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Comment by battle-racket | Hacker News Reader

At least they didn't make you make a phone call and have a rep try to prevent you from doing so for an hour (looking at you NYT).

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The phone rep is almost easier, because all they can do is withhold their confirmation. So, I told the Sirius guy who I was and that they were no longer authorized to charge my card, hung up, and wrote a note in my files. Sirius charged me again, and I submitted a chargeback. Quick and easy.

Sirius were obnoxious when I didn't convert from free to paid, on a service I wasn't using. The number of times I got phone calls and emails from them ended up with me repeating to them that their behaviour was guaranteeing I would never use them, and would tell friends not to either.

Unless you're on hold >1 hour since they have no one staffing the call center.

Even worse when their crappy VOIP software insta hangs up when you're up in the queue and you get kicked to the back to wait longer.

I was on phone support for a SaaS based company that did something similar. Massive pricing restructuring increasing 90% of accounts bill and they made you call in and wait on hold to cancel. This was 10 years ago, but the ruling is a welcome pro-consumer addition.

NYT has had click to cancel for a few years at this point. Were they later than they should be? Yes. Are they bad now? No.

I don't know how NYT has been handling cancellations in other states, but California has required companies to allow cancellations in the same form as sign ups for a few years (Sign up online requires the ability to cancel online too).

Not bad now? Yeah, right. They're still barely complying with the law.

I hope this new law comes with domain cancellation and registration blocking penalties.

AAA also makes you cancel over the phone during business hours.

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