Same with me. In my case, the Economist, who does the same like the New York Times. Subscribing is a click, canceling is a call to a representative who will talk to me about how they "love to discuss a more affordable or flexible subscription option so that you can keep enjoying everything The Economist has to offer" https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/How-do-I-cancel-my...

The economist was my first experience with this tactic, and I promised myself I’d never sign up again, no matter how good a deal they offered.

If you want to avoid Economist business practices, but still access the coverage, I found DiscountMags to be fairly pain-free experience. They manage the customer info and billing, and have a "rate protect" feature, where they promise to get you exact same (or lower) price next year, or cancel the subscription otherwise.

Their regular prices are somewhat inflated, but registering a deal alert on slickdeals/etc. would get you annual pricing similar to https://slickdeals.net/f/14599963-1-year-of-the-economist-ma...

I remember that same experience, really annoying. These days I’ve been using Privacy.com which generates a one-time use CC for anything that I want to use for the free trial period. (I am in no way affiliated with this service btw, just a happy customer).

Many banks allow you to create a virtual CC.

Why can't there just be an option to subscribe for one year and it cancels? No auto-renewals, just a polite reminder it's about to expire. The world is filled with roach-motel dark patterns everywhere that I never subscribe to anything, and they're losing out on people like me.

Excellent! This is exactly what I describe in the post. This is why dark patterns are bad for the business.

I like the NYT for the occasional article. I subscribed for something that interested me, and then I had to chat with a support representative during the NYTs business hours to actually cancel.

Now I just don't read articles from the NYT.