How to Cancel Your Subscription Online, Even If the Company Doesn’t Want It
Most services are easy to sign up for. You enter some information, credit card numbers and shazam! A subscription is born. The reverse is not always the case. Many companies make it harder to cancel their services than it is to sign up, which should be illegal. And in some places it is, a fact that you can use to your advantage.
I wrote earlier about how the FTC cracks down on this type of shady activity, and how, among other things, they expect companies to follow a simple rule: canceling a service should be as easy as signing up. to that. To show how intimidating and powerful the FTC really is (not so much), most companies haven’t changed their behavior at all.
A long time ago I signed up online for a newspaper that offered a good introductory course. The newspaper kept raising its monthly fee until I could justify the cost. So, it was time to cancel – except that the website’s cancel page only suggested I call them, with no option to cancel online. Fantastic, let me find time to call the newspaper.
Everything went as expected: the rep was very upset to hear that I was canceling my subscription and then informed me that I could keep my subscription at a “special rate”. No thanks, I’d like to cancel please. But apparently only for me was an even better special rate! No thanks, just cancel please . To this, the representative replied, “Sir, if you unsubscribe, how are you going to read the news?” JUST CANCEL. . SUBSCRIPTION.
Wouldn’t it be better to just press a few buttons? Me too.
You can cancel these subscriptions online
Forcing to call is not allowed when the subscription takes 30 seconds online. But if the FTC is going to do nothing but warn or rely on ordinary people to report these shady companies, there is something you can do to fight back: lie.
As it turns out, this isn’t a universal problem: some states have laws requiring companies to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up. California is a prime example , as of 2018, the state is requiring businesses to offer California customers an online cancellation option. Paradise.
If you’re one of the 290 million US citizens who don’t live in California, that’s fine. You just need the company in question to think you live in a state that requires them to offer you online cancellation. All you have to do is change your billing address to a valid address in the state and you’re done. Go to Google Maps, choose your favorite house in California and pretend to live in it for a minute while unsubscribing from news.
This idea comes from this tweet , sent in response to Marquez Brownlee’s thread about a questionable unsubscribe. It turns out New York has similar laws , and switching to a New York billing address also caused the hitherto-missing “Cancel Subscription” button to appear on the Wall Street Journal’s website.
I hope we will see some federal legislation in this direction. Until then, we will need to rely on the laws of individual states and jump to them for a few minutes while we cancel our predatory subscriptions.