Last month, I tried to cancel my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Much to my surprise, there was no option for me to cancel online.
I then found out that if you’re a WSJ subscriber, and you live outside of California, Maine, or Vermont, you have to call the Journal’s customer service centre to cancel your subscription.
California, Maine, and Vermont, on the other hand, have consumer protection laws where businesses must provide an online option for users to cancel their subscription.
I can’t understand the WSJ’s logic here.
Making money off a complicated cancellation process is a short term play—highly unlikely to result in long term brand loyalty, trust, or shareholder value.
The inverse of this—giving your customers the ability to walk away at any point in time, and retaining them because your product is excellent—is the kind of long term game I’d rather play.