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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

I had the issue with the WSJ. I couldn't believe it was so hard to cancel. My solution was to update my card with an incorrect number, they canceled the subscription after the payment was declined.

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The problem with that is that you still have a valid contract, some companies will ding your credit rating and still pursue you for the money.

You cant ding a credit rating unless you have a users SSN, which the NYT almost certainly does not.

Nope. To put something on a credit report you need only match 2 out of Name, Address, DoB, and SSN. This is one of the big reasons why the reports are so inaccurate. It's absolutely hellish for people with a very common name. Source: when I was young my job was to investigate adverse items on credit reports and find legal pretexts to get them removed.

> To put something on a credit report you need only match 2 out of Name, Address, DoB, and SSN.

So any third-party vendor on Amazon has enough? Fantastic.

Yeah, the whole industry is insane and scummy. It's designed to give creditors as much gossip as possible, and congress has only taken rather tepid steps to reign it in. At the time I thought I was on the side of goodness, as my job was to find legal reasons to dispute these negative items on credit reports, submit the report back to the bureaus for a rescore, and ultimately get people their mortgage. But with the benefit of hindsight I can plainly see how I was a cog in creating the 2008 crash, and how the whole system was ultimately constructed to look the other way vs fraud if it meant the mortgage went through.

We badly need much stricter privacy rights surrounding personal information, but I don't see a viable political path to making it happen sadly :(.

Maybe change your name and/or billing address, and then change your card info?

Don't these subscriptions charge at the start of the bill cycle and not rears? You're not incurring debt.

If you agreed a contract to pay someone and stop paying without terminating the contract, then as soon as you miss a payment, you are in debt.

I cancelled my wsj subscription the other day, I had to call to cancel which is insulting but it only took 5 minutes. Wonder if someone sued them in between our cancellations. I actually cancelled because I found out call to cancel was their policy. Wont do business with companies that have this process.

> but it only took 5 minutes

I live in a different country / time zone, wasn't unsure how long it was going to take and if my phone would be charged. Also English isn't my native language and it adds to the burden of having to call them.

I wonder if this strategy could impact your credit rating though?

Does it? I'm having the same issue

No. You cant do anything to someones credit unless you have their SSN. Damn good thing thats the case also, if you happen to be named Jane Doe or Bob Smith.

This is incorrect, see my other reply to you in the sibling thread.

Yup, the local city library dinged my credit report for late library fines ($18) and I had to clear it up to get a new mortgage. The library did not have my SSN.

Years ago I did credit investigations related to mortgages as a job. My info is perhaps a bit out of date but I'm not aware of any significant changes related to this. If you simply ignore an account that has a balance due accumulating on it, they'll likely charge it off to a debt collector as part of a routine batch process. The threshold where this happens varies but 90 to 120 days overdue is the common range. You could argue with the collection agency that the service provider voided the contract by their behavior, but honestly, arguing with a collection agency isn't gonna be easier than jumping through the hoops to cancel with these scummy service providers.

You still owe them the money technically.

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