It's not like we can capitalize on commerce in China anyway, so I think it's a fairly pragmatic approach.
If it works for my health insurance company, essentially all streaming services (including not even being able to cancel service from abroad), and many banks, it’ll work for you as well.
Surely bad actors wouldn’t use VPNs or botnets, and your customers never travel abroad?
There are some that do not provide services in most countries but Netflix, Disney, paramount are pretty much global operations.
HBO and peacock might not be available in Europe but I am guessing they are in Canada.
Netflix doesn't have this issue but I've seen services that seem to make it tough. Though sometimes that's just a phone call away.
Though OTOH whining about this and knowing about VPNs and then complaining about the theoretical non-VPN-knower-but-having-subscriptions-to-cancel-and-is-allergic-to-phone-calls-or-calling-their-bank persona... like sure they exist but are we talking about any significant number of people here?
How so? They did not let me unsubscribe via blocking my IP.
Instead of being able to access at least my account (if not the streaming service itself, which I get – copyright and all), I'd just see a full screen notice along the lines of "we are not available in your market, stay tuned".
In several European countries, there is no HBO since Sky has some kind of exclusive contract for their content there, and that's where I was accordingly unable to unsubscribe from an US HBO plan.
When you posted this, what did you envision in your head for how they were prevented from unsubscribing, based on location, but not via IP blocking? I'm really curious.