I cancelled my NYT subscription a couple of years ago and had to chat with customer "service" to cancel. One of the things they asked me about was keeping the crossword subscription ($20/year), which I might have done. But I was so irritated by the annoying process that I just wanted to cancel everything. So they definitely lost money thanks to their "customer retention" tactics.
Same here. And you have to call on East Coast business hours (I'm west coast). I am a crossword aficionado and would enjoy having the NYT crossword puzzle fresh each day. No way am I keeping a subscription that was so hard to cancel.