[_Donny]

Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order.

I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...

[rich_sasha]

A few times I found it was easier to cancel a card than to cancel a subscription.

I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods and services is to pass full details of your payment card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it.

It thankfully is now more of a thing of the past, but it used to be the case in the UK at least that places would take a telephone card payment, where you recite your card number, expiry date etc. So not only can they make any future payment they like, there is even no durable record of them having these details.

[KennyBlanken]

You hand that info to the merchant because your credit card company can issue chargebacks against them and that costs them a pretty penny with their payment processor, especially if it happens often. Credit card disputes almost always slant in favor of the customer.

Folks just don't seem to realize: you make a reasonable effort with the vendor, and then go straight to your credit card company.

I caught a restaurant "helping" themselves to a very healthy tip for delivery; I'd tipped in cash. The owner repeatedly professed that he didn't know how to issue a refund and offered cash.

He was playing stupid because he didn't want to deal with the transaction fee, nor did he want a paper trail of his fraud; I strongly suspect he was doing this to other people, too. Warned him three times and three times he said, gosh, he had no idea how to issue a refund to my card.

I asked for just the fraudulent tip back and my credit card company reversed the entire charge. So not only did he lose the tip, he lost the cost of the food and he got dinged with a chargeback fee. He also lost my weekly pizza order.

[rich_sasha]

I believe this doesn't work with debit cards, which are the norm in Europe.

Still though, it's a weird system. Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it, with some other party reimbursing me if that goes awry (and I notice).

[dotancohen]

  > Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it

A peeve of mine is that the trust-until-a-screwup system is used in far more critical places than with a credit card. For instance, "DOT certification" of tires has no paper trail until people die.

If a tire fails while operating within its speed regime and before five years from manufacture, then it is to be reported to the DOT (US Department of Transportation). This usually only happens if the police are reporting on a fatal accident - most common citizens neither know that this option exists nor how to report it. If enough reports of a specific brand or type of tire come in, then the manufacturer (or importer) must provide proof of the testing done and pay some fines.

Many of the cheap Chinese tires are out of business (read: have changed business names) far before this critical last step could ever be reached, assuming that any reports were filed at all.

[KennyBlanken]

Living in the US, with some of the worst banking infrastructure in the world, my debit card has an app that allows me to instantly lock/unlock the card, set spending limits, category limits, and even to deny a transaction if my phone isn't geolocated close to the transaction point.

I get a nearly instant alert, sometimes before the payment terminal has displayed "accepted", that there's been a charge on my card.

Also, at least in the US, debit cards have similar fraud rules to credit cards (ie you can chargeback) but the time period is much, much smaller. A week, I think.

I strongly urge you to not use your debit card and use a credit card wherever possible. Aside from better protection, any fraud or mistakes are not involving real money, but credit.

[Nextgrid]

Disputes are enforced by Visa and Mastercard rules and apply to debit & credit cards equally. Some countries may have some extra legal protections for credit cards, but for clear examples of merchant bad faith the card network's dispute resolution process should be enough.

[soco]

I also wouldn't call debit cards "the norm". They are in majority (1 to 5?), true, maybe also because many are issued for free by the bank where you have the account (which doesn't mean they are also used). But still not really "the norm".

[f-jin]

Can't speak for all of Europe, but my bank in the Netherlands (Rabobank) certainly does offer chargeback options on debit card purchases.

[type_Ben_struct]

I had to resort to cancelling a card once too, but it didn’t fix the problem. My Credit Card Provider (Barclaycard) implemented the Visa Account Updater service with no way to turn it off so my new card details went straight to the merchant.

Ended up cancelling the account I was so frustrated, lost a customer of 10 years.

https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau

[ClumsyPilot]

Typically you can call your bank and ask them to block transactions from a particular merchant that you have an issue with, I have done that before, once on credit card and once on a current account.

[viknesh]

I once had a paper/digital subscription, and at some point I had cancelled the card linked to it. Unbeknownst to me (my parents were receiving the subscription), they had kept sending the paper despite the card being cancelled. When NYT eventually realized the card had been cancelled, they claimed that I owed them for the ~year or so that I had been receiving the paper after the card was cancelled, and attempted to send this to collections.

Completely outrageous business practices if you ask me.

[manigandham]

That's not outrageous at all. Your failure to pay doesn't invalidate your contract that you will pay for their services.

It's definitely frustrating to cancel, and this is a good ruling that will help make it easier, but it's still your responsibility to do so.

[matheusmoreira]

How could it not invalidate the contract? Services are provided after payment is made. If no payment is made, no service is provided.

[manigandham]

Those are not universal terms, and are actually defined in the contract which you seem to have not read. Grace periods, minimum commitments, subscription lengths, and/or post-paid terms are all common.

Ironically there are far more complaints about cloud providers shutting down entire business operations because of a late payment here on HN. Perhaps you should consider this more thoroughly instead of escalating a single unfortunate anecdote into a strawman argument against how business billing works.

[soco]

Have you ever read your contracts? Maybe it would be time to do so now, before you run into troubles with collectors.

[matheusmoreira]

Of course. I just opened up a contract I signed with a legal firm. It says lack of payment ends the contract.

Why can't everything be simple and easy? Maybe somebody needs to pass a law to make it so.

[soco]

I'm not sure why is this outrageous. You had a contract with NYT so they deliver you the newspaper for a payment, contract which you didn't even try to cancel. This is how contracts work.

[fundatus]

It's not a token, but similar: Europe has Direct Debit mandates, which you give to the biller and they can be revoked.

https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/mandates/

[rich_sasha]

That's better, agreed. But can I e.g. limit payment amounts on these?

On Direct Debits in the UK, the merchant just charges me whatever. This is for things like utilities and phone bills, so I don't have major trust issues, but still it irks me.

[zwaps]

In a way, it's even better than credit card: You can not set a limit - except contractually, but you can enforce it. You can do the charge-back yourself (via the Bank's website) within like 6 or 9 months of the transaction. This will cost the vendor a lot (relatively speaking) money and is pretty easy to do. However, if there is any doubt about who is right, an action like that will lead them to invoice you all associated costs, send it to collections and then a legal fight begins.

Which I guess why many businesses prefer Klarna or other payment processors. You login with your bank account and then wire the money to them, instead of them pulling the money. Then, no chargebacks are possible.

[Reason077]

I haven't seen an option to set a payment limit, but all banks give you the ability to cancel a direct debit authorisation at any time. For that reason alone I'd say it's always better to use direct debit than give a merchant your credit/debit card for subscription services.

In any case, the banks seem to be very good at refunding direct debits in cases where the merchants appear to be abusing them. My ex once noticed after several months that her gym was still charging her even after she'd cancelled - the bank made it very quick and easy to claim back all the extra payments!

[Xelbair]

>I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods and services is to pass full details of your payment card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it.

That's kinda how Blik payments work in Poland. They generate one time code that is used to purchase goods, you also have to confirm it on your device(usually a banking app).

That code is one time use and expires after 2 minutes - and it can be safely told out loud. You also get transaction details before you confirm it on your device.

Expanding this system to a token that allows recurring subscription would be pretty convenient.

[malka]

That's what 3dsecure is for.

in EU (well, at least in my country, France) a payment without 3dsecure is extremely easy to chargeback.

[soco]

I don't think 3d protects you in this case of recurring charges.

[nivenkos]

It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.

[hnarn]

This isn't "Europe", it's Germany. Germany is still well known for using fax for government and corporate communication, and there was heavy criticism for how the Covid pandemic was initially handled because faxing records was so common which meant they could not be easily digitized, collected and searched.

In Sweden, sending a fax or physical letter to a government instance or private companies rather than an e-mail is more or less unheard of, unless they for some reason need a physical paper with your signature on it (I've heard this happen with customs, for example), but in almost all areas of society this has now also been replaced with Bank-ID, which is digital.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID

[revax]

You have to call or send a letter to cancel your subscription of the French newspaper LeMonde.

It's not just Germany.

[_Wintermute]

I had this same issue with a number of French companies. Couldn't figure out why they weren't cancelling my contract despite repeated letters until someone told me you have to send the letter with proof of receipt otherwise they just ignore it.

[nivenkos]

Yeah, I live in Sweden now too.

I think Sweden is the exception here really though (and the other Scandinavian countries, and possibly the UK).

[hnarn]

To me, that’s enough exceptions to not generalize about “Europe”.

[raverbashing]

This is not all of Europe, though Germany is known for this shenanigans (but on the other hand this gives you a confirmation of when you cancelled it if you send it Advice of Receipt)

[t0mas88]

That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up. So if you can signup online then you must be able to cancel online.

[Reason077]

> "That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up."

Unfortunately I don't think that's true. I'm looking at you, beer52.com! [1]

(And yes, they were doing this long before the UK left the EU, and are still at it today)

[1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F

[misnome]

Yes, beer52.com is atrocious for this also. I tried over a couple of weeks in lunch breaks and never got through.

Eventually I sent an email to some random customer support email I found complaining and they actually did it.

[umanwizard]

I subscribe to Der Spiegel (German weekly news magazine) and as far as I can tell it can’t be cancelled without e-mailing them.

This is unfortunate because although I can read German, I can’t write or speak it, so figuring out how to write that e-mail would be a headache.

Edit: Thanks to aboalarm.de, which I learned about from this thread, I have learned the correct formula to use:

> Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

>

> hiermit kündige ich mein oben genanntes Abonnement Ihrer Zeitschrift fristgerecht zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt.

so if I do ever decide to cancel, this thread has been quite useful.

[jfk13]

You could email them in English. Der Spiegel is large and international enough that it's reasonable to expect them to cope with that.

[llampx]

It probably depends on which country is handling your subscription. With a German address, they don't have to consider any request in any language other than German.

[umanwizard]

You’re probably right. I haven’t tried.

[llampx]

Europe is big. This is most definitely not illegal in Germany, in fact it is the preferred practice by anti-consumer companies.

[sitic]

A recently passed German law requires (among other changes) an online cancel button, however companies don't have to implement it until July 2022 unfortunately.

https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/vertraege-reklamat...

[Manozco]

It sure as hell doesn't work like this for the newspaper Le Monde (in France). Sure you can sign/resign with Apple/Google but if you sign with e-mail, you have to mail a physical letter to resign (8Euros one with proof of delivery and all)

[hnarn]

Source?

[t0mas88]

Here is the Dutch implementation, because it's the first I could find in English: https://business.gov.nl/regulation/automatic-renewal-subscri... As is says there "Consumers must be able to cancel their agreement in exactly the same way as they signed up for them."

It's based on an EU directive, but a recent one so not all countries have it live yet. More details on the EU directive and the German implementation starting next year: https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/211006-new-two-click...

[ahartmetz]

IIRC it's a law that is just a few months old.

[revax]

That's not really a source.

[ahartmetz]

It's a possible explanation for older anecdotes about having to cancel by fax.

[tchalla]

There are 3 ways to cancel an O2 contract - (1) Online intimation + phone call, (2) Letter or (3) Fax [0]. Most routers (like Fritzbox) come with a fax function which you send an online fax [1]. O2 charges a maximum of 0.14 cents per fax page or free based on your DSL plan. Alternatively, you can also send a physical letter online (0.70 cents) [2].

Your comment below says that there is no receipt for confirmation. O2 provides a default PDF form on their website which to fill for termination. The letter explicitly states that "o2 should send you a written confirmation of cancellation". It is illegal for O2 to be in receipt of a letter and not send a confirmation. I am sorry if that happened to you!

Don't get me wrong - the auto-renewal of contract practices in Germany are predatory for the consumers. Recently, there has been a change in law that forces providers to extend contracts by 1 month instead of 1 or 2 years.

[0] https://www.o2online.de/service/kuendigung/

[1] https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-Box-7490/...

[2] https://www.deutschepost.de/de/e/epost.html

[3] https://static2.o9.de/resource/blob/498264/12cd6ca6ee17a02b9...

[nivenkos]

This was 10 years ago, it definitely wasn't possible by phone call back then.

Hopefully it'll get better. I also had a terrible experience with Vodafone in the UK, charging the higher rates for data usage with no warning.

[texasbigdata]

Which is ironic from what I understand to be a mobile phone operator. Clearly they don’t trust their own network

[shp0ngle]

No, they just want it to be as hard as possible.

Although I was surprised how relatively big faxes are in Germany. I never had sent a fax before I was in Germany.

[nivenkos]

From nuclear power, to card payments, to online shopping - Germany is extremely conservative with regards to modern technology.

[ahartmetz]

Faxes aren't that big either. I never liked them, never owned one, and I remember sending two faxes in my life. Maybe a few I don't remember. The last one was... to cancel a mobile phone contract.

[Aardwolf]

Still better than waiting hours on a "support" phone line

[nivenkos]

It's not, because there's no real receipt confirmation.

They ended up chasing me for 3 years over 20 euros when I moved to the UK. At least here in Sweden, credit checks aren't really a thing thankfully.

[low_tech_love]

Yeah, but try to cancel an internet subscription here in Sweden…

[nivenkos]

I've always had it included in the BRF or rental agreement. Only 28 Mb/s mind...

[Aardwolf]

You can send a signed letter and that should be legal proof

[huhtenberg]

Probably no less than 90 days in advance too.

[nasir]

You can instruct your bank to stop the direct debit payments and they'll cancel your subscription.

[hnarn]

You shouldn't say this to people like it's some obvious truth. There are many cases in which this action will land you in trouble due to it not being a legally valid termination of the contract (which of course may be different by country -- it's very common that cancelling requires an actual message to the other party).

One specific example is if your contract has a termination period, which is pretty common, at least in my part of Europe. If you simply stop paying, you are denying the other party N months of revenue (your cancellation period) that you are contractually obliged to pay. You are now defaulting on your payments and will likely pay additional fees.

[Nextgrid]

This makes sense if the contract indeed has a minimum commitment that hasn't been reached.

But if the contract has no minimum term (or it has since passed) and you've made a reasonable effort to attempt to cancel with no success, it'll now be on them to recover the money through legal means which would require them to explain to the court why your cancellation attempt was ignored, demonstrating their bad faith in the process. That's not something they want to do.

[hnarn]

The point of my comment was "this is not good general advice". The point of your comment seems to be "it can be good advice in some cases", which makes no sense to me. Obviously it can be good advice in that exact case where it makes sense, but it's not good general advice.

[Nextgrid]

I'd argue it's good enough general advice and would apply to most online subscriptions as they typically have no minimum commitment. The ones with a minimum commitment would be the outliers and would require special treatment.

[nasir]

I agree with your point that you could get into trouble for violating your contract terms. I perhaps should have mentioned specifically about NYTimes which seem to have designed around people blocking the payments to cancel their subscription.

[odiroot]

I had to do exactly that with o2 Germany. They continued to charge me after the contract expired. And they even tried to charge for the router that I actually sent back.

[nivenkos]

This was the whole issue though. I closed my bank account and moved country, and they delayed cancelling it and then chased me up on one month's payments for years - when I had no easy way of making payments in Germany.

In the end I paid it though, it was only 20 euros!

[wheels]

At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or, amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.

[whazor]

In The Netherlands there are companies that will fill in, print, and send cancellation letters for you as a service. They rank very high in Google search.

[sorokod]

Was cancelling my cell provider and was required to send a fax - hello Vodafone.de

[littlecranky67]

Cancellation by mail is always fine, no company can opt out of it in a legal way. You don't even need to get the address right, you can mail it to any subsidiary of the company - it is the companys responsibility to correctly route it internally. You can even directly address it to the CEO and at "persönlich" to it. My favorite.

[pantulis]

You would need proof of receipt and proof of content in case contract termination does not happen, though.

[littlecranky67]

In theory yes, in practice I had multiple disputes over contract termination and in 100% of those cases the counterparty with happy with the photo. And also compare it to any "phone calls" where you basically have nothing as a proof (dunno about your jurisdiction, but in Germany it is illegal to record phone calls without prior consent and also would require technical means to do so).

Also, if you ever worked in a large corporation, they have a lot of means to track incoming mail ("Posteingangsbuch") and for an enterprise to try to pretend not to have received a letter would require maldoing by a lot of employees (who usually are not commited to giving false statements in court for their employer).

[hnbad]

This is true for traditional "contracts", e.g. phone, apartments, gyms, etc, but these generally also involve paperwork when signing up (though in some of these cases you can sign up online and then have the confirmation mailed to you).

This is definitely not the case for websites or apps and I'm pretty sure what the NYT is doing wouldn't amuse German consumer protection agencies.

[Faaak]

In general I write an e-mail saying "please don't make us waste more time by requiring me to send a letter and please revoke my current subscription".

Works somewhat

[wheels]

There are third party services that handle cancellation (e.g. Aboalarm) that are more reliable, and don't require any more time. I honestly just have an online fax account where I can upload a PDF to send a fax for like 20 cents, and that almost always works. It's still a dark pattern though.

[imtringued]

Stupidly enough, you have to cancel SEPA direct debit mandates with a written document to the merchant.

[xdfgh1112]

I used online chat to do it. It took several attempts to get connected. They offered me a really good deal to stay but I declined on principle because I don't want to support such practices.

[quitit]

It’s why they hate people that sign up via IAP - literally one click and the subscription is gone.

[vojvod]

What's IAP?

[quitit]

IAP for in app purchase.

There are currently two ways to sign up for the New York times online, one is via the website and the other is via a subscription from the various app stores(an in-app-purchase).

To unsubscribe from the website-based subscription requires a call to NYT’s customer service based in New York which have limited operating hours- here they’ll try their best to convince you not to unsubscribe after waiting in a phone queue.

However if you chose to subscribe through an IAP then you simply browse to your active subscriptions and press a button - far simpler and on par with how easy it was to sign up.

Making subscriptions difficult to cancel is not new in any industry, NYT’s behaviour here isn’t unique, or even the worst example. I use it as a demonstration that even reputable companies use these tactics.

This is one of the reasons why certain businesses loathe IAPs, (regardless of the cost). When providing your details to a business there is a lot of added potential for lock in, follow-on marketing, increasing the cost at irregular intervals and selling your information to 3rd parties.

I say "regardless of the cost" because many types of digital goods have minimal costs to provide them. For example a 15% or 30% cut of such purchases is negligible when selling an in-game currency because there is no genuine cost for providing that currency. Even if the app store charged 0% instead of the 15% or 30%, the business would still be missing out on using your personal details for all of the other valuable ways they can extract money from you/your data.

To use Amazon as an example - I receive extreme levels of spam for the custom email address that I use with Amazon, many vendors I have purchased from have immediately on sold my contact information.

[vojvod]

Thanks, it hadn't occurred to me that the app stores would enforce easy cancellation. I'll remember to prefer in-app sign up over website for any new subscriptions in future.

[quitit]

It’s best to check both options before proceeding, as some businesses do offer a cheaper subscription service when working directly - however as mentioned that may come with strings attached.

I feel the success of small developers relies on IAP, it means I can purchase from them without needing to trust them - the app stores do a good job of reviewing the app for malware and if the app doesn’t live up to expectations it is trivial to get a refund from the various app stores.

[montag]

In-App Purchase

[Manozco]

I got this issue with the newspaper "Le Monde" in France a couple of months ago. Had to send them a 8Euros letter to cancel the subscription.

[ddek]

Had a similar issue with a US publication recently. They emailed to say "Your subscription of $120 has automatically been renewed, please check your card details or contact us to alter it."

Fortunately the card they have expired last December.

[docdeek]

I had that exprience with the NYT - I had to time my call right to hit the office hours on the US east coast.

That said, when I last had an interaction with them about a subscription, I did the whole thing via a 24/7 online chat. A far better and more convenient experience, if one that still lacks the simplicity of a simple ‘unsubscribe’ button.

[hajhatten]

Now I just wish this was implemented in my country/EU. NYT set the precedence for our national newspapers.

[melomal]

Wall Street Journal does the same thing. It's completely mad.

[insaneirish]

Tip: when you’re ready to cancel, change the physical address in your account to one in California. Magically, a cancel button appears (to comply with California law).

I did this the last time WSJ decided to jack my rate to something obscene.

[nasir]

I immediately instructed my bank to block the upcoming payments and on the renewal day the subscription was cancelled. This is pretty much a flow of their cancellation.

[kashyapc]

Yeah; I've had this "send us a letter via snail mail to cancel" recently. Saying "it's unreal" doesn't capture the absurdity.

[makach]

THIS. I am thinking that I can finally cancel my nytimes subscription^^

I mean, I really appreciate the articles but I haven't been able to follow as closely as I wanted.