“Cancel cosplay” is a widely-accepted but pointless role-playing, where you pretend to cancel a subscription, and they try to win you back.
Cosplay is the act of dressing up in the costume of a character from some movie, book, or video game. Think Comic Con or Trekkie conventions.
I’m not into too many “otaku” cultures, though I did go to the Adventure Game Fan Fair last summer, and seeing people dressed up like Sierra game characters was a serious thrill.
So what does this have to do with subscriptions or saving money?
Read on, because your subscriptions are about to renew, cosplay-style.
Table of Contents
New subscriber discount
You’ve doubtless been there: as a new subscriber, you’re given a “welcome bonus” or other discounted rate to entice you to try the service out.
Then, after the initial period, often a year, the price will jump to something higher—often much higher. The hope from the business is that by this point, you’ll just keep using the subscription and not cancel. The discount just got you in the door, and hopefully now you’ll stay.
Please don’t leave
It seems simple so far: stay and pay full price, or cancel.
But that’s not how it often works in pracitce. Companies want your business, and some of them want your business enough to deploy “retention offers”. These are offers to get you to stay when you express an interest in cancelling.
So when you call/email/chat to say that you want to cancel, they may say, “how about if we offered you 20% off for another year?” Or something to that effect.
Some companies will in fact offer you the welcome bonus all over again. And some will keep doing this, over and over and over.
New York Times
I think we should pay for news, so that we can keep journalism from either dying or turning into “you’ll never believe what he said!” clickbait.
But that said, $25 a month for the New York Times, which includes a lot of services that I have no interest in (such as Games or The Athletic sports coverage), is not exactly steep, but I wouldn’t mind paying less.
I got in on a welcome offer of $8 a month, which for unlimited news articles feels like a good deal.
The welcome offer was for a year, and after the welcome offer it’s supposed to go back to $25.
But that never actually happens. Every year I chat with customer support, say I want to cancel, and they offer me the welcome bonus again.
A New York Times conversation
The following is an actual chat transcript I had in a New York Times chat. I started off with the basic question: “Do you have any subscription options that are less than $25?”
Agent connected, you are now chatting with Andy
Andy: Hi Michael, I hope you’re having a wonderful day! Thank you so much for reaching out to The New York Times account management Team. My name is Andy, and I’ll be happy to assist you today. We always want to help our customers find the best value; however, our welcoming offers are typically designed to introduce new customers to our services. My apology for any inconvenience!
Me: Hi Andy. Thanks for checking. I don’t need All Access and don’t want to pay $25 a month. If that’s my only option, then please cancel my subscription.
Andy: Would you reconsider the cancelation if I apply the promotional rate of All Access $8 every 4 weeks for 52 weeks? It would be $25 thereafter but you may cancel/change it at any time with no commitments.
Me: Yes, thank you, I would definitely reconsider for that offer.
Andy: You have changed your product from All Access to All Access effective today. Your payment method will be automatically charged $8.00 every 4 weeks for the first year. It will then be automatically charged $25.00 every 4 weeks thereafter. I hope you’re satisfied with the assistance provided today. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.
Me: Thanks so much! Have a great day.
“Cancel cosplay”
I found that whole exchange baffling on one level. The whole thing boiled down to this:
Me: Can I get the lower price?
NYT: No, sorry.
Me: Okay, I’ll cancel.
NYT: How about the lower price?
Me: Sure.
Why do we have to do this? Why do I have to go through the trouble to say I’m going to cancel if you’re just going to offer me the same bonus again? Why can’t you just offer me the bonus?
I call this kind of interaction “cancel cosplay”. I’m not actually serious about cancelling my subscription, I’m just play-acting at it to get a lower price. Similarly, they’re not serious about making me have the higher price, they’re just play-acting at it until they learn that I want to cancel.
It’s a dance, a charade, a theater production. We’re all pretending, and it feels more than a little pointless.
Nevertheless, one year from now, I’ll be back on the horn with NYT, threatening to cancel once more if they won’t offer me the lower rate. And the dance will continue.
The lesson in “cancel cosplay”
I don’t know if the baseline subscription price internally at the New York Times is $8 or $25. But what I do know is that people who don’t phone in to do the Cancel Cosplay will pay the higher rate.
From this, we can deduce one important lesson: lower prices are available to you if you keep a close eye on your subscriptions.
Don’t just let your subscriptions continue endlessly, even if you want to keep them. (And not all of them should be kept if we’re being honest.) You want to follow how much something costs, so that if the price changes unexpectedly, you’ll be aware of it.
How many times have I coached people who signed up for services at one price, and then didn’t notice as the price crept up and up and up? These services are allowed to do it, but they are relying on you not noticing or caring.
In the case of the New York Times, $8 a month is $96 a year, and $25 a month is $300 a year. So by having a five-minute conversation in a chat window, I just gave myself over $200 back.
How many subscriptions do you have? How many hundreds of dollars could you save?
I don’t like that we all have to do “cancel cosplay”, but we do if we want to save more. And it’s another reminder that being intentional with your money will help you have a lot more of it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to contact SiriusXM.
