I subscribed to the NYT a few years ago and it took a phone call and a retention pitch to finally unsubscribe. I vowed to never subscribe again as long as this was in place.
NYT problem was due in part that we had so many legacy systems related to subscriptions; there was a big push internally to solve this.
When "online cancel" finally rolled out we were all so excited there was a party with a sheetcake that had the cancellation landing page printed on it. We'd rather have users trust us than use dark patterns to "trap" them into a subscription.
I subscribe to the economist, and they automatically renew at a rate of $199 per year, I called to cancel and they drop it to $80 per year. Would save everyone the time if they started with $80
FWIW Comcast does this too. Just call them every 11 months and make them give you a better price. It’s dumb as heck and I want to live long enough to see them burn to the ground, but it’s one call I will make as it lets us give the only ISP option at our address in Silicon Valley that can actually give us gigabit download speeds (and capped 40mbit upload with a 1.2tb data cap) less money.
If the rep you talk to won’t do it, hang up and call again.
My wife subscribed to The Economist but we weren't reading it. I tried changing my address to California, which has worked for some subscriptions because of California's consumer-friendly subscription cancellation law. That didn't work.
I tried doing the chat to cancel. I said multiple times that we wanted to cancel and the person (presumably a person following a script, although they certainly seemed robotic) just kept ignoring that. Eventually I said I'm cancelling, if you charge us, I'll charge it back and took a screenshot of that.
When they charged me, I charged it back. No need for the screenshot, which was mildly disappointing because this was one time where I felt I had proof that I tried to cancel.
We'll never subscribe to The Economist again. If you make it this difficult to leave, better not to start.
During the chat, they kept trying to make conversation, to ask questions, and to retain me. I just copy/pasted "I'm not here for chit-chat, please cancel the subscription and confirm once complete" each time they tried to engage me.
Immediately after my subscription expired they started emailing me 1/2 off offers. The whole experience put a bad taste in my mouth and I won't be back.
My previous Internet provider Cox tried this tactic on me when I canceled. My reply to them was ok, so you're admitting to overcharging me all along. I'll agree to stay with you if you also provide a refund for all previous months I was overcharged. They finally agreed to close my account at that point :)
NYTimes changed their policy sometime during the Covid years. I canceled back in 2017-18 and can confirm that it took me talking over the phone rep repeatedly saying nothing but "Cancel." for them to stop the retention spiel and finally close my account.
I just interacted with the WSJ several days ago. It was extremely annoying -- and probably painful to the poor customer service rep who has to take these calls.
I don’t read any of these regularly, but the Apple One subscription includes Apple News+ or whatever it’s called and that lets you read NYT, WSJ, LA Times, and quite a few others…only works in the Apple News app though. That’s the annoying part — you don’t technically have a subscription with them, so you can’t comment (if that matters to you). It’s more comparable to RSS feed access, albeit with no ads and full fidelity articles.
Honestly, I prefer it to their own apps, and the price + cancellation policy is WAY better.
"Xperience Fitness" made me show up in person and sign a document. This needed to then be faxed to HQ. Of course, the gym didn't have a fax machine. So had to find a fax machine, send off a fax and wonder if anybody is going to look at it on the other end. This was in 2015 or so, not 1986.
