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Comment by 2T1Qka0rEiPr | Hacker News Reader

> About 30 sites made it easy to sign up for services but particularly hard to cancel, requiring phone calls or other procedures. The Times requires people to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions, but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites.

Nice that the editor was at least allowed to point out that their own employer employs many of these "dark patterns".

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Hi! I know this thread is a day old at this point, but I'm the reporter on this story and just wanted to say thanks for noticing that I put that in. I write a lot about privacy, online advertising and so forth, and I think it's important to readers that reporters at the NYT cover the same issues within our own business.

(Also, I acknowledge that perhaps you were being facetious and I just can't tell. But I still want to take this opportunity to point out the general principle.)

Also, I'd actually been considering a Times subscription for a while. That's going to be a hell no from me now.

I've heard that if you use privacy.com with a California mailing address they let you cancel online due to California law.

Not true, the law applies to making it easy to opt-out of automatic renewal

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

They offer a discount, you just say no. It's a nuisance, but I wouldn't reconsider a subscription to what is maybe the best newspaper in the world because of it.

The hack I use for subscriptions is to pay with a money order, mailed to their location. This makes it impossible for them to autorenew. I started doing this after discovering to my dismay that one subscription used my checking account routing number to auto debit a subscription renewal the following year, at a significantly increased rate, direct from my checking account! I don't see how this isn't larceny or bank robbery.

I also track who is selling my name to marketers by using initials. So my subscriber name instead of Bob Jones is Ned Y. Jones for the NYT sub, Will S. Jones for the WSJ sub, and Roger D. Jones for the Readers Digest. Then when I get mailed an ad for sex toys advertised to Ned Jones, I know the NYT sold my name to them.

> after discovering to my dismay that one subscription used my checking account routing number to auto debit a subscription renewal the following year, at a significantly increased rate, direct from my checking account

You might ask your state's banking(?) regulatory authority or attorney general's office about that.

But in the current economy, people routinely need more than 26^2 subscription services to function!

I'm using virtual credit cards with a preset limit, that my bank generates on demand.

Like the idea of using fake name!

It's also the principle of the thing. I USED to have a subscription, but they would never give Bernie any print time which pissed me off and I gave up on it.

Citi credit cards (and maybe others) have a good feature where you can set a "virtual card number" with a specific credit limit and/or expiration date. Great way to ensure that your card can be charged once, then payment is denied when a company tries to auto-renew you.

In the US, businesses try to get you to sign contracts even when it makes zero sense. For example, why do I need to sign a contract for a gym? I pay X dollars for a month, and use it for that month. If I want to use it next month, then I pay X dollars again. Makes sense (this is how it is, at least in the countries I have been), right? Nope. I made the mistake of signing up for NYSC, imagine my surprise when I wanted to cancel (because I was moving away) and I got calls non stop for $250 "cancellation fee"? My fault for not reading the fine print, lesson learned.

Strange that an NYT got facts about NYT wrong:

* You don't have to "talk" with a CSR online, it's a chat window

* You can cancel with an email to unsubscribe@nytimes.com

* By disabling auto-renewal the subscription will automatically be canceled at the end of the subscription period

>You don't have to "talk" with a CSR online, it's a chat window

What do you consider talking online, if not chat?

I was vague. Talking, as in speaking into a phone, feels more laborious than talking as in typing in a chatbox to me. I more often refer to the latter as "chatting."

From 2014: https://canceltimes.tumblr.com

The pattern has gotten more familiar since then. It also seems like they've improved things.

>You don't have to "talk" with a CSR online, it's a chat window

You're just splitting hairs - you still have to have a conversation with someone, and the rep in the chat box makes it just as difficult as if you'd called in. When I canceled, the rep kept asking me if I was sure, reminded me multiple times what I would be missing out on if I went through with it, etc.. It took more than 5 minutes to get them to pull the trigger on canceling my account.

>You can cancel with an email to unsubscribe@nytimes.com

But I, and many other users, just want to click on "My Account" and then click a button that says "Cancel Account".

>By disabling auto-renewal the subscription will automatically be canceled at the end of the subscription period

NYT doesn't tell you that that's a method you can use to cancel your account, and not everyone is likely to think of it.

That's a very poor user experience, I agree with much of what you said; I just wanted to add some facts I felt were missing.

I think at least some of these options were added because CA law made their prior (phone-only) cancellation process illegal.

Are you sure it's not a reference to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times

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