The Economist Reviews 

The Economist makes it really difficult to cancel subscriptions. You need to chat with a bot / CS rep. They proceed to try to turn the cancellation into multiple upsells. This is really disappointing and will ensure I never spend another cent with this company.

Boring content and takes forever to cancel

Awful. Won’t let you cancel by managing your subscription in app or online. Instead they force you through their chat team. This kind of subscription cancellation is old fashioned, tired and completely lacking in customer experience and innovation. Will never be back (so they have the absolute opposite effect to what they should be hoping to achieve - customers often cancel and rejoin subscriptions - but not if you make it hard for them).

Terrible support. It looks like you can easily cancel your subscription via your Economist account, but this is not true. You need to decline multiple offers and dodge stupid questions from support before they help you to cancel the subscription. It took me 18 minutes of begging to cancel before I got a confirmation. Never again.

I had a very frustrating experience with The Economist's subscription service. Canceling my subscription turned out to be unnecessarily difficult and time-consuming. Despite following the steps to cancel, the chat assistant instead enrolled me in a different subscription that I never requested.

This feels incredibly disingenuous and predatory. Instead of respecting my decision to cancel, they used the process as an opportunity to push unwanted services. It’s a shady tactic that undermines trust and makes me question the integrity of their business practices.

For a company of The Economist's reputation, I expected better. Making cancellations straightforward and transparent should be a basic standard—not an uphill battle designed to retain customers at all costs. I won't be recommending their service to anyone.

Ridiculous, time consuming cancellation process.

Worst cancellation policy in the history of cancellation policies. You have to use a live chat and I told the representative I wanted to cancel like 4 times before they actually would. I got the subscription to read one specific article and ti make matters worse that article was hilariously underdeveloped. There's much much much better sources out therre

A shame that such a great news company has such a scammy cancellation process. They should make it so much more transparent and easy to cancel or manage subscriptions. You can only do it through online chat. Both online and applications doesn’t allow you to do it yourself.

Unbelievable they make it so hard to cancel a subscription in this day and age, as if some dodgy online scam. Didn't expect this from them and I now take everything from the economist with this hindsight. Wth. And that's £300 a year, not something small

Like others, I can’t stand how difficult The Economist make it to cancel a membership. Even if you’re cancelling the subscription of a deceased family member, you need to call them and persuade someone that you really do want to cancel. I no longer subscribe to any paper that won’t accept direct debit or a one off payment. Cancelling a recurring card payment is too much hassle when you’re pressed for time, and downright offensive when you have no choice.

I'd signed up for a free trial to be able to read an article and decided to cancel. There's no way to cancel by logging into your account on their website. Instead you are forced to use a chatbot and wait 30 minutes for this AI to respond then the bot pressures you to keep the subscription.

It took another 20 minutes patiently replying "No thank you. Please cancel my subscription" to get The Economist's bot to finally agree to cancel the subscription. These tactics are extremely unethical.

Over decades of having subscriptions to a variety of websites I've never been forced to use a chat bot like The Economist is using nor been so pressured to keep a subscription. They are deliberately making it both extremely time-consuming and using high pressure sales tactics to get people who want to cease their subscription to give up trying. After this experience I'll never recommend their site nor subscribing to it.

Maybe I would have stayed a subscriber with all the deals they are offering, but after having spent 40 mins trying to cancel auto-renewal/subscription after free trial, I will NEVER pay for that unethical, dodgy, cheap magazine. Appaling customer service for the 21st century. You can be the best freaking journalists in the world, but this experience made sure I will never subscribe.

The live-chat hold me for 45 minutes a sunday to cancel a subscription. Worst customer experience I have had with a magazine.

The Economist itself is a fine and informative newspaper. But their digital subscription model is just appalling.
- Implementation was chaotic and had not been tested.
- Renewal was made without any warning.
- It is impossible to unsubscribe without entering into an online conversation where they try all the usual upselling techniques
The whole process is worthy of Sky rather than the Economist.

They prevent you to unsubscribe by all means by forcing you to call them or to have a chat to cancel... I wasted 20 minutes on a Saturday to cancel...

And please don't answer with a generic "We are doing our best to improve because clearly the process is made on purpose..."

It pains me to write another review of the Economist subscription department but the staff there are plainly not up to the job . Today I wanted to upgrade a digital subscription purchased for my son on 7 December to a print plus digital subscription but it took for ever to sort this out. At my first attempt their agent maintained that they had not received my payment via PayPal. As she was clearly floundering I asked to be put in touch with her supervisor but there was no reply although I waited for some time. After checking with PayPal I was able to go back to the subscription department with details of my payment. The second agent, Karen, was marginally more helpful but seemed to be unaware that London is in the UK. I asked to change my gift digital subscription to a digital plus print subscription, but she said this was not possible despite the fact that an Economist email said I could alter my subscription by going to “My account” on the Econlmist web page. . I then asked to cancel my digital subscription but she said this was not possible, even though cooling off periods are allowed by law for card payments.The subscription department staff need substantially more training

Why don't you listen to the people what they are saying about your poor subscription service, zero credibility for a big magazine kick out your useless subscription team have some shame 😡❌👎

Signed up for a free trial to read an article. As noted by others the cancellation process is unethical and arduous. They are basically scammers.

I cannot reccomend more strongly to actively avoid this company.

Cancelling subscription only via chat.

No way of just clicking "cancel subscription" (it brings you to a "loop" and does not let you confirm it). Then forces you to go through a live chat. Unacceptable.