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Comment by strenholme | Hacker News Reader

Since I live in California, which has a “click to subscribe means you must have click to cancel” regulation, this isn’t an issue for me. After the New York Times published their inaccurate hit piece attacking Scott Alexander and Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten, I was able to cancel online just clicking my way through.

I now subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, which looks to be the most neutral newspaper right now. Being a California resident, I have a special “California only” cancel button on my user control panel.

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I eventually opened a case with VISA to get them to stop payment to the Wall Street Journal because every time I called to cancel, I got a message that their call centers were closed due to COVID. As far as I can tell there was literally no way to cancel for several months during 2020. I do enjoy their reporting as a more right-leaning alternative to the New York Times but I have learned my lesson and will never again subscribe to WSJ.

Meanwhile, the I have cancelled the NYT several times relatively painlessly (via online chat) and even been offered a discount to remain a subscriber, which I view as a much more consumer-friendly retention tactic.

If anyone from WSJ reads this (unlikely, ha), you should know that it does not matter how good your reporting is - if you use predatory tactics to prevent cancellations you will turn off many potential readers simply out of principle.

I called to cancel last year. Then I had to call again a couple months later because I noticed that, despite calling, waiting on hold, requesting to cancel and then being told that my subscription was cancelled, they didn't cancel it, and the charges continued to go through on my card.

I was able to cancel my WSJ subscription last year through an online chat (it was almost identical to how I unsubscribed from the NYTimes). I definitely would have preferred a cancel button though. A few months later I resubscribed after they offered me a deal. My only issue with them is that they're kind of expensive.

Canceling aside, I don't think the WSJ is particularly neutral, but perhaps it does appeal to your sensibilities (note, however, those are not the same).

I find WSJ to take particularly corporatist/capitialist views on things. Which is fine for things business, I suppose, but I've read many articles from WSJ that are basically "hey government sucks, am i rite?" which is not neutral.

Not that HN is really the place for this discussion, but the _news_ section of the WSJ is pretty neutral and well written. The _opinion_ page is very slanted towards "corporatist/capitalist views".

That's an easy thing to say because it's more difficult to disprove. You could say that about the NYT, Al Jazeera, NPR, CNN, etc etc.

Of course the topics that an institution choose to talk about also biases it. If you spend all of your front page space complaining about unions and talking about business, that is a different bias than one who dedicates column inches to stories about the environment. Or different from once that dedicates column inches to ones about social issues.

But even if you go on wsj.com, I see "Biden EV Tax Credit Puts UAW Over Environment, Nonunion Auto Makers Say," -- which is such an interesting way to frame the topic, but certainly not what I would call neutral. The topic pits UAW versus Nonunion automakers.

If you want neutral news, in terms of content and in terms of story coverage, there are better options than the WSJ.

  "but certainly not what I would call neutral. The topic pits UAW versus Nonunion automakers."

How is that not neutral? It's an unambiguous statement of fact that the tax credit is favoring unionized automakers over non-unionized automakers, and that this particular distortion/difference in tax credit has no environmental justification and is designed purely to help out unions.

> How is that not neutral?

the "news" headline is literally just a quote from only one side/perspective of the issue

I don't look for a neutral paper, because I don't think it exists.

Instead, I want to hear the smartest people from the left and the smartest people from the right argue their best points in a calm, reasoned way and check their facts before printing.

Wall Street Journal robbed me this way.

I clicked to subscribe to a paid membership for both print and web. Then when I wanted to cancel, they sent me to a chatbot. The chatbot told me told it had unsubscribed me. Three months later (I wasn't at home), I realized WSJ was still charging me monthly for a WSJ subscription. I called them to see what is going on, they told me you can only unsubscribe via a call. I told them I had used the bot which was the only option on the site and it confirmed that I had been unsubscribed. The person told me it only unsubscribed you from Barron's not WSJ.

So yup, after 10 years of loyalty to them, they definitely burnt me and I will never subscribe to them or any of their publications ever again.

After reading the article on Pewdiepie I stopped thinking about WSJ as a serious newspaper.

Can you link to this article? A lot of people consider it a serious newspaper still so there is an apparent disconnect here.

I think it's this one [1] and this is the text from it without WSJ paywall [2], but the main issue was with the video included in WSJ not in the article text itself. If I remember it correctly it is few clips from Pewdiepie's videos stitched together out of context to make him look bad. Note that I am not saying that he did not push his jokes too far but still a "serious newspaper" should not take short clips out of context, like if you took any 10 seconds from Dave Chappelle last special that would make him seem like a horrible person.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube... [2]: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/disney-severs-ties-wit...

Sorta off topic but I read a “not that we’ll know old novel” recently and was surprised to find out that PDP read it as party of his book club (which I didn’t know existed). It changed my view of him a bit that he reads serious books and talks about them, whereas I thought he only fucked around to entertain children.

Yeah, there certainly is a ton of videos where he just "fucked around to entertain children" but he said it himself that he could just keep doing it forever. There was more serious side to him, like the book club, but I have no idea what he does now.

That is crazy. I spent 20 minutes trying to cancel the WSJ. It is infuriating.

The thing the WSJ doesn’t get is this: I wouldn’t had subscribed to them if I didn’t reside in California and didn’t have my special “California cancel” button.

WSJ was the first service I thought of when I saw this headline. For such a revered publication, WSJ's customer retention tactics are scummy.

This would seem like an obvious topic for rival publications to run with.

www.privacy.com

I recently tried to cancel the WSJ

Them: Hello

Me: Hello, cancel my account

Them: I'm sorry to hear that, what is the cause of

Me: I just want to cancel my account

Them: Lets try and understand what we can improve

Me: I just want to cancel my account

Them: Sir, i understand but perhaps we can explore other options

Me: CANCEL MY ACCOUNT

Them: ....

Me: Are you having a hard time understanding English

<this literally happened this week> receptionist says he was born in America and found it insulting that I suggested he doesn't understand English.

Me: Glad you understand English. Cancel my account.

Them: We have several options available

Me: Cancel my account in 30sec or I'll contest it with the credit card company

<this literally happened this week> receptionist says in that case they will continue to bill me. FYI: False, Ive now made a documented attempt to cancel my account and they didnt. You can contest it with your credit card company.

Me: Cancel my account in 30sec or I'll contest it with the credit card company, note we're speaking at 2:14pm eastern on 15 november 2021 and i'm noting i tried to cancel my account and you are refusing.

Them: cancels account.

Exactly how I imagined my call would go like, almost word for word. Society has been way to gullible to phone-calls and when they try shit like this to me I make extra work to react very harshly.

I also confirm with them that we speak the same language, do what I said and don't try ANY bullshit on me. Make them as uncomfortable as possible. Not for me, but for the next person they're calling.

Hold on here, does that mean that Cancel button only appears based on location?

yes.

I believe for the New York Times it’s based on billing address. So if you change your billing address to California you should get the cancel button.

Wow. Maybe I'll actually try this. I've wanted to subscribe at various points but knew it would be basically impossible to cancel so never bothered

Use a burner card from privacy.com, which lets you put any zip code you want. Then pick your favorite California zip code (that isn't 90210 because that gets flagged) and away you go!

I've subscribed and cancelled the NYT several times over the years. Cancelling has never been "basically impossible." At worst, I've had to do an online chat and say "please cancel" three times that took 5 minutes of my time.

Most recently (a couple months ago), I was able to cancel online w/o having to interact with a human at all.

The NYT is a really mixed bag and regularly infuriates me, but it also has some columnists I really like, and occasionally has some terrific long form reporting. Hence why I've subscribed and cancelled so many times.

I most recently cancelled my NYT sub a couple months ago. I was able to do so w/o interacting with anyone. I'm in NC.

I think they've just finally relented on forcing you to interact with a human.

They have also allowed me to keep reading past my subscription termination point, but they keep asking me to re-subscribe. At some point, I assume I'll start getting blocked entirely.

This is why I always enter a fake address in CA :)

That doesn't work if they use your billing address, unless your billing address is in CA, in which case you're probably located there anyway.

You can use Privacy.com to generate a one-time use credit card number that lets you use any fake address you want. It will charge properly and you can set limit

exactly my case. this is why I sometimes subscribe but only on Apple iOS devices, which helps me cancel all those things much easier... and cheers! I also subscribe to the WSJ. A little bit biased here and there but very high quality and neutral. Reading nyt, washpost, etc. can be very exhausting.

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