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Comment by damnyou | Hacker News Reader

In the world I inhabit, Apple is the one that intentionally makes it really hard to cancel subscriptions. You literally cannot cancel a subscription to an iOS app from an Android phone or Linux PC.

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You can't subscribe without an IOS Device , Mac or Windows PC.

If your in some strange edge case where your subscribing to services and then discarding your IOS devices before canceling , that's on you. In a worst case scenario you could borrow a friend's Windows PC. As much as I love Linux I can't imagine most Linux users don't have at least one windows PC or Mac.

If we really want to get technical, spin up an AWS instance, RDP into it, install iCloud for windows and then cancel your subscription.

There are a few services you can sign up for without any of those... but Apple has a support page telling you how to unsubscribe from those from the devices you signed up from: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211011

Said support page also says you can contact Apple Support about it, which I imagine would also work for the "canceling an arbitrary in-app subscription" issue.

No, what the fuck? It's not "on me". It's on Apple to make it easy to cancel even if I no longer have an Apple product or Windows PC on hand.

Borrow a friend's PC? Spin up an AWS Windows instance? Seriously, WTF?! I can cancel my Android subscriptions from anywhere with a web browser.

It's not an intentional trick to force you to keep paying.

The vast vast majority of people have access to a Windows PC or Apple product. How you ended up in this edge case I'll never know.

To take this to it's logical conclusion, what if you don't run JavaScript on your browsers. Would they also need to give you a cancelation page which doesn't require JavaScript.

How about this? An email reminder N days in advance of the charge date with a cancel link.

Companies get regulated for a reason, and facilitating the cancelation of subscriptions sounds reasonable to me.

Apple does send those emails, but the link to unsubscribe simply doesn't work on Linux or Android. It's the most absurd thing.

Of course you should be able to cancel without requiring JavaScript.

Alright, after returning my iOS device I became Amish.

I fully expect Apple to cancel my subscription via Mail and refund me back dated to when the letter was post dated !

My point is Apple isn't doing this on purpose to you, you're just in a very strange use case

Yes, Apple should let you cancel by mail. And the web.

You keep making these claims that I'm sure sound more outlandish to you, and I think all of them are quite reasonable.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

How many users as a percentage do you think are signing up for IOS services , discarding their IOS devices and then don't have access to a Mac or Windows PC ?

Very few people use Linux as their desktop is. To be honest they should allow you to reply to the email and allow a cancelation, but you following into an edge case isn't deliberate.

This also applies if you sign up for, say, HBO from an iOS device. You can keep using the same subscription on Android but can't cancel.

If you subscribe to HBO on Google Play, you can keep using it and cancel it on iOS.

The asymmetry is bad and Apple should be held responsible for it.

Good point. I stand corrected. I still don't think Apple is doing this intentionally, but rather as a side effect of it's ecosystem. Thanks for your insight

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