Let me support your argument by telling you what you just reminded me of...

I was briefly subscribed to the NYT from Germany. To my surprise, I couldn't cancel online, but had to call. (The EU has a law which requires that if you can subscribe online, you must be able to cancel online.)

They have national numbers for many countries, but they're just forwarders to the same call center, with notably mangled audio quality presumably due to multiple lossy compression algorithms applied at each hop of the call.

Additionally, there was lots of background noise when I got connected to a rep. Over this barely usable line, I was now asked to spell out my email address, which naturally took multiple attempts of painfully slow spelling before the rep was able to locate my account. (My very limited knowledge of the NATO alphabet didn't help.)

Of course, I then had to go through the spiel of declining alternative offers and providing a reason for my cancellation (all of which I never had to do in Germany before) before they finally confirmed it. Yeah, I'm glad about consumer protection law in the EU.