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Comment by t0mas88 | Hacker News Reader

That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up. So if you can signup online then you must be able to cancel online.

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> "That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up."

Unfortunately I don't think that's true. I'm looking at you, beer52.com! [1]

(And yes, they were doing this long before the UK left the EU, and are still at it today)

[1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F

Yes, beer52.com is atrocious for this also. I tried over a couple of weeks in lunch breaks and never got through.

Eventually I sent an email to some random customer support email I found complaining and they actually did it.

I subscribe to Der Spiegel (German weekly news magazine) and as far as I can tell it can’t be cancelled without e-mailing them.

This is unfortunate because although I can read German, I can’t write or speak it, so figuring out how to write that e-mail would be a headache.

Edit: Thanks to aboalarm.de, which I learned about from this thread, I have learned the correct formula to use:

> Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

> hiermit kündige ich mein oben genanntes Abonnement Ihrer Zeitschrift fristgerecht zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt.

so if I do ever decide to cancel, this thread has been quite useful.

You could email them in English. Der Spiegel is large and international enough that it's reasonable to expect them to cope with that.

You’re probably right. I haven’t tried.

It probably depends on which country is handling your subscription. With a German address, they don't have to consider any request in any language other than German.

Europe is big. This is most definitely not illegal in Germany, in fact it is the preferred practice by anti-consumer companies.

A recently passed German law requires (among other changes) an online cancel button, however companies don't have to implement it until July 2022 unfortunately.

https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/vertraege-reklamat...

It sure as hell doesn't work like this for the newspaper Le Monde (in France). Sure you can sign/resign with Apple/Google but if you sign with e-mail, you have to mail a physical letter to resign (8Euros one with proof of delivery and all)

Source?

IIRC it's a law that is just a few months old.

That's not really a source.

It's a possible explanation for older anecdotes about having to cancel by fax.

Here is the Dutch implementation, because it's the first I could find in English: https://business.gov.nl/regulation/automatic-renewal-subscri... As is says there "Consumers must be able to cancel their agreement in exactly the same way as they signed up for them."

It's based on an EU directive, but a recent one so not all countries have it live yet. More details on the EU directive and the German implementation starting next year: https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/211006-new-two-click...

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