Comments from submitter
In 2017 I submitted an article to Research in Phenomenology for review, and after almost a year of waiting for my submission to be reviewed or even sent to a reviewer (the status for the submission in the journal's submission portal indicated that this had not yet occurred), I emailed the journal's editor to ask for an update, but never received a response. Over the next few years I periodically sent the editor other emails, asking, similarly, for an update, but these were never answered either. After four years I finally sent an email informing the editor of my intent to withdraw my submission (the journal's submission portal does not allow one to do this oneself), and yet I never received a response to this email either. A few months after this attempt to withdraw my article, I checked the journal's submission portal once more and discovered that the status for my submission had been changed, and that my article had now been sent to reviewers, which led me to email the editor again reiterating, with growing panic now, that I had withdrawn the submission, for by this point I had submitted the article elsewhere. Like all of my other emails, this email was never answered, although my submission was finally deleted a few days after I sent this email.
All in all, I have never been dealt with in such an inappropriate manner in an academic venue. I will obviously never submit another article to this journal and in fact I no longer will read any of its publications due to the unconscionable practices if the journal. I also recommend that others avoid this journal, and particularly, that they never submit an article for review to it, unless they do not mind waiting years without a response to their submission.