WSJ makes it easy to subscribe (online), but hard to unsubscribe (2018)

reddit.com

24 points·thazework··5 comments

Pretty much every newspaper does this. Bloomberg Businessweek and the Globe and Mail do this as well. California has laws allowing you to cancel online. The rest of the US and Canada are not so fortunate.

I bought the URL BadSubscriptions.com because I came across the story of subscriptions/services that are hard to unsubscribe from over and over again. I haven't built anything that works yet, but what features/suggestions would you all have for a service that unsubscribes for you. How valuable is that to you?

I'm mocking up workflows with various API's right now but nothing is concrete so I'd love and welcome any and all suggestions.

A year ago I checked the websites for all of my subscriptions. I unsubscribed from any site that made it difficult. Was on principal.

It was unfortunate this included the ACLU.

I feel the same way (about the principle). There is no justification for not having an easy online cancellation option.

That kind of tactic used to solely be the domain of companies with no faith on their product. They expected low retention so it made sense to add an extra step where they could hard sell, knowing that a reliable percentage of the population has a hard time saying no to a human.

hmm, sounds like "dark Patterns" to me, as described here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M and here https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern

Reply on news.ycombinator.com