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Comment by kreeben | Hacker News Reader

>> Get unlimited access to Le Monde in English €2.49/month, cancel anytime

>> A Customer who wishes to terminate their contract must print out (or copy on plain paper) ...

So, cancel anytime by conveniently printing out and filling in a form then sending it by snail mail to their customer service dept. I think I'll pass. Too bad.

https://moncompte.lemonde.fr/cgv-en

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For the international offer, cancellation is possible "with one click from the subscriber’s online account" (it is in the special conditions).

The part with the registered letter (not just simple mail!) is for the regular (French) subscription. But to be fair, the best way to cancel these kinds of subscriptions where they make it hard for you is to just block the payment at your bank. In theory, you can get sued, but in practice, they will simply cancel your subscription. There are strong consumer protection laws regarding recurring subscriptions (because there is a lot abuse) and if the company wants to take it to court, they need a rock solid case otherwise it will backfire, so usually, they don't bother.

Well yeah, but it's still a very shitty practice, and just that is enough for me to not give them any money.

I think the reason is that France is much less online in these things (at least this is my experience with seeing my in-laws). They expect to subscribe and cancel via a letter, much more than online.

I've had debt collectors sent after me for not updating my card details on a subscription service, granted it's the exception but it happens and I'd imagine blocking the payment would incur a similar wrath.

I wonder if it'd be more convenient for a French subscriber to use a VPN. Or change their address to somewhere out of France before cancelling.

Subscribing through Google Play should allow easy cancelation.

Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

Yep, or Sirius radio in Canada. Want to cancel? US customer? Click a link. Canadian? Have to phone, so they can force you to wait through a retention sales game. (Where they will offensively offer you a way lower rate than you were already paying, making you feel like a fool for not hassling them in the first place. And then after 6 months it goes back up again because you forgot to call back and threaten cancellation again. Awful dark pattern.)

I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

>> Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

> I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

All kinds subscription of businesses do this exact same thing or worse, so the answer is probably "both." IIRC, the (large, chain) gym nearby required cancellation either in person or by registered mail. When I complained, their sales guy unbelievably justified it because "they've had problems with people canceling other's memberships."

That said, I actually did cancel the New York Times a few years ago, and I don't remember the process being too onerous. Though I'm not allergic to speaking to someone on the phone.

After being a regular reader for years and finally getting fed up with the increasing restrictions on their paywall, I bought a digital subscription in late 2019. I could have done it through their app on iOS and - eventually - gained the ability to cancel right there if I wanted to as it's now in the App Store TOS for Reader apps, but the web offer was too good to pass up.

~$1 per week for a year, IIRC.

I think the process may be improved enough at this point that there is a web cancellation procedure available.

("Subscription Overview" when you are signed in to your account has a link to do this part.)

As for this change, I'm pleasantly surprised that they are following the "good" convention for foreign language sites that also publish in English:

E.g, https://example.{{ Insert country-specific TLD}}/en/

That said, URL's to articles are still a bit of a mess, as the this one shows...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/2022-presidential-election/article...

Click through for the whole thing and you see `/article` is redundant and it's not just in English, the French articles follow the same weird convention.

Not sure why they've done that.

I cancelled the NYT through chat, but I'm in the EU so that might have made a difference.

That’s different than what’s posted in their FAQ for canceling. The FAQ suggests that it’s a simple button in the account settings.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/faq/?question=i-want-to-cancel-my-...

I think EU regulations require that cancellation must be accessible in the same way as the subscription. So online subscriptions must have an online cancellation.

Said button is no doubt “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.‘“ because we are all Arthur Dent in this Internet.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...

*Offer with no commitment required, valid for orders placed from outside the US, Canada and France area, for all new subscriptions to the promotional offer Le Monde in English of Le Monde. After the end of the first year, the amount debited will be adjusted each year to reflect the applicable price. An email informing you of the adjusted price will be sent 2 months before the new price goes into effect. The client may cancel their subscription to Le Monde from their account.

This sort of thing, and the whole "cancel by mail" thing noted above, are why consumers see such value in buying subscriptions through Apple's evil puppy-kicking "walled garden."

Tech types don't see the value in it. But regular people do.

I subscribe to the dead tree editions of four newspapers, and several magazines. But if it's available from Apple News, I'll go there first, because I know I'm insulated from the dark side of the subscription model.

I'm completely with you here. I subscribed to the NYT for some time through Apple subscriptions. No funny business when I wanted to unsubscribe, just two clicks and my subscription stopped when the expiration date came.

Cancelling Le Monde is a well known pain in the ass for us french users. I almost passed out thinking how hard it would be for a foreigner. Please avoid.

Even trying to talk to a french person as a foreigner is a pain... Almost as bad as with italians, but in italy you can atleast wave with your hands, the french ignore that too, and doing it over the phone is totally impossible.

(source: live an hour drive from italy, buy cheese and pasta there, and often go to france on business).

I must admit you're right and I feel the pain for you. Sorry.

I got the perfect automatic cancellation: my credit-card expired. Worked a charm.

Pas Le Monde Diplomatique though.

Le monde diplo has no relationship to le monde afaik

Le Monde owns 51% of it [0]

[0]: https://mondediplo.com/about

Isn't the paper one there because of legal reasons? Like that is the proper and legal way to cancel a service. According to their FAQ it seems they have a button.

No, there is nothing in any law that mandates that. It's there for artificial churn reduction. The irony, is that if you register through a platform that takes a big share (they get less money) like the App Store or Google Play, it's then easier to cancel…

If I send a physical letter to them, they have to accept and respect my cancellation. That is what I meant. Is that not the case in France?

Oh I see, sorry for the misunderstanding. To go into more details, you need to send a LRAR, which is the only one with a legal proof and costs ~6-7€; otherwise they could pretend that you never sent it.

But my comment was on the fact that it was the only way to cancel. They could implement a system with single-click cancel (and it seems they did, here); it costs less than the current snail-mail system, and is more honest. But they don't because this system has a measurable impact on churn.

Not a solution but a way to deal with this practice: some credit card providers allow you to create virtual cards that you can cancel any time. I do this all the time with Capital One.

https://www.capitalone.com/digital/eno/virtual-card-numbers/

That's just the formalities most likely copy pasted from the physical edition. In reality it's just a "Cancel subscription" button.

Just subscribe with a card from Privacy.com, and cancel the card when you want to cancel the subscription.

better than "phone a call center" like Barrons, Morningstar or other I have checked. Looks like editors love to keep readers tied with uneasy unsubscribe methods.

Looks like editors love to keep readers tied with uneasy unsubscribe methods.

The fact that people think editors have anything at all to do with subscriptions illustrates a lack of basic understanding of the publishing industry.

Source: At various times of my life, I've worked for two of the largest newspaper companies on the planet.

I've got to the point where I won't subscribe to any of these publications now which makes me wonder if these tactics really work.

>>> A Customer who wishes to terminate their contract must print out (or copy on plain paper)

I thought only Germany had this BS.

I actually found German newspapers to be comparably nice. Any country without laws prohibiting it have these behaviors.

Not papers, but everything else in Germany like gyms, telcos, etc.

Gyms and telcos in the US certainly do this type of thing, though usually not with paper forms specifically. At gyms, they often won’t let you get out of the contract no matter what you say, or they’ll say you’re free and then keep on charging you for years if you don’t notice on your credit cars bill. For telcos, they’ll make you wait on the phone through hours of waiting “for the next available representative”.

Ah yes. Don't forget to fax the paper you printed. No fax? No luck..

Unsubscribing should be as simple as telling your bank to stop payments.

Why is this still a thing?

That would be neat.

A hacky way to do it, I guess, would be for banks to make is really easy to spin up debit accounts. You drop exactly the right amount of money into the account, then when you want to unsubscribe just stop putting money there. I guess, though, some organizations would keep providing service and then consider you to owe them money, and eventually send it to collections... but if this was the conventional configuration for paying for accounts, I guess that sort of behavior on the part of the people looking for payments wouldn't be scalable, and so they'd have adjusted to just accepting the signal of non-payment=unsubscribe.

Lots of banks already provide this service (spin up as many unique debit cards through an app as you want), at least in Europe and Asia where I've used it. It's often marketed as being specifically for this purpose, along with extra features like locking a card to the specific merchant you plan to use it for, to guard against theft of the card number.

Are there often legal issues around not paying for services with annoying contracts? In the US it is not super uncommon to pay after consuming (this is how electricity typically works for example) or for services to offer some grace period where they'll keep providing service with the expectation that you'll pay back later. Hypothetically these companies could I guess sue you if you don't pay back later (I'm not sure actually -- more likely I guess they'd send it to collections). But if the default way to cancel a service was to just stop paying for it, then I guess companies would change how they billed (fundamentally I think paying beforehand would be more convenient for most consumers).

For subscriptions like newspapers, I think it is reasonable to expect a grace period equal to at most the billing period.

But stuff like this should be enshrined in law. See also AWS billing nightmares.

I accidentally dinged myself with a couple hundred dollar AWS bill -- surely nothing nightmarish compared to what others have gotten, but it sure was annoying.

What's with Europe and their love of non-digital way to cancel service?

> So, cancel anytime by conveniently printing out and filling in a form then sending it by snail mail to their customer service dept. I think I'll pass. Too bad.

you are not missing anything, LeMonde is one of the worst papers ever out there.

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