* consistently user hostile
Try to cancel your newspaper subscription - you have to call in and jump through hoops.
Try to cancel your cable or internet, you didn't realize the rate you got was a "promo" rate that required a two year contract?
I guarantee that if apple used the approaches others use, subscription revenue would be a LOT higher.
They send you an email saying, here's what will be renewing soon, click here to cancel. I end up canceling about 80% of what would auto renew.
And I hate the developers who are not upfront with the subscription price. If there is a free trial, what does it cost after. Even NY Times did this ($1/month in big print - fine print said something like $54/month after 1 month or maybe it was just in a link burried etc).
A lot of shady companies thinks customers will not chase after 5 dollars a month and even if they are right %50 of time, they make a pretty penny.
Really, I feel it should be available through icloud.com, but I couldn't find it anywhere. That'd avoid any of these issues where you need access to a non-phone device.
...vaguely possible that you could get to it through the Apple Music app on Android. I can't easily check that from where I am now, though.
It took being on the phone for over 8 hours before someone figured it out (I didn't know that was the issue) and they ended up writing off $12 to let me make the switch.
Apple prides into protecting customers, but when such issue appears you can’t do anything in the usual case deflection UI.
I can do that online with a few clicks. (I do not subscribe to the NYT or WSJ). This is the same with most newspapers that are not the NYT or WSJ.
Try to cancel your cable or internet, you didn't realize the rate you got was a "promo" rate that required a two year contract?
I can do that with a simple call. My rate was not a promo that required a two year contract. I know this because they said so in big letters on the contract, which they're legally required to do in most states...
I guarantee that if apple used the approaches others use, subscription revenue would be a LOT higher.
TIL that if Apple didn't force trial periods to become auto-billed, revenue would somehow be higher. Instead of the more obvious result, which is that revenue is higher because people are being auto-billed after they forget to cancel. That is the business model of quite a few scams, and it's disappointing but not surprising that the Cooks-era Apple has embraced this business model.
If the app does not deliver what it claims with the subscription, I can trust Apple to dispute it. For example, there are a couple of apps that offer subscription and amazing deals out of in-app purchases, but I simply refuse to subscribe that kind of applications, because there are a lot of shady companies want to take your money.
Sure, and that's great. But why can't subscriptions be opt-in after a free trial, instead of opt-out? They can still send an email with a "Subscribe" button instead of a "Cancel" button. I would argue that's much more user-friendly.
Also, the opt-in vs opt-out could be configurable.
Opt-out is only user hostile when it is used as a scam. Whether it is hostile depends on the implementation.
Apple’s implementation is a friendly one. Firstly there is an email confirmation with a link to cancel, and secondly there is a single screen with all of the subscriptions aggregated and cancellable.
If you are someone who generally purchases subscriptions to things you actually want, then opt-out is clearly more friendly.
If you are someone who likes to try a bunch of stuff but isn’t likely to want to keep much of it, then you would likely prefer opt-in.
Whether a given implementation of opt-out is a scam or not is orthogonal to whether it matches your personal style.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your comment would be just fine if shortened in the way the guidelines recommend; it's a fine comment otherwise.
By ‘reading along’ I was referring to earlier places in this thread where the issue is already addressed, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23705338
If you have counted this as a violation of the site guidelines, please decrement the counter.
What shortening is recommended in this case?
I would recommend just leaving out the first sentence. It's not clear that the comment loses anything by it. Alternatively, you could say "This issue is already addressed upthread, for example <link>". That would be the equivalent of "the article mentions that". Yes, that's not shorter, but the intention here is to make one's points without personal swipes. And linking to the other explanation also adds information.
By the way, once I read your explanation of what you meant, it seemed like a much lesser violation than it did when I read it without that. The trouble, though, is that other readers encounter such a comment without knowing what you meant either.
It’s also simply not reasonable to say I made a distinction without a difference.
We know that a lot of people engage with the comments on HN without fully reading the source material, and this is now expected behavior. This makes the guideline as written a good way to avoid a common and unproductive antipattern.
However there is a clear difference between not fully reading the source material and not reading the comments you are replying to.
If you want the rule to cover both cases, then you should update it to do so.
A rule like ‘don’t make inferences about other commenters knowledge or understanding of the post or the thread - but rather address this through commenting on the meaning of their statements’ would cover this and a host of other issues, but the one you have used simply does not.
Your suggestion - “This is addressed unthread” can be a dismissal (especially if inaccurate) that is significantly more offensive than “sounds like you aren’t reading along”.
“How can it be objectively user hostile, if someone such as csunbird loves it?”
Would fit this rubric.
In any case, something seems off about this particular moderator intervention.
I’m sure you’re familiar with gym membership cancellation? That’s not limited to gyms. This may not be the absolute best, but it’s way, way better than the worst.