A bit off topic, but this pattern is the worst. It happened to me with Hellosign. I signed up for the free trial and never remembered to cancel. I saw the charge last year and thought “oh well,” then forgot to cancel again this year. I literally did not login even once for a year, but then like clockwork they charged me $140. What annoyed me is that it seemed like they intentionally went radio silent for a year, so as to not remind me I was using their service. I received no marketing emails, no pre-billing email, and no receipt. They just silently charged me $140.

To their credit, they refunded me when I complained about this.

Personally I think it should be illegal to renew annual subscriptions without some kind of reminder that the bill is coming up, or an opportunity to cancel at some point, especially if you never even used the service. Heck, I might go so far as to say that annual billing should not be allowed.

Some credit card companies and banks will send you proactive reminders that you're about to be charged for an auto-renewal. If I'm purchasing a subscription, one of the advantages of doing so through an in-app purchase on iOS is that you get reminders and receipts from Apple.

I think that's what the new SCA regulations in Europe help with - they require confirmation and authorisation even for some recurring subscriptions so auto-renew becomes less of a blind process.

So I couldn't find the ability to subscribe annually (https://www.nytimes.com/subscription only offers me a weekly subscription) but at least right now they're pretty damn upfront that you're giving them your credit card and authorizing a recurring payment until you cancel:

"Your payment method will be automatically charged $4.00 every 4 weeks for the first year ($1.00 per week).

It will then be automatically charged $17.00 every 4 weeks thereafter, starting on (date) ($4.25 per week).

Your subscription will continue until you cancel. You can cancel anytime."

In your case, you may not have checked a box, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't similar language saying that you were opting in to a recurring payment. (It's not as if they're making you read a 5000-word EULA - it's right there front and center on the page in my case.) Not to mention that this is pretty standard practice across subscription-based businesses.

I do think it is good form for subscriptions to give customers advance notice of when their subscriptions will renew, though, and most don't. I would go so far as saying that I wouldn't mind if this was a requirement.

I'm not suggesting that the NYT corporation didn't have their bases covered legally, I'm sure it said somewhere that my subscription would autorenew, but I assure you it wasn't plain or obvious. In fact that is not what I'm used to from periodicals, which is part of why I was surprised. I have subscribed to magazines many times in my life, and I'm used to getting many "your subscription is about to run out" "only 2 issues left!" "last issue! Resubscribe today!" notifications with the magazines. Presumably this is what the times does as well if you subscribe in cash or check.

What really bothered me was they took the payment method itself as an indication that I wanted a different type of subscription. Check? 1 year subscription. Cash? 1 year subscription. Credit card? oh ho! You obviously want to subscribe from now until the end of eternity! And yes, they told me on the phone that my use of a CC was indication that I wanted to autorenew and that there's not a way to pay with CC that doesn't autorenew (at the time I spoke with them in early 2018).

Basically to the NYT: "because of the payment method you used, we are able to keep billing you" = "you must want us to keep billing you!" and that is complete bullshit.

I didn't mean to imply that your experience was otherwise; I apologize if it came off that way! The point I was making was just that this doesn't seem to be the case anymore, at least as far as I could find - it's pretty clearly stated upfront what you will be billed and when. This should always be the case.

May I ask how you subscribed? I agree it's pretty shady to offer multiple payment methods side-by-side with different terms, but I also haven't seen a lot of online merchants accepting cash/check.

I should have made it more clear that auto-renewing seems like the default specifically for subscriptions made online through the web or an app.

I forget, probably online. I was one of the many after Trump's election who thought "oh dang! I'd better start actually financially supporting the news reporting organizations upon whom I (and the nation) rely!" I later moved out of the country & I was informed that transferring my subscription was impossible (I'm in Toronto) and that was that.