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

[plarn]

I mean I know WHY, but it's so grabby. I'm a reasonably intelligent woman but trying to work out how to cancel my audible account just took me much longer than it should have. And the Amazon music subscription my kids somehow signed up for when playing with our Alexa even though we have Spotify .

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.

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!

Can you ring your bank and cancel it?

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

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?

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 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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

@sharpclawedkitten yep, you can upgrade your package online but good luck downgrading or cancelling I wouldn't even mind so much if they genuinely gave good offers but so often the retention offers are shite these days. No it's just a test of your patience.

Totally this. I want to cancel Audible as I'm struggling to find things to use the credits on but if I cancel I lose all the unused credits - which I've bloody paid for. I actually can't understand how it's possible for them to remove those. But as I refuse to be ripped off in that way I am locked into paying until I've used the outstanding credits - even though the lack of things to get is the reason I want to cancel.

Head exploding basically.

I cancelled my ex husband's sky account by just saying that I was him. I had all the passwords and the person on the phone didn't date say 'but you are not a man' although they did ask me a few times if I was Mr X

I have to say my experience this morning was very easy to downsize my package. Done with immediate effect and at a better price than advertised.

I was expecting hassle but it was really straightforward and the lady was really chatty and friendly.

A friend of mine said if you click "unsubscribe" from emails that shows your account is active and they'll keep sending emails....which seems to defeat the object! I've no idea how these things work but now you get sent receipts by email then it seems you are bombarded by every company you ever buy anything from.
I bought a photo frame for my mum in 2011, the company must have sent me emails for the next 10 years, I was sure I had unsubscribed at least once!

TwistedWonder

best of luck!