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TheAdamist

You can't cancel a meetup subscription online, you have to submit a ticket.

You can start a subscription online however.

Another sign of a failed company, trying to hold onto those who want to leave.

Seems like its chargeback time.

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Not a great solution, but VPN into California and it should show a cancellation option.

Seriously? What possible reason could there be for limiting this to Californians?

Dark patterns. Make it hard to cancel unless legally compelled otherwise.

It's a Californian law mandating that subscriptions that can be started online, must be cancellable online. https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscript...

AMC’s movie ticket subscription service requires waiting for and chatting with an ostensibly human support agent in order to cancel a subscription. If that’s a real loophole in the CA law then they should obviously patch it.

Run it deliberately until someone complains, and then make a pro forma change. Run that cycle until someone actually passes a law or takes you to court in some fashion.

The question wasn't "Why does CA get this?"

The question was "Why doesn't everyone get this, if CA has it?"

Because they want it to be hard.

CCPA

EDIT: I guess it's not CCPA, but a separate law https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

I recommend using virtual credit cards or https://privacy.com/

If only it wasn't US only

This is a big pet peeve of mine. Just seems desperate when it's twist and turns to cancel and get 1 extra month. E.g gyms

You can't cancel a meetup subscription online, you have to submit a ticket. You can start a subscription online however. Another sign of a failed company, trying to hold onto those who want to leave.

The New York Times is the same. Rather than bothering I simply cancelled it on the PayPal side.

Does this get you off the hook in the US? I'm pretty sure I'd be soon talking with a collections agency if I did only that with my subscriptions.

They send you a series of increasingly emotionally-manipulative emails then give up. It’s a monthly subscription after all, you stop paying then they disable you access to paid content. They perfectly well know they’re doing something shady by making it easy to sign up but hard to cancel. As others have pointed out that’s illegal in some jurisdictions. They won’t want to press it.

And it doesn't affect your credit?

Why would it? It’s not a loan.

The Wall Street Journal makes you call a phone number to cancel a subscription. It’s the reason I’ve never subscribed.

Set the address to CA and the option to cancel pops up.

I remember one of those cheap wine subscription companies required a phone call.

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