I don't want to submit to substack's age verification process that requires streaming face mug videos, and am trying to delete my account and paid subscriptions.
Unfortunately, the only way seems to be logging into your account first - a nice catch-22.
support@substack.com autoreply directs you to substack.com/contact -- which requires you to pass age verification first.
The substack AI chatbot is ridiculous - no hope of reaching a human. The process for cancelling a deceased account doesn't work either as the chatbot can't look up my account using my email address (presumably it is frozen until age verification). Tor and VPNs don't work as my profile includes my location in Australia, and my email address is Australian.
Any ideas? I'm about to cancel my credit card as a last resort.
harshreality•1mo ago
Chargeback. Tell your credit card company the truth, you can't login to cancel substack payments, and let your credit card company deal with them.
If you used paypal, they already allow you to cancel recurring payments from paypal's website, without going through the payee at all.
Maybe substack has been lazy in implementing this, or maybe the guidance the were getting as the deadline approached was conflicting. They may have it fixed soon. They may even determine that payments associated with the account indicate over-16 and they don't need to lock you out at all. Or, getting hit with a lot of chargebacks will motivate them to have a separate login flow to cancel billing even if they can't let you read what you paid for. You can't be the only person frustrated at being locked out while they're still billing you.