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Difficulty in cancelling subscription

Company

The Economist

Date

Oct 3, 2022

Industry

magazines

Description

Trivial self-service subscription through website
Deceptive subscription cancelation process. Appears as a simple button press, followed by a screen asking for confirmation and an option to select a reason from a set of choices. This does not cancel a subscription but presents three options: Contact customer support by phone, contact customer support by live chat, or keep the subscription. The live chat option was a needlessly drawn out series of retention tactics, while requests to confirm cancelation were ignored. A ~1 minute subscription process is countered by a nearly 20 minute chat.

The account management page design gives the strong appearance of trying to provide assurance that cancelation is as easy as updating other details. If the process had been disclosed up front its unlikely I’d have subscribed at all.

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