My economist sub renewed at a cheaper/more reasonable rate (I think the common $130/yr that's at least better than newsstand) but I just think their subscription services are in the utter dark ages. Changing anything (Updating an expired credit card, change of address, etc) is painful.

Address was pretty easy, but if you don’t have the link they emailed you when your credit card expires then it is pretty much impossible to update your payment information.

What happens if you block them, or your credit card, so they'll get no money?

Is there any risk they'd sue you? Or other auto renew services, what do you, or others, think — do they sometimes sue their customers whose credit card expired?

That sounds annoying b.t.w., having to call them etc.

I believe it’s fine to simply email them. The self service on the Economists website is notoriously bad. It’s not really because it’s not working or that hard to use, it’s just insanely poorly organized.

Cancelling my Economist subscription was the biggest hassle.

You need write an email with order date, current billing cycle, reference number and more.

All the while there you can manage parts of your subscription through a portal. They just try to make cancellation as laborious as possible.

That’s just insane, other than trying make cancellation harder there’s no reason that your supscription number shouldn’t be sufficient.

It’s uncommon, but some will send your account to a collection agency, which has automated the process of causing you enough trouble that you’re likely to just pay if it’s a small amount.

This happened to me, but I had to laugh when I discovered that the agency's tactics were limited to a few stroppy letters and a couple of phone calls that went:

"Hello sir, this is (collections agency). Can you confirm your address, please?" "No." "I'll have to end the call then." "Okay."

I would feel awful if I caved in and paid money I don't owe just because a company told me to.

I don't know the situation in US, or other places, but companies don't have time to deal with legal issues, regarding user debt, so they delegate this process to collector agencies.

And those agencies are very happy to assist, since they get a % for their work, and when the money is big. Most of they time it's very productive. Letters and calls are just the first step. A debt of 300$ can get to x000 pretty fast (debt, fees, lawyers). And then they go to court, put financial blocking on your assets, there is a judiciary person in charge of evaluating your assets, bank accounts, they can even freeze your debt from your bank accounts if you are refusing to pay a legal debt.

If you are abroad they will happily wait for you when you will get back, or get in touch via one of their foreign agency and let you know they are near.

If they would really want to get you in trouble they can inform the foreign local authorities about your problems, so depending on the case they can create problems for you.

They claim that, but I got around it with an email to support.

I cancelled my subscription in 2018 via e-mail.