These experiences honestly make me want to never subscribe to a newspaper again.
Last time I cancelled they were a nightmare calling me every other day.
I recently cancelled again after getting the 1-month renewal warning, and immediately got a 50% off offer, so I'll probably subscribe again.
I had a similarly easy experience with the Guardian a few years ago, based in Europe.
Sadly in the UK I guess we won't get the benefit of any new EU legislation to address this.
To their credit they did send me a reply saying my account had been cancelled and I never spoke to anyone on the phone.
But I immediately cancelled with card after I tried to cancel the subscription. I misread that and thought I'd cancelled, then got stung with a bill, but they didn't send as they couldn't take payment. So I retried to cancel and realised what had happened... I think the most annoying bit that that you can _try_ to cancel on their site and then, after answering several questions (are you sure if we offer X or Y), several pages later, they tell you that you need to call them (IIRC the wording if you skim read it almost makes it sound like you _have_ unsubscribed.
For a 'hip' beer company, I was surprised at how baroque it seemed.. I refuse to recommend them to ANYONE, even though I actually quite liked the beer.
A big selling point for companies for a while was quick answering of calls. My bank has genuinely answered faster than 999 (our 911 equivalent) on occasion. Although during COVID hold times have gone up dramatically for some reason.
But because they offered a free month to wine52. Easy to sign up, phone up to cancel
Of course you could argue that the EU might do it one day, but you could say the same about the UK.
That being said I thought it already was against UK law. Maybe I got that wrong, or there are loopholes around it, or its just not heavily enforced. Who knows
Do you have a regulation reference by any chance?
Gesetzesänderung des § 309 Nr. 13 BGB vom 1. Oktober 2016
The one newspaper I've had no issues at all with is Indian Country Today. They use qgiv and while you can make an account with qgiv to edit payment details, they also send you an email every time they bill your card with a link that lets you unsubscribe in one click with no account (so it is easy to just cancel and resubscribe if you need to make changes rather than needing yet another account). All around excellent experience with ICT and qgiv.
I usually have to repeat it 3-4 times before they finally give in and do it.
Maybe I'll try, "I'm about to winter over in Antarctica and won't have the internet bandwidth for your paper. Do you guys deliver there?"
Perhaps Mars?
In the end I just told my bank to stop the direct debit - I had a few what seemed like automated payment emails from The Guardian telling me that my payments had failed and to update my payment choices - but other than that I considered my subscription over.
Meanwhile, I signed up for a magazine 20 years ago for $8/year and still get it monthly as well. I haven't paid since, they send me an annual reminder pay which I ignore. I suppose they like including me in their readership numbers to sell print ads, so they keep sending me magazines. Luckily, I enjoy the magazine. Monthly in my mailbox (not wet out in my yard). I would not want to even think about trying to stop the deliveries, they follow me wherever I live.
What is true is that, with a lot of magazines, to get the best rate you have to select an autorenew option and then they make it difficult to cancel. (That may be the case with The Economist; don't know.) In general, you're better off just paying a bit more and passing on autorenew unless you're sure you want to keep on subscribing.
Still better than the Globe and Mail though, had to call and talk with them for 10 minutes while they tried to sell me a different subscription.
[1] of course that is now a moot point as they've been bought by DMGT and I refuse to give any money at all to those in any way responsible for, or benefiting from, the Daily Fail.