Plus, if you give in and subscribe to the WSJ they go out of their way to make it difficult to unsubscribe, requiring users to call in by phone and be subjected to a sales pitch just to cancel the recurring charges. It's a very scummy retention tactic.
It's so common, it's ridiculous. The NYT has the same policy, and you have to call in on certain days of the week at certain times. They even published an opinion piece decrying the practice while participating in it.
The call centre employees will even discount your subscription to try to keep you. Not at all cool.
I finally started letting Amex sort this out. I'll attempt to call to cancel a service (during my local business hours), follow up with a short letter if the call is unsuccessful.
After that, any new charges that appear result in a call to the Amex Fraud Dept. Sadly there have been a couple services I had to do this with.
I had the same thing with the Times (Murdoch-owned) in the UK. I remember that I got through on the phone but they said that it wouldn't be possible to cancel my account without charging the next two (monthly) billing cycles.
I cancelled my card and somehow they managed to cancel the account once payment didn't go through.
Only fucking subscribed because of one article we were in, ended up paying for almost a year of none-usage.
Fyi: I subscribed briefly through their iOS app. The Apple app store allows you to easily manage subscriptions made through any app from the store, which made it much easier to cancel.
I had a subscription to sugarsync for a few months longer than I needed due to their "cancellation dept" only being open a few hours a day in some far off timezone. Hateful.
