What the author didn't mention explicitly is the obvious sludge techniques used in media subscription models.
(https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclope...)
In case of The Economist, to which I'm subscribed, you have to call them...on a phone...like it's the 80s
The worst offender of the type is scribed.com that has a fake "we're sorry to see you leave" page before you actually hit the final "yes I confirm that I want to unsubscribe" button. This resulted in at least 30 dollars extra that they got from me.
Despite all their faults, that's the main reason I won't subscribe to anything unless I can go through the intermediaries of Apple, Amazon, or Paypal. When I decided to cancel the NY Times, all I had to do is stop payment via Paypal. Didn't have to deal with their retention department, though that department did send me a couple of vaguely angry emails. Still subscribed to the Kindle version of the Economist, but cancellation is just a click away at Amazon. The price I pay for that is non-access to articles on their web site, but I can live with that.
Because someone figured out that hiring one person on minimum wage to handle a phone queue results in them retaining more people than providing a nice and easy unsubscribe option.
It's not like this is being advertised when you are subscribing to some service. "Subscribe now and if you ever want to cancel, we'll make you pay! PS. We know where you live."
What could the consumer do apart from relying on word of mouth to avoid such services?
> It's not like this is being advertised when you are subscribing to some service. "Subscribe now and if you ever want to cancel, we'll make you pay! PS. We know where you live."
They could at least ask. But I understand your point.
> What could the consumer do apart from relying on word of mouth to avoid such services?
I'm not sure I understand you. Are you implying you can't follow the news without using these services? Only through word of mouth? If that's what you mean, there are ways to follow the news while avoiding paywalls. I do.
One of the web-only paper I'm subscribed to require an actual letter, with an "Avis de réception", that requires you to go to the post office to get the proper, special envelope, like it's the XIXth century all over again. For a web-only publication, that's quite rich.
How do you pay that doesn't just let you cancel the payments on your end via your bank's/service's website? I'm no very familiar with this problem but I'd expect I could just tell my bank to stop honoring the subscription.
