Geoff R.

My wife had some work published in The Wall Street Journal, and wanted to see the layout. The WSJ offers a 3 month subscription for $1, so she thought she'd just cancel immediately after seeing her article.

Turns out there is no way of cancelling a subscription online, so she emailed customer support. When they didn't reply, she followed up.

Exactly 3 months after the subscription was made, she received an email from them saying that to cancel a subscription - you had to call them on the phone. This email came on the same day they charged our card, so was obviously deliberately timed as such.

We have called the bank, who have informed us that we have to cancel the debit card, and get a new one, as they are unable to block a specific company from taking any funds from the card. Super inconvenient.

Upon doing further research and reading anecdotal accounts on Reddit - it turns out this is standard practice and in fact part of their business model.

Some people on Reddit even suggested changing the billing details to a California address, as this brings up a subscription cancelation option - meaning that they were legally required to provide this service in the state of California. Meaning that it's not a "security issue" like they try to suggest it is.

This means that Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal is knowingly and willingly acting in bad faith.