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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Wonder if this can be used to unsubscribe from The NY Times?

I heard you can change your address to California, which then gives the option to cancel online (due to state law). It is absolutely ridiculous that NYT will happily take your card info online, but require you to be on hold to speak with their "customer care" to cancel. Maybe it is time to use virtual CC's a la privacy.com.

Even better, when I had to cancel my NYT subscription, it said there weren't enough cancellation reps to connect me; "try again later".

I went in via the normal support chat, said I wanted to cancel, and was immediately redirected to one. It was an outright lie.

Yep - and these are the SAME places posting LONG articles about how terrible Apple's store policies are. Uh, folks spend a lot on the apple store for a reason.

The problem is how Apple both profits from the app store and sets rules on the app store. It’s incentivized to create rules that make it money without helping users. Apple needs to either stop making money from the app store or to create a separate body that can set rules without being incentivized by profit.

Laws are good, but the lawmakers shouldn’t profit from them.

Walmart profits from their store and sets the rules from their store. The incentive is to make the store a place people want to spend money. This is the same as almost any other store isn't it?

You do that by making it safe and comfortable for users (or in androids case maybe by doing deals with phone companies to pre-load their apps and make money off users there ).

Apple is only partly successful, they have 15% market share in phones or so. But one area they've been good at is trust - users on an iphone probably spend a lot more (it's also harder to pirate, so what developers give up in profits they make back in lack of pirating).

Except, as a seller, I have multiple avenues to deliver my product to customers other than Walmart. On top of that, Walmart charges a fee per sale [1], and doesn't get to double dip into additional services rendered on top of that product. As soon as the sale is done through Walmart, they're cut out of the picture. Could you imagine Walmart demanding a 30% cut of profits if I sell a video game with in-game purchases--just because they performed the task of stocking it on the shelf?

[1] https://deliverr.com/blog/costs-of-selling-on-walmart-vs-ama...

Your boy at darkpatterns.org would love that gem. I don't know if you can give it a more succinct name other than, you know, lying.

Is apple somehow weird with canceling subscriptions on the iPhone?

I can just go into the Google Play store and terminate the subscription for the NYTimes on Android in one click.

Apple makes it easy. I was subscribed directly with the NYT on their site, not the iOS app.

Just dispute the next charge with your card company.

Well, you tried later. Technically.

In California the New York Times still requires you to chat with a customer support person on their website. You still have to wait in queue, then wait for the person (or maybe it's a bot at this point) paste in several attempts at retaining your subscription.

The law needs to be that you can cancel all recurring payments through a standard interface. It's ludicrous that my online banking account doesn't just show me all subscriptions and allow me to cancel all future payments of any of them.

I should be able to tell my credit card company that I'm ending a subscription, and have them be in charge of notifying the provider that the subscription has been terminated

Yes for recurring subscriptions the control should be firmly under the consumers control. Perhaps there should be a special recurring transaction type on credit cards akin to those in PayPal.

Startup idea? I would totally pay for / use a service that managed and paid all of my subscriptions to various things that also made it so that I could cancel any of them at any time with a single click (okay maybe 2 clicks) on their website and hear nothing more about that account.

Privacy.com

I think my bank does this, when I called for another reason this week there was an option on the phone menu to stop a recurring payment.

I've done this using my credit card company (not the bank) and they were very helpful. I explained why I wanted them to stop the recurring payment and they asked if I wanted to dispute any of the older charges, took less than 5 minutes. I call the 'fraud/disputes' phone number on the back of my card for this and I think that is not the bank, I think it's Visa / Mastercard themselves.

I bet processes like this are why subscriptions like gyms are starting to require your _bank account info_ rather than just a card.

Or just reject the payment the next time they try, that would be fine by me.

you can do that already. just issue a chargeback and poof.

Do that to a gym and they'll sue you for not paying out your contract.

A gym is not a recurring payment, it's a facility access contract defined for a period of time. You agreed upon price for the year, broken down into monthly payments. You are obligated to pay that full amount b/c you agreed to it when you signed the contract at the beginning of the membership.

You don't have such contracts with recurring payment products.

No, quite a few gyms advertise “no contract” month-to-month payment schemes that still require a specific cancellation process.

For example, Planet Fitness has “no commitment” memberships, but you still have to explicitly cancel.

> You may cancel according to our policy: Per the agreement, in order to cancel a membership, one must either go to your home club in person to fill out a cancellation form, or send a letter (preferably via certified mail) to the club, requesting cancellation. Please note: Memberships cannot be cancelled via fax, phone, or email.

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/51m0e0/com...

And your bank will probably get upset at you too.

Any banks that offer this service? I would switch my primary banking service for this.

You can kind of get close to this using merchant-specific card numbers from privacy.com (not affiliated). If you want to cancel a subscription, you just deactivate the number associated with that subscription.

All of them. if you don't like a subscription and don't care about burning a bridge, issue a chargeback.

Can you dispute? Just say that NYT cannot be unsubscribed from because of unresponsiveness and blacklist it from ever charging the card number.

I doubt the bank is going to be happy with you disputing charges if you haven’t followed whatever process the company makes you follow in order to cancel.

I love privacy.com for this, and I’ll never sign up for a trial or something recurring without using it again.

I signed up for a trial for another service which shall remain unnamed, and of course I couldn’t find anywhere on the site to cancel my trial once I wanted to. No problem, I just disabled the card. They’ve probably tried to bill me a dozen times since.

There are some less scrupulous sites that ban privacy.com cards. Dallas Morning News is a recent one I ran into.

I hadn't heard of privacy.com cards, but that thought had crossed my mind. What is to stop organisations simply banning privacy.com cards?

We’ll technically I don’t think they’re able to, but they can ban prepaid cards which I think is how they’re classified.

was it… stamps.com? adobe? wsj? a gym?

Privacy.com is free, but I’d pay quite a bit of money for it, it has saved me hundreds of dollars.

That's my biggest use case for Privacy.com. I care less about the privacy aspect and more about the convenience. I've already had once instance where a single-use card I created for 1 specific vendor started getting fraudulent hits (declines) and all I had to do was delete that card.

> all I had to do was delete that card

Careful. If you didn’t properly terminate the contract, you still owe that money. I have a friend whose credit got hit because a service sold his debt to a collector.

Thanks, good to note. In this case, they were declined transactions (nothing that went through) so it was only a tip-off to something fishy.

Be careful. You are still on the hook. And in many cases companies will sell you debt to collection agencies.

Long-time Privacy.com user.

You'll typically be OK with streaming services, newspapers, and mobile / web apps.

Definitely be careful with gyms, insurance companies, and any service that sends out invoices (instead of calling it a monthly subscription.)

I dunno. I cancelled the other day now that I no longer care about the pandemic data and it was basically just three minutes of politely stonewalling in a chat box saying “No Thanks, please cancel my subscription.” a couple of times.

I live in California and would have tried cancelling online but actually couldn’t find the option. I can’t say it was difficult to cancel though once I picked a process and initiated it. Maybe that was the online option now that I think about it? I was expecting a button or link.

I did the same a few years ago and it was relatively painless, however there are many people that do not like confrontation and "stonewalling" is not an easy task. NY Times understands this and preys on a specific segment of the population.

I don’t know. It’s 6 words and you don’t even have to be rude about it or get annoyed at the offers they throw at you. Then you get the confirmation email and you’re set.

I hate talking in the phone to people I don't know so intensely that I have wasted hundreds of dollars on various things because I procrastinated calling to cancel.

This effect is real, and companies know it, and design their cancellation processes to extract extra money from people.

Mate, I mentioned up above that the process by which I cancelled was a chat box that intermittently ate maybe three minutes. Not mentioned was I did it while cooking breakfast.

The best experience would have been no human intervention necessary, but for a process where someone was involved, it was incredibly straightforward. They gave me an offer, I refused it, and nobody had to be a dick about it and no phone calls were made.

Then that part has changed. I had to talk on the phone when I canceled about 8 years ago

Someone informed me in a different part of the thread that this apparently is the California cancellation experience from the New York Times, which I wasn’t sure of. Like I said above, I was expecting a button or link because that is more akin to how I actually signed up, but there you go.

Unfortunately that leaves the phone option as the remaining option for everyone else.

They don't have the right to my attention. If they were to cancel my service due to lack of payment (for example), do you think they would engage me in a dialogue to discuss it or just send me a notice in the mail?

> […] politely stonewalling in a chat box saying “No Thanks, please cancel my subscription.” a couple of times.

> I live in California and would have tried cancelling online but actually couldn’t find the option

The chatbox is the online option.

That answers that. Thanks!

If you have a credit card with capital one, they provide a browser extension for generating and managing virtual numbers which works like a charm. I’ve been happily using it for all online purchases for the past couple of years. No need to worry about merchants charging for cancelled subscriptions, and if a service has implemented any dark patterns in their unsubscribe process, I just kill the virtual number and let it resolve itself, rather than needing to worry about it.

The Globe and Mail operates similarly. I spent some time while cancelling a few years ago informing them that making me call them to cancel is a crime in California. The person on the line cancelling my account was genuinely surprised.

Canada was the first to require simple unsubscribe for email lists... I'm surprised it still does not have a law to require online unsubscribe for media subscriptions.

> I'm surprised it still does not have a law to require online unsubscribe for media subscriptions.

Newspaper editorial endorsements are still a big thing in Canada.

> The Globe and Mail operates similarly.

But this is good to know. I was considering swapping another newspaper subscription for a Globe and Mail subscription, but after looking into it, the eventual unsubscribe hassle isn't worth it.

I used a Privacy card and NYT did a “force post” [0] after they got a decline. I contacted Privacy and this is apparently a per se violation of the Visa rules, so they opened a dispute and I won. But NYT actually tried to charge me despite me trying to cancel, and I live in CA, and the card was blocked in Privacy.

[0]: https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012288214-F...

As a side note, I got a subscription to the online edition of the NY Times included with my local newspaper. When I cancelled my local newspaper subscription, the NY Times access was never removed, meaning I have free access to the Times. I've told them about this issue several times, and they acknowledged it, and yet, I still have free access to everything. My account says I'm a "subscriber." So, apparently , it is sometimes just as hard to stop getting something for free.

That’s every newspaper online. And gym memberships. And many others. Easy to get, pain in the ass to end.

I had no difficulty unsubscribing from The Washington Post.

If you use PayPal to pay for NYT, you can cancel via PayPal and never speak to anyone.

I signed up to NYT using a virtual CC, knowing how much of a pain it was to unsubscribe (I'm not in California). When I was through with it, I just paused the card. And I was amazed at how many times they tried charging it before giving up and actually cancelling the account. 13 times, now that I'm looking at it. The Gray Lady isn't as well-mannered as one might think.

Do any banks do a good job offering this feature for debit?

Back in one of the days, the PayPal TOOLBAR used to offer this feature, it was really convenient since you were essentially direct drawing from your bank account with it.

This raises one notable benefit of going through Apple for all payments -- as a customer, it buffers me from dark billing patterns of any random company. Companies like 37signals don't like it and claim it hampered their relationship with customers, and that might be true in some cases, but overall it seems like a benefit for customers to have a consistency process of buying, refunding, cancelling everything they use digitally.

I'm not sure I see that as a benefit so much a government doing a poor job on regulations for subscription services and online payments

Yes, to both. Gov could do better, and in the meantime until if/when that happens, may be worth it to use a trusted source (Apple) to manage that for you.

Likelihood of Gov doing better seems tied to how much they can get away from Wall St. funding/defunding their re-election campaigns.

Do you think government could actually keep up with technology to regulate it? And if they did regulate it would it actually help people or the companies that are buying them?

But if the price of that benefit is 30% off the top for Apple for all payments, it's a high price to pay. Perhaps better consumer protection laws would be a better way to fight the dark patterns.

As a consumer, I have effectively no control over laws. I do have control over which payment system I use. So if you as an app developer don't want to give a 30% cut to Apple, maybe push for better consumer protection laws so IAP doesn't have that incredible benefit for me.

You can believe that dark billing patterns are bad and this change is good, while at the same time also believing Apple should charge developers less -- these are not mutually exclusive.

The judge in the Epic case did rule Apple was entitled to payment even if it didn't go through their payment system. No ruling was made about if the 30 % was too high or not.

PayPal does the same thing without taking a 30% cut.

The 30% cut is for the cost of the channel to market.

Not the cost of facilitating the transaction.

it buffers you from dark billing patterns of all companies except apple

I’d be interested to hear what dark billing patterns you are seeing rn with Apple?

When you start an app trial, and cancel right away, your trial stays active for it‘s duration. When you do the same with an Apple service like Music or Arcade, the service stops right away. This keeps you from pre cancelling a subscription while you trial in peace. I can’t imagine any technical reason for this and I‘m sure other developers would like to do the same thing.

That is bad. They should give you the trial for the remainder of the period. I use this pattern all the time. Cancelling earlier removes the burden of having to remember to cancel later. Thanks for sharing I had no idea they did this.

Here’s one: they advertise “family” accounts: you buy an app and your purchase also covers your spouse.

But your spouse has to know you (or which family member) bought it and click on their name in “family sharing” to get it for free. Else spouse will pay for it again.

That’s simply not true. My spouse and I buy apps all the time from the App Store and when you try to pay for it, it pops up a message that a family member already has and proceeds to the download.

> Else spouse will pay for it again

It doesn't quite work like that. When someone in your family goes to hit the purchase button, it pops up a window saying that someone else has already purchased it. I'm not sure why you have to hit the button first, maybe for some measure of privacy from your family members?

That's the "you have the choice to not use Apple" argument. Until apple becomes the only choice in the market I agree with the argument.

Subscribing through the NY Times iOS app already solves that problem I think, there’s no need to delete your account, just go to the Apple subscriptions management page and end the subscription.

Yep, can confirm, did that myself earlier this year. Canceling the subscription for NYT that I had originally subscribed to through iOS was painless and took all 10 seconds that it took me to open the "my subscriptions" panel in the App Store and clicking "cancel" on the NYT one.

I was going to say the same thing! They are the WORST. I had to cancel my subscription and the process was like a legal battle with the customer representative. He fought me so hard and it took so long. I lost all respect for the times after that.

I had the same experience with The Economist. And they've been harassing me for months trying to get me to subscribe again.

That is interesting. I cancelled mine by writing an email and threatning a charge back.

SiriusXM is like this as well, you subscribe/upgrade online but you have to argue with a support person for 30-40mins to cancel, at least you can do it on a chat on their website.

Honestly if you can subscribe with a button you should be able to unsubscribe with a button.

It's outrageous that you can't cancel online as easily as you signed up, and we do need legislation to correct that. But when you have to talk to them on the phone, just say, "I sold the car." End of conversation. What are you telling them that gives them the hook needed for a 30-40 minute conversation?

If all else fails, "I was just diagnosed with a terminal illness" or "I am required to report to the state penitentiary on Monday" will work.

They say “well we have the online streaming you can use” or “we can txfer it to your new car” they’re just stubborn and incitvized to try to keep you. Whats worked the best for me is “i haven’t used it in 6months and dont want it”. theres nothing they can say to that.

If you buy your subscription as an in-app purchase, you can cancel it easily from your phone. Say what you will about the app store and in-app purchases, but when it comes to cancelling subscriptions they've eliminated the dark patterns.

And they'll notify you of the subscription's upcoming renewal (about a month in advance). Which is very nice when you have a subscription that you forgot about or for an app/service you realize (with the reminder) you no longer need or use.

People need to learn to just use registered mail. Yes, it's ridiculous that it's necessary, but the postage and hassle is probably less than dealing with those intentional hurdles.

Alternatively, if the US legal system allows it and you can find a number: Fax. This has the advantage that it can be automated on your end so it's not much more hassle than a quick e-mail, and the delivery receipt (yes, trivially spoofable in theory, but I would assume it's widely accepted in practice) also shows what the content of the message was.

I am not in California, and was able to unsubscribe recently using a simple UI and I did not have to chat with anyone.

Same here. Perhaps they've updated the unsubscribe process?

I was expecting a painful process based on what I'd read on HN and Reddit but it was just a couple of clicks.

I had the same experience. Very simple with only one retention step of offering a discount. Once declined I could cancel.

Where was the UI? Help us!

https://www.nytimes.com/data-subject-request

Nevermind NYT, what about your gym subscription!

That's been so bad that there are now gyms which have 'easy cancel' as a selling point. Pure Gym (UK) allows you to cancel by just stopping the payment (they call this "No contract" which is legally illiterate, but whatever). Ironically my bank was suspicious about me when I did it.

That's not 'easy cancel', they've kept difficult cancelation but outsourced the responsibility (at no cost to themselves) to your bank.

They also let you cancel on their app or talking to the counter. The only "catch" is you have to do it at least 4 days ahead of the next payment or it will still go through one more time. I cancelled in person, they asked if I'd consider freezing the membership instead, I said no, they printed me a receipt for the cancellation on the spot and that was it.

Not a big fan of the gym itself, but I can't fault their cancellation process.

Nah, it was. Much less stressful than some salesman trying to string it out until I give in. Bank guy asked 1 question then actioned it. With another bank it would probably be 2 clicks.

In my experience it has been easy, but they charge a cancellation fee.

Maybe. You can't generally unsubscribe without the demons offering you temptations and otherwise stealing your time. Except that one case back in 2016, but that's just a legend.

There's probably a startup idea around unsubscribing from difficult companies but legislation and rules in general are likely more effective.

This is mostly an internet meme, I subscribed and cancelled from the NYT many times without an issue with their online chat.

Isn’t having to have an online chat an unnecessary artificial barrier? Why not a button like most other sites.

They have that too: https://www.nytimes.com/data-subject-request

This is only for deleting your entire account. It says right there at the top of the form

"To change or cancel your subscription, please contact Customer Care."

As a free user, you still need an account to read certain free articles. So it's not really the same as canceling your subscription.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they deleted your account but kept billing you.

I've tried using this form several times. They send me an email afterward telling me they won't delete my account. (This is despite me living in a jurisdiction where deleting my account is legally non-optional.)

NY Times needs to get their shit together.

On that page I see this:

> To change or cancel your subscription, please contact Customer Care.

You're right, you have to do that: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/cancel

That is pretty anti-user. Comcast does this too.

Not a meme, I had the experience first hand. It's very much real.

I think the problem is that it requires chatting live with someone who's job it is to prevent you from cancelling in the first place. If you can sign up in two clicks you should be able to cancel in two clicks.

I canceled by clicking a button. NYT very much knows I'm in Texas, not California. It was so easy I almost signed back up...

Are you in California?

No, in Canada

I didn't realize it was because I live in California that this is never a problem for me. I thought businesses just stopped doing that shady practice in general, not that it was outlawed here. How very interesting.

You can just fill out their online form: https://www.nytimes.com/data-subject-request

An email did it for me. Couldn't believe I had to, though.

[Unsubscribe Now Button] -> click -> Popup -> "Call us <3 and we'll reply in 10 business days xxx"

Same as WSJ

Reply on news.ycombinator.com