Unsubscribe, If You Can

It had been a while since I purchased access to Fox Trump Channel. Given how flagrantly the president has been displaying what in any other context would be criminal insanity, I was hankering to learn how far he would go before the sycophantic channel would notice. (Very far, as it turns out, but that’s not what we’re here to consider today.)

I had looked around for the cheapest way to watch the various Fox Trumpian channels — Fox “News,” Fox “Business,” and its often-decent weather channel and its “Live Now” channel, the latter two normally free, anyway. It turns out that Sling has a package, “Sling Select,” that offers the Fox “News” channel and some throw-away channels for $20 per month. (If they offered, say, the Fox channel, plus CNN and NewsNation for that price, it would nearly be worth it.)

For the same price, Fox itself offers the “news” and “business” channels, plus the free weather and live event channels, some sports, and some other Foxian channels for viewers who do not want to be bothered to think. Not ideal, but better than the Sling thing. I decided to buy the Fox package for a month.

It took less than a week to realize that the only respectable programs in my opinion nowadays on Fox are Special Report (and this just barely — it remains highly Trump-tilted), Trey Gowdy’s Sunday night show (just because he’s a likable guy who ought to be running for Lindsey Graham’s seat in the Senate, which he’d win handily; government positions aren’t or oughtn’t be hereditary), and in my estimation the best show on television, the hour-long Wall Street Journal Editorial Report on Saturday afternoons. (But you can get that, in pieces, for free online.)

So, no, Fox Channels are still mostly Trumpaganda. A week into the month, I canceled. As expected, I’ll still have access for the remainder of the month I paid for, but unsubscribing was easy and trouble-free. Bad product, good business practices.

You may be, as I was some time ago, victim of what I think of as “Scamazon Crime.” Amazon likes to “reward” Amazon customers with a free month’s subscription. Ah, but then try to unsubscribe! It will take you a long time and will make you tear your hair. the company’s hope being that before you’ve succeeded in being rid of the subscription you’ll say, “What the hell, it isn’t that expensive” and give up.

The Scamazon Crime issue was so blatant that the Federal Trade Commission took Amazon to court and managed to wring $2.5 billion out of them.

I expected to have trouble unsubscribing from Fox, but didn’t. I didn’t, years ago, expect trouble ridding myself of Amazon Prime, but did.

What I really, really didn’t expect was trouble with one of my favorite publications in the world, one for which I have written and whose founder was a good friend until his death years ago. But it turns out that National Review is a good product with very hinky business practices, if my unhappy experience is any indication. The company seems to have fallen in with a bad crowd. Perhaps “consultants.” Perhaps even worse (if there is anything worse than consultants).

I’m not much of a subscriber to things, especially publications. I subscribe to Crunchyroll, which is an anime service that costs $100 per year. I used to subscribe to a similar service, Hidive, but halfway through the year for which I’d paid it decided it would not let me connect using the VPN I use for everything, so I did without it for a paid-up six months and when it expired I did not renew, nor do I recommended it to others.

Five years ago I subscribed to the online National Review. There was some sort of sale underway, and I bit. Within a minute or two I got a nice note, that said “You have been subscribed! . . . You may cancel at any time, and the value of the unused portion of your subscription will be refunded to you. Thank you for supporting NR!”

After a year I got busy with other things and let the subscription lapse. No problem.

Two years ago I subscribed for a year. I had no plan to resubscribe after that. Nor, it turned out, did I have a choice. I was automatically renewed, for $99. I hadn’t authorized it. That didn’t matter. I was stuck with a subscription that expires at the end of October 2026, months from now. I let it be known that I was done with their auto-renewal tricks and was assured my wishes would be observed.

(I also received nearly daily spam emails from “National Review Institute” and frequent emails asking for donations. I clicked to “unsubscribe” from that mailing list every day, to no effect. It hasn’t anything to do with my paid subscription, but demonstrates that the company does not recognize the word “unsubscribe.”)

I having made it clear that it did not want my subscription to be renewed, you can imagine my surprise when last Wednesday, I got an email from “National_Review@orders.buysub.com.” It resembled the emails that arrive once or twice a week from some swindle outfit saying that they’re renewing my (nonexistent) Norton Utilities account or whatever, and if there’s a problem click this link.

The email said, “Your National Review renewal is being processed. To view your subscription details, click here and enter your account number: [a long number].”

Clicking there produced an error:

“Server Not Found

“Firefox can’t connect to the server at w1.buysub.com.”

Yup, a scam.

But it was an unexpected kind of scam, as I learned when some hours later I got a message from Paypal saying they had paid $119 to National Review.

I immediately checked Paypal. Then I filed a complaint there. I also revoked National Review’s authorization to ever take another penny from me via Paypal. Thinking that National Review might have been cracked and its subscription list stolen by unsavory characters, I phoned the company in New York. As with many places, people there have been replaced by an answering machine. (To its credit, National Review has not included “Please listen closely. Some of the choices have changed.”) I punched in the number for the subscription department.

And my heart sank. I was directed to what seems to be a boiler room in India.

My existing subscription expires at the end of October, so these guys raided my bank account three months before my digital-only account is done (they seem to think I also receive the magazine, which I don’t. Also, in keeping with boiler room scams, they wanted all sorts of information about me that has nothing to do with National Review, and I did not give them that information). “National Review does not issue refunds,” I was told.

So National Review, the beloved organization I’d been involved with off and on since high school, has associated itself with what seems to be the typical crooked boiler room outfit. Nor could I get any actual person at the company’s office in New York to come to the phone. People — crooks, I suspect, but certainly unethical — had swooped in and stolen $119 from me. (Which was also a $20 increase in price, of which I was not informed. Nor would I have cared, inasmuch as I’d turned off auto-renew, or so I thought. I suppose I should count myself lucky that they hadn’t increased the price to $200 or, hell, $500. By their lights they are entitled to take whatever of mine they like, whenever they like. Then tell me that they do not offer refunds. At best, it’s a highly sketchy practice, don’t you think?)

I filed a complaint with the New York Better Business Bureau. I have no idea what will come of it. I was informed by the BBB that National Review is not a member.

I complained about all this online and was relieved when a distinguished writer of my acquaintance at National Review asked me to write up what had happened and send it to him, which I did. (Haven’t heard anything on that front. Perhaps foolishly, I believe that the company would be shocked by the sketchy business practices being conducted in its name.)

After some work, I was able to log in to my National Review account and to cancel my subscription. But guess what? They still intend to keep the money they took without my permission for a subscription that doesn’t begin for months.

I then received an email from “Ann, National Review Customer Service, NR1custserv@cdsfulfillment.com”— yet another company or email alias — which said “National Review does not offer refunds.” Not even of money stolen by its contractors? For subscriptions that haven’t begun and that were established against my will?

I couldn’t help but think of a book published over the name of my old friend, the late founder of National Review, “Cancel Your Own G-ddam Subscription.” Which of course was what I had been trying to do, at the very same magazine to which he was referring.

I have no idea whether I’ll ever get my money back. It has been a time-consuming ordeal, with no success so far.

But at least I can warn you. For me, subscribing to National Review has proved an expensive, dangerous thing to do.

National Review still has fine content, but its business practices need to be visited by the Federal Trade Commission. They are worse than Amazonian.