2. I subscribed to Netflix because they had a reputation of being easy to subscribe / unsubscribe. I'm not going to subscribe to the New York Times because I've heard how hard they are to cancel. I have a subscription to a local newspaper, they even had ads mentioning how easy it is to start / stop their subscription.
Not sure what the OP is talking about with the Apple system. There is a Subscriptions section in your Apple ID.
But I like going through Apple because it’s all in one place and the content provider has no chance to try and dark patterns on me. Even if the Apple subscriptions is a slightly worse experience, if I can get all my subscriptions in one place and have the ability to cancel at will I’m going to chose that.
I can’t imagine what kind of minor benefit I’d get from using multiple cards and different subscriptions that would make it worth more than easy management.
I have a personal bank account, a business bank account for all business expenses, and a bank account shared with my significant other for household expenses.
I want to pay our shared Netflix and Spotify accounts from the family account, apps that I buy for business use on my business account, and things I buy for myself on my personal account.
I can't be the only person who has multiple bank accounts?
If it was easy for me to unsubscribe, I'm not going to worry much about re-subscribing later. If you put me through an hour of faffing about in the hopes I give up then why would I ever come back.
Beyond that, if someone's choosing between one of e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+, I imagine that it could make a difference.
On the other hand if I can just go "click" on website and the site goes "ok, your subscription ends at the end of this month". I'll most likely come back if there is some content I want to get to.
There is also people that might be put off if the process is notorious for being unfriendly or cumbersome
How much this affects subscriber numbers is a different story altogether.