A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you.
When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one.
If it's hard to unsubscribe - then their last memory is a bad one, and it's even harder to persuade that person to resubsubscribe again.
This is admitedly more applicable to industries with a lot of annual churn between suppliers - such as insurance, internet providers, power suppliers etc -- but it should be a rule of thumb for all companies.
Good lord yes. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a bit, but then ended up low on cash and needing to cut back on spending. Of all the subscriptions I stopped at that time, they were the most annoying. Because, even though I was able to sign up easily online, there was no way to cancel other than calling them. That disparity in ease between starting and stopping my subscription is why I will never pay them again.
This is why I like subscribing to things through iOS (and iPadOS). There’s one place I can check to see all my subscriptions and stop any of them with a click or two.
When I want to subscribe to something on my iPad, I don’t think about it very long because I know it’s going to be easy to quit. It will sometimes cost more but I’ve been happy to pay it because that’s what easy quitting is worth to me.
Exactly. My personal example: wanting to cancel due to shady advertising practices, my newspaper said i owed them money for an additional subscription I didn't make, and then threatened to send it to a collection agency.
I hate to turn my back on local news, but its owned by Gannett now who've ruined it, so I guess I'm ok with it failing. Sad though...
Yep, when I switched away from Sprint, it was a huge pain, switching from T-Mobile was so easy I felt a little bad for them being so helpful. Of course, the choice doesn't really exist anymore, but I was only interested in going back to one of them.
And not just that person, but everyone else as word gets around. Another commentor mentions Wall Street Journal; I’ve often considered subscribing to WSJ, but the horror stories I’ve heard about unsubscribing have pushed me away.
I don't understand why companies don't think this way. AT&T and Verizon both screwed me on the way out. Verizon decided to suck $15 more, and since I wasn't expecting another last bill, It got a $15 late fee so they got $30 out of me. In exchange, I've banned them from my life. AT&T made cancelling a royal pain in the ass, and also slapped me with some stupid fee.
T-Mobile, Google Fi, Ting, and (somewhat) Mint mobile all made it really easy to leave. I've been back to them a few times and I recommend them to others in my life. That $30 from Verizon cost them $100 per month in revenue for what likely would have been many, many years. It's just such a silly short-term approach IMHO.
> When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one.
When I purchase a new subscription the first thing I do is cancel renewal so I can do it manually. When a site makes this easy I'm actually much more likely to end up re-subscribing and leaving it on automatic since I know I'll be able to have peace of mind and cancel any time.
> A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you.
I was waiting for "so that's why we re-subscribe customers after a 6-month hiatus / every time we update our mail delivery service". At least that's what some companies have done to me...
This is why I keep coming back to Netflix. It's a simple process to subscribe or unsubscribe. I don't find enough interesting content to fill 12 months of use but I love that I can watch for a couple months, go away for the summer, and then pick it up again as the days get colder and darker from my sofa with just a remote or a click of the trackpad.
Yep. I wanted to temporarily cancel the NY Times. The process was horrible and the first time I called they said it would cancel at the end of the month and it didn't so I had to call them again and go through the whole horrible process again.
I will never resubscribe again because the cancellation process was so horrible.
what is really funny is that someone with an MBA was working behind the scenes to claim this suscriber churn flow dark pattern was A/B tested, and the test "conclusively demonstrated" that action B (hiding the cancel/forcing user to call/etc) resulted in XX % less churn, ergo resulting in additional YY revenue/quarter.
Yet, anyone with basic reading comprehension can read this thread, and conclude these dark patterns are destroying the brand with existing customers.
This is a great way to think about it, and upon reflection I definitely operate in this way.
I'd love SiriusXM at the promo rates they offer, or even at full price in a month where I know I'll be on the road for a while. I will never re-subscribe because they make cancelling so hostile.
The Boston Globe, for example, first introduced online cancellation in fall of 2020 to a portion of its subscriber base after it received an influx of tens of thousands of new subscribers at the beginning of the pandemic, Tom Brown, Globe vice president of consumer revenue, said.
“We wanted to make sure that didn’t clog up the phone lines and create a poor experience for any subscriber calling for any reason,” Brown said in an email. “We then started making it available to more subscribers based on market research that we conducted that showed subscribers wanted this.”
~~~
Reads like: After I hired a market research firm to gather opinions from my brother, I decided to stop poking him with a stick.
I'd certainly like everything to be easily canceled online.
Having said that I wonder if that example with the Boston Globe is sort of the old "Be Radiohead" example. In that situation Radiohead sold their album online for whatever you want to pay. It was touted as a good way to do business, because Radioheads sold a lot.
Later someone wrote satirical article telling other bands how they could do the same. Step 1 was "Be Radiohead".
In reality the reason for all the sales were ... they were Radiohead.
I wonder if the Boston Globe is at that scale where they can do that, while other places might not see any new subscribers.
They may have considered difficulty cancelling as a feature. It would probably look good in the retention metrics. Companies often hire consultants to tell them things that they already know but don't like to admit to themselves.
Man, the Boston Globe is way too expensive, but I'm still subscribed. After the marathon bombing, it hit me how crucial it is to have local reporters who aren't just on TV. Even though they get on my nerves sometimes, I keep shelling out the cash. I've lived in places where the last real paper shut down, and it's a massive loss that never gets replaced.
I'd say about 15-25% of Meetup's revenue comes from people who don't know they are still paying for a group, because its a subscription that only gets billed once every 6 months. So many groups are dead. Before the pandemic it might of been maybe 5-10% but afterwards its much much higher.
Odds are anyone you unsubscribe from will spam you in a newsletter. Even if you opt out, you'll be re-added a year or 2 later. I've learned to use certain gmail for certain sites/services to prevent them spamming up my personal domain emails.
I really hope they make it 1 click to cancel as a law, I've had to call in my CC as stolen at least 2 or 3 times to end something or to prevent some trial period from charging me.
I switched to using a custom domain + catchall email setup. So when I go to a retail store that requires an email to get a receipt, I just give them [email protected] and it will get delivered into my inbox. Retailers that don't honor the unsubscribe button just get the email address created and then set to bounceback as undeliverable.
This also does a great job of catching data leaks or willful sale of client and customer data.
Check out Privacy.com, they let you make virtual cards that you can limit or cancel whenever if things get fishy. I had to use this recently with a merchant who, after being unable to sell from their e-store on weekends left me wondering if I was going to be charged for this unprocessed order or not. The person I spoke to at the business had a 'gotcha' flair to their response about this, so I just cancelled the number before the conversation was over.
Many institutions allow you to issue yourself a digital card via your online banking/mobile app. You can turn it off whenever you want. I have digital cards for all my subscriptions in the event I have the problem you had. The digital cards all tie back to your physical one, but it allows you to give a different card number to the vendor that is not your actual plastic card number.
I understand that reminding people of dormant subscriptions might prompt cancellations, but I'd think the following test might be worth trying.
Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them.
I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting.
I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play.
Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.
I am reluctant to subscribe to anything nowadays. I contemplate hard and long before deciding to go ahead, more likely not going ahead. And this is mostly due to the rubbish client relationships many providers allow for themselves. Most times it does not worth the effort.
The pain I went through to stop The Economist has made me reluctant to subscribe to anything too - and I run a subscription publication business. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this approach hurts revenue overall.
It's tough because everything is a subscription now. In the early days of steaming products like Netflix was great because you had access to so much for a small price. Now subscriptions services are so granular so you really have to pick and choose.
I wonder if as the subscription landscape gets more “toxic”, it’s a net negative for the whole industry. Even above-board offerings will get ignored by would-be customers that no longer trust.
A thoughtful article, not run of the mill kvetching.
It includes comments from some of the newspapers about the thinking behind their cancellation processes and some considerations of the reasoning, which, regardless whether I agree, is enlightening.
As a side note, there’s hardly any outrage, which I find somehow refreshing reading an article on this or any other topic.
Some years ago, I was subscribed for The Economist. You needed to call support in order to cancel. Every 3 months I'd do the same ritual: call support; tell them I want to cancel; they offer 50% discount for 3 months sub; I tell them I've reconsidered. Every. Goddamn. Three. Months. And what about all the people who don't know about this? Why can't magazines treat their subscribers... you know... fairly?! Why do I have to be a terrible human being and lie my lay to the actual price?
I started to subscribe to The Economist online and when I got to the payment info thought to check how hard it would be to cancel, and it turns out there's no online way to cancel, you have to talk to customer service rep. I read a number of reports about the process and some were absolutely livid about getting the runaround trying to cancel.
I contacted support to check if this had changed and not only did they confirm that there is no way to cancel online, I was told that this is actually for my benefit! This was conveyed with a lot of corporate-speak trying rationalize the decision (or just confuse me).
An organization being greedy is one thing, but I really don't appreciate being gaslit about it. It's too bad because I like their work, but I won't support these kinds of business practices.
This crap is what prevents me from subscribing US press. I would love to some of their titles but I am a foreigner and there's no way I am going to call a number in US to cancel.
I am also not desperated to create burner cards for paying for those.
It's interesting how these companies seem to optimize for retention by making it hard to unsubscribe but that's probably not optimal for acquiring customers.
I would probably subscribe to the nytimes but I've been discouraged by the stories of how hard it is to cancel.
What I learned a while ago was that both NYT and Economist will never get another dime from me, because both made me angry when I tried to unsubscribe. As a side effect, I'm far more suspicious of subscriptions now and especially suspicious of newspaper subscriptions, so my default answer is just 'no.' And certainly not until I can prove that the cancellation is just as easy as the initial subscription.
Every year in December I start seeing these nice ads from Economist, FT, NYT and all others and I'm really tempted to subscribe to one of them. But then I go to Reddit and look up reviews about unsubscribing, and see things like "simply call some international USA phone number, wasting a lot of money in the process and when/if you'll get to a human on the other end just dictate them an obscure number not visible anywhere except during the new subscription process" and I nope the fuck out of this idea. The Economist alone lost probably a thousand dollars from me only, which I would have wasted in a recurring sub, like I already do with video streaming services or MMOs. If only they had a sane unsubscribe option online. And the longer I avoid expensive online press, the more I will probably avoid it altogether, since now I know that I'm really not missing much in the very long run, over several years.
Boston Globe forced you to call a boiler room call center as recently as 2021 (when I cancelled) where you had to talk with harried, demoralized staff hurriedly reading through retention scripts. Glad to see they’ve done away with it. NYT still does it, though.
I canceled before they rolled out the online cancellation. I had subscribed early during the pandemic to try and have something high quality and local to follow. The online version of the paper is a lot worse than the old paper version was years ago when I got it. Lots of clickbait articles and articles intended to rile up online subscribers and drive engagement in the comments.
When I went to cancel the process was absolutely horrific. And it also revealed just how scammy the pricing is. The globe would be happy to let you have a subscription for $1 a month. But if you just go in and subscribe they will charge you 10x, 20x, or 30x that amount. You only get access to the cheaper prices once you tried to cancel and had to fight it out with the representatives on the phone. It sounds like the new online cancellation process is something everyone should do to lower their prices even if they don't intend to cancel. If you just sign up they might charge you $30/month, but as soon as you try to cancel they'll give you a way better deal.
You really don't need to read more than 1-2 newspapers. They all publish the same stories about the same topics, rarely anything different. To reduce time wasted just summarize their content with an ai bot of your choice. Happy life.
> In March, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a “click to cancel” rule that would make it as easy for consumers to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up.
Unsubscribing (and cancelling any other recurrent payments) should be made from bank's website. It is noteworthy that banks allow companies to charge you but do not display list of subscriptions and do not allow to easily cancel them. There is no hope that banks will change, so I hope cryptocurrency wallets will fix this problem.
It resonates with my own experience. It seems rather counterintuitive that, in an era of growing digitalization and consumer-centric services, some newspapers continue to employ tactics that hinder the cancellation process.
I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. While it's understandable that newspapers would want to retain subscribers, making the cancellation process a nightmare only tarnishes their reputation and, in the long run, may result in even more subscribers seeking alternative sources of information.
A better approach would be for newspapers to invest in improving their digital offerings, making the subscription process more flexible, and providing subscribers with value-added services. This could include offering customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. By focusing on the needs of subscribers and creating a seamless user experience, newspapers would be better positioned to maintain their relevance and grow their subscriber base.
It's high time that newspapers prioritize customer satisfaction and transparency. A frustrating cancellation process does nothing but alienate subscribers and contribute to the decline of the print media industry.
Are there any banks that offer subscription cancellation natively?
I feel like it's a feature that could live at that level rather than deal with these patterns. Within the bank's app, a list of recurring payments or 'subscriptions' with a cancel button. Cancelling results in a failed payment authorization response to the merchant psp the next time they hit you for $, who can then treat it as a cancellation.
[+] [-] ianvisits|2 years ago|reply
When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one.
If it's hard to unsubscribe - then their last memory is a bad one, and it's even harder to persuade that person to resubsubscribe again.
This is admitedly more applicable to industries with a lot of annual churn between suppliers - such as insurance, internet providers, power suppliers etc -- but it should be a rule of thumb for all companies.
[+] [-] ziml77|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|2 years ago|reply
When I want to subscribe to something on my iPad, I don’t think about it very long because I know it’s going to be easy to quit. It will sometimes cost more but I’ve been happy to pay it because that’s what easy quitting is worth to me.
[+] [-] petee|2 years ago|reply
I hate to turn my back on local news, but its owned by Gannett now who've ruined it, so I guess I'm ok with it failing. Sad though...
[+] [-] gs17|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinventullo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freedomben|2 years ago|reply
T-Mobile, Google Fi, Ting, and (somewhat) Mint mobile all made it really easy to leave. I've been back to them a few times and I recommend them to others in my life. That $30 from Verizon cost them $100 per month in revenue for what likely would have been many, many years. It's just such a silly short-term approach IMHO.
[+] [-] JohnFen|2 years ago|reply
I'm really surprised that so many companies don't understand this. It's just the old wisdom of "don't burn your bridges".
[+] [-] TheFreim|2 years ago|reply
When I purchase a new subscription the first thing I do is cancel renewal so I can do it manually. When a site makes this easy I'm actually much more likely to end up re-subscribing and leaving it on automatic since I know I'll be able to have peace of mind and cancel any time.
[+] [-] armchairhacker|2 years ago|reply
I was waiting for "so that's why we re-subscribe customers after a 6-month hiatus / every time we update our mail delivery service". At least that's what some companies have done to me...
[+] [-] brewdad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] not_the_fda|2 years ago|reply
I will never resubscribe again because the cancellation process was so horrible.
[+] [-] IG_Semmelweiss|2 years ago|reply
Yet, anyone with basic reading comprehension can read this thread, and conclude these dark patterns are destroying the brand with existing customers.
And...those customers are not coming back. Ever.
Where is the A/B test for brand suicide ?
[+] [-] raincole|2 years ago|reply
How did you, exactly, learn this lession? Or you just personally hope that the world would work like this?
[+] [-] amelius|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhardcastle|2 years ago|reply
I'd love SiriusXM at the promo rates they offer, or even at full price in a month where I know I'll be on the road for a while. I will never re-subscribe because they make cancelling so hostile.
[+] [-] peoplearepeople|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramijames|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sagebird|2 years ago|reply
“We wanted to make sure that didn’t clog up the phone lines and create a poor experience for any subscriber calling for any reason,” Brown said in an email. “We then started making it available to more subscribers based on market research that we conducted that showed subscribers wanted this.”
~~~
Reads like: After I hired a market research firm to gather opinions from my brother, I decided to stop poking him with a stick.
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|2 years ago|reply
Having said that I wonder if that example with the Boston Globe is sort of the old "Be Radiohead" example. In that situation Radiohead sold their album online for whatever you want to pay. It was touted as a good way to do business, because Radioheads sold a lot.
Later someone wrote satirical article telling other bands how they could do the same. Step 1 was "Be Radiohead".
In reality the reason for all the sales were ... they were Radiohead.
I wonder if the Boston Globe is at that scale where they can do that, while other places might not see any new subscribers.
[+] [-] glxxyz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkmk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobcoder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pers0n|2 years ago|reply
Odds are anyone you unsubscribe from will spam you in a newsletter. Even if you opt out, you'll be re-added a year or 2 later. I've learned to use certain gmail for certain sites/services to prevent them spamming up my personal domain emails.
I really hope they make it 1 click to cancel as a law, I've had to call in my CC as stolen at least 2 or 3 times to end something or to prevent some trial period from charging me.
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|2 years ago|reply
This also does a great job of catching data leaks or willful sale of client and customer data.
[+] [-] lagniappe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ru552|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mgkimsal|2 years ago|reply
Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them.
I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting.
I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play.
Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.
[+] [-] mihaaly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corbet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guybrush_T|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wanderingstan|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if as the subscription landscape gets more “toxic”, it’s a net negative for the whole industry. Even above-board offerings will get ignored by would-be customers that no longer trust.
[+] [-] jmbwell|2 years ago|reply
It includes comments from some of the newspapers about the thinking behind their cancellation processes and some considerations of the reasoning, which, regardless whether I agree, is enlightening.
As a side note, there’s hardly any outrage, which I find somehow refreshing reading an article on this or any other topic.
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|2 years ago|reply
Perhaps because it wasn’t his money or time being taken by these websites. It was his employers.
[+] [-] stodor89|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurp|2 years ago|reply
I contacted support to check if this had changed and not only did they confirm that there is no way to cancel online, I was told that this is actually for my benefit! This was conveyed with a lot of corporate-speak trying rationalize the decision (or just confuse me).
An organization being greedy is one thing, but I really don't appreciate being gaslit about it. It's too bad because I like their work, but I won't support these kinds of business practices.
[+] [-] Ralfp|2 years ago|reply
I am also not desperated to create burner cards for paying for those.
[+] [-] dmm|2 years ago|reply
I would probably subscribe to the nytimes but I've been discouraged by the stories of how hard it is to cancel.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yizahi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben7799|2 years ago|reply
I canceled before they rolled out the online cancellation. I had subscribed early during the pandemic to try and have something high quality and local to follow. The online version of the paper is a lot worse than the old paper version was years ago when I got it. Lots of clickbait articles and articles intended to rile up online subscribers and drive engagement in the comments.
When I went to cancel the process was absolutely horrific. And it also revealed just how scammy the pricing is. The globe would be happy to let you have a subscription for $1 a month. But if you just go in and subscribe they will charge you 10x, 20x, or 30x that amount. You only get access to the cheaper prices once you tried to cancel and had to fight it out with the representatives on the phone. It sounds like the new online cancellation process is something everyone should do to lower their prices even if they don't intend to cancel. If you just sign up they might charge you $30/month, but as soon as you try to cancel they'll give you a way better deal.
[+] [-] Raed667|2 years ago|reply
If I sign up with 3 clicks, it should be (at most) the same to unsubscribe.
[+] [-] gumballindie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codedokode|2 years ago|reply
Unsubscribing (and cancelling any other recurrent payments) should be made from bank's website. It is noteworthy that banks allow companies to charge you but do not display list of subscriptions and do not allow to easily cancel them. There is no hope that banks will change, so I hope cryptocurrency wallets will fix this problem.
[+] [-] anupj|2 years ago|reply
I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. While it's understandable that newspapers would want to retain subscribers, making the cancellation process a nightmare only tarnishes their reputation and, in the long run, may result in even more subscribers seeking alternative sources of information.
A better approach would be for newspapers to invest in improving their digital offerings, making the subscription process more flexible, and providing subscribers with value-added services. This could include offering customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. By focusing on the needs of subscribers and creating a seamless user experience, newspapers would be better positioned to maintain their relevance and grow their subscriber base.
It's high time that newspapers prioritize customer satisfaction and transparency. A frustrating cancellation process does nothing but alienate subscribers and contribute to the decline of the print media industry.
[+] [-] kylecazar|2 years ago|reply
I feel like it's a feature that could live at that level rather than deal with these patterns. Within the bank's app, a list of recurring payments or 'subscriptions' with a cancel button. Cancelling results in a failed payment authorization response to the merchant psp the next time they hit you for $, who can then treat it as a cancellation.
Or does it not exist because incentives.
[+] [-] anthk|2 years ago|reply
Everything else is too much to read.