[r2222]

Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yep, or Sirius radio in Canada. Want to cancel? US customer? Click a link. Canadian? Have to phone, so they can force you to wait through a retention sales game. (Where they will offensively offer you a way lower rate than you were already paying, making you feel like a fool for not hassling them in the first place. And then after 6 months it goes back up again because you forgot to call back and threaten cancellation again. Awful dark pattern.)

[ulfw]

I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

[tablespoon]

>> Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

> I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

All kinds subscription of businesses do this exact same thing or worse, so the answer is probably "both." IIRC, the (large, chain) gym nearby required cancellation either in person or by registered mail. When I complained, their sales guy unbelievably justified it because "they've had problems with people canceling other's memberships."

That said, I actually did cancel the New York Times a few years ago, and I don't remember the process being too onerous. Though I'm not allergic to speaking to someone on the phone.

[chrisfinazzo]

After being a regular reader for years and finally getting fed up with the increasing restrictions on their paywall, I bought a digital subscription in late 2019. I could have done it through their app on iOS and - eventually - gained the ability to cancel right there if I wanted to as it's now in the App Store TOS for Reader apps, but the web offer was too good to pass up.

~$1 per week for a year, IIRC.

I think the process may be improved enough at this point that there is a web cancellation procedure available.

("Subscription Overview" when you are signed in to your account has a link to do this part.)

As for this change, I'm pleasantly surprised that they are following the "good" convention for foreign language sites that also publish in English:

E.g, https://example.{{ Insert country-specific TLD}}/en/

That said, URL's to articles are still a bit of a mess, as the this one shows...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/2022-presidential-election/article...

Click through for the whole thing and you see `/article` is redundant and it's not just in English, the French articles follow the same weird convention.

Not sure why they've done that.

[disgruntledphd2]

I cancelled the NYT through chat, but I'm in the EU so that might have made a difference.