Products · Product
The Economist
Raised as a usability problem by 49 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 42 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
- 2
Every issue, all time, most people first
No online cancel option, so cancelling requires a phone callUnreviewed
20102026- Unsubscribing is frustrating and requires jumping through hoops2026-06-04
- No online way to cancel; must call a phone number to exit2025-07-12
- No online cancel option; users get run around wasting time cancelling2025-06-25
Cancelling requires a chat with a human pushing retention dealsUnreviewed
20102026- Cancelling requires waiting for a sales rep who pushes discounts for 15 minutes2024-07-08
- Cancelling took 15 minutes, with counter-offers meant to trick the user into backing out2023-03-23
- Support agent left the chat immediately when user tried to cancel2022-12-08
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Unsubscribing is frustrating and requires jumping through hoops2026-06-04
- No online way to cancel; must call a phone number to exit2025-07-12
- No online cancel option; users get run around wasting time cancelling2025-06-25
- Cancelling requires waiting for a sales rep who pushes discounts for 15 minutes2024-07-08
- Cancelling a subscription is harder than signing up and can't be done online2023-12-21
- No online way to cancel; must phone or contact a support rep2023-04-26
- Cancelling took 15 minutes, with counter-offers meant to trick the user into backing out2023-03-23
- Support agent left the chat immediately when user tried to cancel2022-12-08
- Cancelling requires a phone call; email cancellation not accepted, a dark pattern2022-11-30
- Unsubscribing involves repeated retention offers and being signed up for newsletters2022-06-17
- Cookie consent is so obnoxious the user leaves before reading2022-04-07
- Cancelling requires a phone call with long hold times, so auto-renewal happens2022-03-18
- No easy way to unsubscribe; must call a phone number or use live chat2022-02-22
- Cancelling is made awful, pushing users toward retention discounts instead2022-02-08
- The website hijacks the browser back button2022-02-04
- Huge cookie popup blocks reading the article immediately on arrival2022-02-04
- Electronic edition shows ads more intrusively than print, hard to skip2022-01-03
- Subscriber must hunt for login and login fails on trailing spaces in email2021-11-20
- Saved articles don't sync across devices and reading requires leaving each article to move on2021-11-18
- Marketing emails have no unsubscribe link, so subscribers can't easily stop them2021-11-17
- Cancelling requires a chat with a human who pushes retention deals2021-11-17
- Cancelling is so difficult it deters the commenter from subscribing again2021-11-17
- Unsubscribing is extremely hard, so the user had to change their card2021-11-17
- Popup modals over online articles push paying subscribers to cancel2021-11-17
- Cancel button looks one-click but leads through retention screens, then an agent who won't cancel2021-11-17
- Cancelling took an hour of chat with a rep, with repeated confirmation prompts2021-10-09
- Confuses the user every day; old Android app crashed frequently2021-08-09
- Simple features like searching, bookmarking and resuming reading have gotten worse2021-08-08
- Feed items have no descriptions and useless generic titles, so readers can't tell articles apart2021-07-03
- Cancelling took over an hour of digging and repeated upselling despite saying they wanted to cancel2021-06-14
- Cancelling required dark patterns and a phone call to an overseas operator2021-05-31
- Animated banner ads are distracting and make reading the articles much harder2021-04-05
- Cancelling requires chatting with support, with long queues and waits2021-02-18
- Must chat with a human to cancel, and repeated attempts to say no to a cheaper plan2021-02-18
- Cannot cancel online; phone line unstaffed so user had to dispute charge with card2021-02-18
- Cannot unsubscribe online; cancelling requires an offline or mailed process2020-09-28
- Has some usability issues that are annoying2020-09-27
- Can subscribe online but must call a phone number during business hours to unsubscribe2020-07-17
- Cannot cancel subscription online; must call them instead2020-05-23
- Makes it very hard for users to unsubscribe2020-02-26
- Must call by phone to cancel or change subscription, not online2019-01-25
- Cancelling requires finding a subscriber ID on magazine labels and phoning, while signing up is a simple web form2018-11-29
- Four pop-ups must be dismissed before the headline can be read2018-09-17
- Stacked subscribe messages cover each other and a newsletter popup appears too2018-07-04
- Paywall text vanishes after loading, so readers think the site is broken2017-07-09
- Couldn't find any way to cancel subscription online; support requires phone call2017-04-24
- Can subscribe online but must phone to cancel, which is hard to do2017-04-20
- Must close four dialog boxes and content takes only about 30% of screen2017-04-12
- Sign-up flow tricked user into paying for an extra publication2016-05-17
- Page takes about 8 seconds to load, then keeps churning for 7 more seconds2015-12-21