Why is it still so hard to work out how to cancel subscriptions?

Just to reiterate - new laws ARE coming in the UK, but not until 2026. And only for new contracts.

Gym memberships are particularly bad, there was a very funny sketch I saw on Instagram - it was about gyms in the US but could have easily applied to the UK. Basically you needed to go into the gym between 11 and 12 on one particular day to cancel your membership in person. It was a lot funnier than that, but that was the gist.

By the way, Sky was the company I was thinking of when I said they were bleating to the government about it being their business model. They want people to phone up so they can persuade them not to leave.

I had similar with NTL back in the day. They refused to speak to me because the account was in my husband's name. The money was coming out of an account in our joint names. I informed them of that and said I would cancel the direct debit if they didn't cooperate. They suddenly found that they could.

In your shoes I'd send Sky a stroppy, old-fashioned paper letter telling them that you want to cancel, that divorce is hardly rare and they are hiding behind data protection rules. Might be worth including a copy of the decree. Insist on a response within x days or you will report them to Ofcom and the ICO. I suspect it will work! Or write to the Times (ironic) - firms seem to get things done when the press get involved.

As for being obvious you are not Mister, isn't that transphobic these days :)

PS I would have thought you were out of contract so you could just cancel your DD and go elsewhere.

Kiehl's/L'Oréal did this to me. I could not unsubscribe no matter what I did. I ended up complaining to the ICO with evidence and my god did they move fast to unsubscribe me after they received a letter from the ICO.

Paypal is great for subscriptions, you can just stop them by logging onto Paypal and doing it there.

The Scottish Sky staff are usually lovely I have to say.

Have to say just had a really positive experience with Sky - managed to speak to a lovely lady in their Scottish call centre who was above and beyond helpful

And what's more annoying is having to call to cancel means their telephone staff are being held up on calls that are unnecessary leaving customers who genuinely need/want to call waiting longer. Even if they're separate teams, if they stopped this practice they could better staff the help teams.

Yes, there's no disguising why they make you phone them whatsoever. It isn't that they actually need to speak to you - it's just that they don't respect you enough to accept that you've chosen to leave them without demanding their chance to try to browbeat you into feeling pressured to stay; or even just to basically refuse to let you leave.

They see your money as theirs by right; and YOU are the obstacle standing between them and it.

I think it should be the law that if you can subscribe online, you should be able to cancel online. It's ridiculous that you have to ring up to cancel a digital subscription and is so obviously a deliberate obstacle they're putting up to stop people from cancelling. I sat on hold for 35 minutes to cancel it once.

It's always worth signing up for this stuff via Apple subscriptions or whatever the android equivalent is as then it's just a click of a button to cancel - the Times included.

That's shocking as most people don't have a printer these days.

There used to be an office of Fair Trading that dealt with these things but now the GOV page directs you to Citizens Advice.

You could contact your MP to try and get them to raise the issue? There must be many people in this situation, and not just gym memberships.

I recently cancelled amazon prime within about a minute. I was surprised it was that easy.
then I've just bought something and got a week free amazon prime for 99p....which I will cancel next week

They could be on quite dodgy ground these days, though, if they refuse to accept that somebody with an obviously female voice is not 'Mr' - leave themselves open to all kinds of lawsuits and cancellation.

I had this. I had to contact my XH in the end and ask him to do it, which was something I really didn’t want to do.

And so now I get marketing shit, addressed to him, delivered to my house, which he has never lived in, begging him to return to Sky.

They don’t give a fuck, do they?

I also put on nearly a stone as I was having a pastry with my ‘free’ coffee, so was really incentivised to cancel it!

Can you ring your bank and cancel it?

That is SO annoying. That's happened to me a few times. An email code and vy the time it comes through it's run out of time. That HAS to be deliberate because I can't see why having the time set to an hour or so makes any difference to them at all!

I actually told Laithwaite’s I had died to get rid of them. They kept ringing me up. I still get the urge to hide behind the sofa when the advert appears on the telly.

I can’t cancel my Sky because the account is in my ex-husband’s name and they won’t let me change it despite having paid the bill from my bank account in my name for the past 5 years. I can do basic things on the app but anything major you have to speak to someone and then it becomes obvious that I’m not ‘Mr’ 😫

I had this problem when I wanted to cancel my Pret coffee monthly subscription.

I needed to input a code that they emailed to me. Fine, but the email came maybe 15 minutes or so after I requested it. I input it straightaway, but it was no longer valid, it needed to be input within 10 minutes of requesting it.

I went through this process many, many times before Pret were willing to actually cancel it at their end.

It's called "nudge and sludge". Nudge is how they make it v easy to do things they want you to do, like sign up for things/ order things, and sludge is where they make it difficult to do things they don't want you to do, like cancelling/ returning items etc.

It can also be used for good- for example employers that enrol you in the pension/ healthcare scheme unless you opt out have higher take up than those that make you actively opt in/ complete forms etc.

There was a recent legal challenge (I think in the US though) where the "reasonable degree of sludge" was being considered- i.e. when is it a breach of consumer rights and when is it just good customer retention. Media subscriptions were the thing it centred on.

Yes, it is infuriating. And then companies make it nigh on impossible to find a contact number on their website.

I think with the Times you have to be on the desktop site to cancel. However, the first time I tried, I gave up after an hour of frustration and called them. The second time I managed it myself but it wasn’t easy. Another difficult one is Spotify, almost impossible to find the cancellation button on that app.

I’m calling today to cancel my Sky - looking forward to several attempts, being cut off and many hours on hold listening to lift music.

I found Apple tv really hard to cancel from my phone. Managed it on an actual computer.