Cancelling Subscriptions, Recurring Charges, Etc

 It's damn hard to cancel subscriptions, recurring charges, etc.  And they accumulate like barnacles so fast your ship begins sinking.  I used to get these things when I felt strongly that I liked something, but long after I've lost interest the charges keep accumulating.  So I try not to, anymore

Yesterday I spent 25 minutes on the phone cancelling (I hope) an Angie's List subscription I had started in 2009 and didn't even know I still had.  I hadn't "logged in" in over 10 years.  When I called, they asked me for an email address which apparently wasn't a current one nor was it any of the ones I remembered.  Finally, I got to the right person who prompted me with the correct domain, then I could remember.  I also wanted a refund for the $47 annual subscription charge, which they said I would get in 3-7 days.  I didn't bother to tell them I had just canceled the credit card too, but I think I should still get the refund, ultimately, from a check from the credit card company because I also had a balance of points, which I had credited back to the card (that was the only "cash" option) so I now have a "negative" balance on the card already (which means they owe me money) and should therefore be sending me a check anyway in about 30 days.  We shall see.  I may have to call Angie's List again and ask if they will send me a check.  I would have never known I was still subscribing to Angie's List had I not called to cancel my credit card, then they told me about the charge (and I immediately paid it).  The card was set to automatically pay the minimum payment every month from my checking account, and I cancelled the last recurring charge I knew about a few months ago.  I might have to call the credit card company again too.  I hate making these calls.

I had just gone through an exercise of cancelling all my paid substack subscriptions.  It's not that I don't like them, it's that I now have to make a $640/mo payment on a home repairs loan (up from $540 for the past 1 1/2 years) and I now need to shake all the couch cushions as hard as I can.

But then, Kit Klarenberg sent me an email that my subscription was about to go away.  Conveniently, the message had a button "Click here to renew."  I hadn't been to visit Klarenberg's substack page (which is so well disguised you wouldn't know it's on Substack except from the domain) in months, so I thought clicking that button would bring me to his page and I could just ignore or cancel the renewal when I got there.  So I clicked on it, and immediately it brought me to his page with a box thanking me for renewing (but giving me no option to cancel that renewal).  I navigated around Klarenberg's page, then I navigated around my Substack home page, and could find no options to cancel any paid subscriptions.

So I asked Google, and it said "Go to your Substack Settings page and find the subscription you want to cancel"  But there was no tab named "Settings" on Substack.  There is a tab called Profile, which is a dozen pages long with endless options, but none of them related to Subscriptions.

Finally I went back to Google and read the help more carefully.  In fact, you don't log into Substack to make any changes, you must log into a separate URL called "Substack Settings". Conveniently, Google provided a link to that, then I could follow their instructions and get the subscription cancelled again before it auto renews tomorrow.

This time, Google had the correct answer, but often in the past the instructions on Google for doing something seem related to some older version of whatever and have nothing to do with the way it is now.  It seems to be that websites with paid subscriptions are constantly re-designing their interfaces so whatever prior knowledge you may have about cancelling subscriptions, or possible Google instructions to do so, are now out-of-date and it's nearly impossible to find the place where you can cancel subscriptions without help.