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Comment by rhaps0dy | Hacker News Reader

What prevents you from subscribing and then unsubscribing just afterwards?

(I don't know, maybe the webpage does, but there's no mention of minimum times anywhere and recurringcheckout has let me unsubscribe without problems in the past)

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You have to call the New York Times to cancel your digital subscription. Why would I trust that some online coffee merchant I've never heard of isn't up to the same tricks?

https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subsc...

Just use a single vendor credit card. I do this all the time with Final (getfinal.com).

Cancelling your card != Cancelling the subscription.

You could get collections sent after you for doing this, bad for credit.

>Why would I trust that some online coffee merchant I've never heard of isn't up to the same tricks?

Because they use "recurringcheckout.com" as a payment processor, which lets you do this.

Nothing prevents you from doing this and you are totally welcome to do it! You can email our support email as well and we'll cancel it for you. We'd obviously prefer that you stay on with a subscription, but are just happy to have more people give us a try.

This is enough of a hassle that I will never make the purchase, despite being interested.

Email me and I'll hook you up with a one time order!

You don't get it, do you? He doesn't want to email anyone just to order coffee.

I would also not sign up for a subscription service that does not let me cancel without contacting customer service. It's a dark pattern that too many subscription services adopt. The only reason for this is to make it more difficult to cancel. I was about to visit your site and try it out (depending on price), then I read that comment. If your willing to make it hard for me to cancel to try and squeeze in an extra buck then what else are you willing to do. I feel like it's shady and makes me not trust your company.

We do have a cancel button as well! Sorry if I was unclear. The UX on our site isn't the greatest - we use a platform to handle subscriptions. However, you definitely DO NOT need to contact support to cancel. Some people just find it easier to hit reply and say 'cancel'. FYI, we also proactively notify customers 3-4 days before a subscription renews. We want to make it as obvious as possible and give you the option to make adjustments. Transparency is critical for it to work.

Nothing, but it's annoying, because it takes 2 transactions instead of 1.

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