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Comment by bobbylarrybobby | Hacker News Reader

If you've ever tried to cancel Amazon Prime through amazon.com, you'll understand the value that Apple provides through its App Store subscriptions.

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What's wrong with cancelling Amazon Prime? I did it recently and it took less than a minute. I even had the option to cancel immediately and have them refund my money, even though my yearly subscription was still running for half a year, which AFAIK is not possible for App Store subscriptions. I'm in EU so might be different to US.

I take that you are American?

It is super easy to cancel Amazon Prime in the EU (I did it in Portugal).

No it's not. They still let you jump through a bunch of hoops and try to trick you. Have you ever cancelled something on the app store? It's really just a cancel button.

Ahh, I see.

Maybe we should expand it then? Make a rule that all subscription services shall to use Apple's iStore – it is after all the simplest possible way.

I have not cancelled anything on the Apple store, no. I have not yet had the burden of owning an iPhone, but I have cancelled a lot of things elsewhere. And the only situations where it has been anxiety provoking has been for US companies.

That's true! In Germany there's the law that you need to be able to cancel a subscription the same way you created it. So if I click a button, you can't ask me to call you. But it's circumvented, and you're right, internationally it's so much worse. And they call it "customer retention" lol

The EU have it way better, like one or two clicks and it's done.

I sincerely feel sorry for you and how fucked up it is to cancel subscriptions in places with weaker customer protection.

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