> I was pleasantly surprised to find that about two-thirds of the newspapers on my list were easy or moderately easy to cancel
I was surprised by only ⅓ making things difficult until the rest of the sentence…
> requiring fewer than five minutes to discontinue and presenting few, if any, obstacles
Considering you can sign-up in a minute (except typing in CC details if you aren't using a stored payment method stored in your browser or a service like PayPal) I would class anything close to five minutes rather excessive, and I'd be less forgiving of any obstacles (an “are you sure, we can offer you a discount” I might accept, but not multiple nags or properly dark patterns).
I'd like to see a breakdown where easy and moderately easy are split. I know five minutes is hardly excessive, but being able to sign-up a couple of times faster that cancel I find irritating.
> As a valued subscriber…
That annoys me, perhaps overly I must admit, as much as “we value your privacy” and “your exclusive code”. Attempting to butter me up with a lie just makes them look scammy IMO. I know I'm no more valued than someone who signed up yesterday and someone who subscribed a while before me is no more valued either, just like I know that while the code is indeed unique (as everyone got a different random one) the pretence that I'm somehow getting special treatment when in fact everyone has been sent a code, again, feels scammy.
> phone calls with customer service representatives
I had this one when unsubscribing from New Scientist, a publication that at the time I felt was more reputable than to be deliberately inconvenient (I say “at the time” as they are now owned by the same parent company as the Daily Mail so these days I'd expect bad behaviour!). Signed up with a simple web form years before, had to cancel on the phone. In fairness the call was fairly short, lacking in hard-sell (there was an offer of a few months discounted IIRC), and I wasn't on hold for too long, so it could have been much worse. One mild concern was that I didn't get any confirmation by email/other so if they somehow kept taking money I had no evidence that I'd cancelled – but I made sure to cancel payments from my side to stop that from happening.
I was surprised by only ⅓ making things difficult until the rest of the sentence…
> requiring fewer than five minutes to discontinue and presenting few, if any, obstacles
Considering you can sign-up in a minute (except typing in CC details if you aren't using a stored payment method stored in your browser or a service like PayPal) I would class anything close to five minutes rather excessive, and I'd be less forgiving of any obstacles (an “are you sure, we can offer you a discount” I might accept, but not multiple nags or properly dark patterns).
I'd like to see a breakdown where easy and moderately easy are split. I know five minutes is hardly excessive, but being able to sign-up a couple of times faster that cancel I find irritating.
> As a valued subscriber…
That annoys me, perhaps overly I must admit, as much as “we value your privacy” and “your exclusive code”. Attempting to butter me up with a lie just makes them look scammy IMO. I know I'm no more valued than someone who signed up yesterday and someone who subscribed a while before me is no more valued either, just like I know that while the code is indeed unique (as everyone got a different random one) the pretence that I'm somehow getting special treatment when in fact everyone has been sent a code, again, feels scammy.
> phone calls with customer service representatives
I had this one when unsubscribing from New Scientist, a publication that at the time I felt was more reputable than to be deliberately inconvenient (I say “at the time” as they are now owned by the same parent company as the Daily Mail so these days I'd expect bad behaviour!). Signed up with a simple web form years before, had to cancel on the phone. In fairness the call was fairly short, lacking in hard-sell (there was an offer of a few months discounted IIRC), and I wasn't on hold for too long, so it could have been much worse. One mild concern was that I didn't get any confirmation by email/other so if they somehow kept taking money I had no evidence that I'd cancelled – but I made sure to cancel payments from my side to stop that from happening.