Difficult cancellation from The Economist
Company
The Economist
Date
May 22, 2022
Industry
magazines
Description
The cancellation flow is the worst I’ve seen from a large international company. They require you to click through 3-4 screens that attempt to communicate the “value” of the product (pretty standard). As you progress through the cancellation workflow, the button for continuing with cancellation is deemphasized, while a button that takes you out of the cancellation workflow is featured very prominently. This was frustrating, but unfortunately, is all too common these days.
Once you get through this workflow, you reach a page that requires you to call a number or live chat someone between 8am and 6pm EST to complete the cancellation. Because I tried to cancel on a Sunday, I had to go through the process again on a Monday morning. When I got in contact with a customer support rep through the live chat, I expected to be able to cancel with a simple, “I would like to cancel.” In response to this, they took 3 minutes to reply, and then asked if I really wanted to cancel, because I may get value out of other parts of the product. This sort of “value reminder” response happened three times before I was finally able to cancel. In total, I had to have a 10+ minute conversation with the customer support rep before they canceled my subscription.
I’m sorry I didn’t record a video of it.