPR does not apply to US companies serving US citizens. If you live in the EU, you might need to request account deletion, I think GDPR doesn't require that data is deleted, it gives Europeans the right to have their data deleted upon request. (I've read the entire code before but I don't remember the details on this point.)

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100629

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

#739

Post by knorker »

CivBase wrote: post #642
knorker wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right don't have agenda-pushing affect their world view? Huh? There was recently an attempted insurrection based on fake news, you know. I must say though that Fox News has gotten downright rational (on all things) since then. Politically biased, sure, but they're actually news lately.

> I must say though that Fox News has gotten downright rational (on all things) since then. Politically biased, sure, but they're actually news lately. I've noticed that national news outlets in the US tend to be better when their preferred party is in power and worse when the opposition is in power. I suspect it's because in the latter case the news outlets slant all of their coverage towards negativity and discredi…

Maybe trump is an outlier, but (at least up until the election) I found Fox News to be completely bananas the last four years. So far they've been better under biden than trump.

But yes, they were bananas under obama too.

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

#740

Post by dahdum »

iammiles wrote: post #173
walrus01 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever need to cancel comcast, time warner or similar entirely and quickly, just tell them you're going to prison. No joke, it works.

I told AT&T I was moving out of the country. The very valiant retention specialist still offered a discount on text messages for a year.

That’s my go to for every cancellation, it’s better for the reps because they can log the reason as something unsalvageable.
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