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Comment by cloverich | Hacker News Reader

Can they loop in New York Times subscription? You have to _call_ them during business hours to cancel. When I was subscribed, I prompted myself to cancel when we had to change CC numbers (random fraud), so I finally called NYT to cancel. "You have to pay out first" -- no problem, I'll pay last bill right now and cancel. "Once you pay out, you have to wait two days before you can cancel it". WTF? Outright shady.

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I've cancelled my NYT sub online, a year or two back. I keep seeing anecdotes like yours pop-up, though. I don't know if they have different policies based on billing address or something.

I remember distinctly because when I _first_ signed up, it wasn't an option. A year or two later they emailed something about "Look how cool we are, you can cancel with just a few clicks now!" as if it was something to be proud of, rather than just them finally using consumer-friendly practices.

Are you in California? They are forced by law to make it easier to cancel in California, but they don't extend that anywhere else AFAIK.

I'm in NC and I'm seeing an option to cancel online.

it's not because of CPRA

Supposedly it is doable if you sign up in California/EU and a few other states that have regulations on this.

IIRC If your billing address is in California you have the option of cancelling online.

I'm in WA state, just checked, there is a big "cancel online" button, quite noticable.

Sometimes changing your billing address to somewhere in California can solve this. CA has a law saying that if you can sign up for a service online, you need to be able to cancel it online immediately, and be able to do so through either a “prominently located direct link or button” on the website or a preformatted email that the consumer can send to terminate the subscription without taking any further steps.

Can you just change your billing address to an arbitrary location like that? CC payments require matching address at least, or zip code. I guess if you weren't receiving any mail from the entity it might not matter in practice but it seems odd.

I feel ya, but there is worse: in France to cancel most services (mobile plan, bank accounts...) you need to send a registered mail. Suffice it to say, living abroad, there is a bunch of services I literally cannot cancel because of that. To close a mobile account, I recently had to cancel the credit card, then ignore emails from the debt collection agency they hired, for them to finally close my account.

> Suffice it to say, living abroad, there is a bunch of services I literally cannot cancel because of that.

Nonsense. Send your registered mail online with la poste. It has the same legal value. I'm not saying that requiring registered mail isn't shitty, but letting this go to debt collection is making things difficult for yourself with no good reason.

And by the way, a law has been enacted that will force business to offer online cancellation starting June 1st: https://www.tomsguide.fr/fin-des-lettres-recommandees-pour-r...

I’m glad they passed the law! Thank you, had no idea you could use La Poste to send registered mails online. As a busy parent, schemes like this definitely prey on people’s lack of time to never cancel.

It's why I find it hard to take the "woe is me, why won't anyone pay for real journalism" pleas seriously when it feels so irresponsible to trust these companies with your credit card details. And this isn't a new problem to the internet, it was also the case with "delivered to your local store" subscriptions in the past

I sometimes feel bad for spending time searching archive links for onlinenews publications but seeing how they treat paying customers I feel better now.

Some of these services I'm interested in enough I'd be willing to pay for a few months to try them. But magazine subscriptions and comcast have trained me to avoid these kinds of relationships like the plague. They aren't usually that expensive but the potential hassle sours the whole deal.

Then you get hit with 30± minute hold times and random "accidental" hangups/disconnects

WSJ is also annoying. The phone rep tries to convince you to keep the subscription.

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