[OutsmartDan]

NYT is notoriously the worst at customer service and account handling. I tried to get a previous invoice from them previously and after 1 week of calling customer support and being passed around, I still wasn't able to get it.

[heyoni]

I had this chat with their customer service department asking to "cancel" my account so that I don't incur any charges and they insisted that it wasn't possible without losing immediate access and getting a pro-rated refund. I thought that was stupid, but ok...

1 month later, still no refund. Account is still scheduled to be auto-renewed, talk to CS and they're basically ignoring me at this point (I'm using text messaging support on a secondary number), so I issue a chargeback with my credit card...

1 month later, I get a refund, no email, no text message explaining the delay and now I have to deal with that or else they'll probably put my account in collections. /facepalm

[jrockway]

My credit card number changed and they sent my account to collections with no notice. The lesson I learned was never to subscribe to something on the company's own website; go through Apple.

[jahlove]

Honestly, the stories i've ready about how difficult it is to cancel your NYT account are a contributing factor to why I don't subscribe. I love NYT, but if it's not as easy to cancel as it is to sign up then count me out.

[asdff]

I just subscribe to the local paper (LA times) and get my national coverage from their reporting. By the time you subscribe to the wapo, nyt, economist, wsj, atlantic, you are paying a huge sum a year on redundant coverage. Better to focus on local issues that are more likely to affect my life than the national soap opera anyway.

[paulcole]

Still love the story of the Pinboard guy’s approach to invoices. If you ask for an invoice, he sends you a blank one and tells you to just fill it out however you want.

[the-dude]

In The Netherlands there are legal requirements for invoices.

[petercooper]

Same in the UK, but for instances where you can't get a fully valid invoice, you can either "self invoice" (so the "fill in your own invoice" approach) or just whatever receipt you get as long as you feel happy defending it to a tax inspector later on.

If you use US companies for services in a European business, you are almost certainly going to have invoices every month that don't meet EU regulations at all and you just have to make it work.

[paulcole]

He said in his tweet about this that when he does it to Europeans (specifically Germans, I think) they just get even madder.

I mean great if there are legal requirements for invoices, but who enforces them, how likely is enforcement, and what’s the end result for a US-based company with no physical presence in The Netherlands?

[petercooper]

The real issue is with the local (European) company when they claim the expense against profits and the tax inspector turns their nose up at the invoice/receipt.

Being in the UK, we tend to work on a system where things are taken in context and you can defend such decisions. Maybe other tax regimes are more restrictive, but the British way is always that you can have a debate with authorities and usually they will see sense in your reasoning if you're not trying to defraud them.

[avree]

Just to make this kind of confusing story less confusing—the Pinboard guy prints valid invoices (in order to be legally compliant, and because he's "not a totally evil guy"). Someone (from Germany) asked him to add Company Name to the invoice, and he replied by saying "just edit the HTML to add whatever you need".

https://twitter.com/i/status/1192182812121583617 The actual tweets probably explain it better than I (and the parent comment) can.

[paulcole]

Ha, the tweets I remember are from years and years ago. Maybe 2015? Really funny that the invoice thing has been such a consistent part of the Pinboard Experience for so long.

Since this predates threads, I can’t find all the tweets but this is one of them:

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/558313726844358656

[paulcole]

That all sounds like the local company's problem right?

If they want to claim the expense they can find a competing company who issues an invoice.

[anticensor]

US has too, they are lower but not nonexistent. Blank invoice is not a valid invoice in the states either.

[hanniabu]

I'm ashamed I'm finding out about this through an HN comment. Would you happen to have a good source to read?