to expect to be able to cancel a magazine subscription?

[user143677433]

You used to be able to sign up to a magazine subscription and cancel it with a week/months notice or maybe a little more.

Now it’s like trying to leave a cult!

There is a kids magazine that I have been trying to cancel for two years now. It keeps arriving. Every week. Mostly they don’t charge for it, but every few months they take a random direct debit amount.

Rather than learning my lesson, I signed up to a popular science magazine for me. I hadn’t realised it was weekly rather than monthly, so there is just too much content for me to get through so after a year I tried to cancel. No luck by email, but I did get a response through the contact form today. They are please to confirm … my last issue will be 19th October! Three and a half months from now! And nowhere on the website can I find any reference to cancellation terms.

So … AIBU to expect to be able cancel a subscription without having to pay for another 15 copies of the magazine?

That sounds painful. Why don’t you just cancel the direct debits?

Just cancel the DD with your online banking.

Is it a direct debit or is it done through your card number?

What did the original Ts & Cs say?

I have cancelled after cheap trials with no trouble at all.

If its a recurring card payment then you can cancel it through your bank

I’m having the same problem, I paid by card but the magazine should have stopped months ago. Magazines Direct don’t return messages etc. Getting pretty fed up now!

The kids one I think is direct debit, so I could try that.

the science one is a “preapproved payment” through PayPal. No idea how I stop it being approved.

Is it WPB?

Your bank can cancel recurring card payments if the company arent doing it for you

You can cancel the direct debit through your banking app and you can cancel the PayPal preapproved payment permission in your PayPal account.

How do I cancel it in PayPal? If I go into “bills” it shows other recurring payments but not this.

1 Go to the PayPal website and login to your account
2 Head to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Payments’
3 You should see a section entitled ‘Manage pre-approved payments’ under ‘Pre-approved payments’
4 Find the recurring payment you want to cancel, select it and click the ‘Cancel’ button.

If you are on apple look at reoccuraning charges in the app store or the google play store if Android. They may be coming out of that and your paypal is linked.

Are you still being charged?

With the kids one I have had confirmation of cancellation but the magazine keeps arriving. I joke “at least we are not being charged for it” but then I get randomly charged.

I’ll try cancelling the direct debit but I worry it will affect my credit rating or something.

The New Scientist, by any chance?

I had to cancel my direct debit for bloody good food magazine as I got trapped in a loop of ‘we need your subscription number’ and I didn’t bloody have it! It’s solved it.

It won’t affect your credit rating. I’ve done it loads of times. They’ll soon stop sending it.

Yes it is. And the kids one is The Phoenix. Not sure why I was being so coy about it 😅

Have you had similar?

If it’s New Scientist you will also have fun trying to unsubscribe to the daily emails which no amount of ‘unsubscribing’ will ever truly rid you of them.

May the odds be forever in your favour.

OMG I can’t believe how many pre-approved payment things there were on my PayPal! I don’t think you can see them on the app. I had to log in via the browser.

I will give that a try. To be fair, for The Phoenix, at this point I would happily pay them to not send it 😂

Where is the "settings" on PayPal? I can't find it anywhere??

New scientist is a subscription for x months, so thats why the last issue date isn’t the next magazine out. So whatever subscription you chose naturally comes to an end in October.

I had to log on via the browser rather than the app.

Clicked on the hamburger on the left.

then the little settings cog that comes up in that menu.
then you should have tabs “account” “security” etc
Click on “payments” tab, then you will see a button for “manage preapproved payments”

I didn’t choose a three and a half month subscription though 😕