As part of my ongoing effort to bring you interesting and informative personal-finance information, I subscribe to several magazines, including Smart Money. Smart Money isn’t my favorite money magazine, but it has some useful articles.
In 2005, I paid $20 to subscribe to Smart Money for two years. In 2007, I paid $20 to subscribe for another two years. Today I received my latest issue, which included this wrap-around “cover” announcing that “as part of our Continuous Service program, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you tell us to stop”:
This is annoying, but it’s an annoyance I can live with. Some periodicals (especially newspapers) automatically renew subscriptions. For a variety of reasons, people are more likely to accept the state in which they are required to do nothing. If the default is “the subscription will expire if you do nothing”, people will generally let the subscription expire. But if the default is “your subscription will automatically continue if you do nothing”, people will generally let the subscription renew.
Dumb money
As I say, this is annoying, but I can deal with it. What made me cranky, however, was this bit at the bottom of the renewal notice:
Smart Money wants to automatically renew my subscription for one year at $20. But I was previously paying $20 for a two-year subscription. They want to use this automatic renewal to double my rate. This is bullshit.
I did some research to see if subscription rates have increased since 2007. They have not. At the official Smart Money subscription page, I found the following deals:
- One year for $12
- Two years for $18
Apparently my reward for being a “preferred subscriber” is that I will pay more for one year of the magazine than new subscribers pay for two years. That sounds like dumb money to me. It gets worse. Using Google, I found an even better deal, also from the official page:
- One year for $11
- Two years for $18
- Three years for $24
And Amazon has an even better price: 24 issues for just $14!
Out of the frying pan
Armed with this info, I prepared to unleash my righteous indignation on a customer service rep. I dialed the phone number on the wraparound cover. But I couldn’t reach customer service — only an automated answering system, which offered two choices:
- Stay in the “continuous service” program and renew the subscription.
- Be removed from the “continuous service” program and cancel the subscription.
I didn’t want either one. I wanted option three: give me back my lower rate. I gave up and tried the web.
Smart Money actually has a website that purports to let you manage your account. Fine. I clicked on the link to renew my subscription and saw this:
This clearly says: “Fill in the form below to access your subscription account.” I understood this to mean: “When you enter your information, you will be able to perform various actions on your account.” But no. That’s not what it really means. I entered my account number and was greeted with this screen:
That’s it. A blank page with the command: “renew your subscription”. Can any of you tell me what this means? Checking a different page on the site revealed that by entering my account number, I had actually agreed to renew the subscription.
I hate crap like this. I hate it when businesses treat me like a commodity. Usually when these things happen, a business loses me as a customer forever. (No joke.) But I can’t just pretend Smart Money doesn’t exist; it’s an important part of the financial media. Argh!
Free magazines!
How much does this bother me? So much that I’ve spent an hour processing images and writing this post. So much that I cancelled my subscription — and then re-subscribed for two years for $14 through Amazon. And so much that I’m going to give away free subscriptions to GRS readers — for Smart Money‘s competitors.
Six commenters on this article (chosen at random) will receive a one-year subscription to the personal-finance magazine of their choice from those reviewed in these two articles:
The only caveat is that if you win, you cannot choose Smart Money. To qualify, all you have to do is share your own tale of financial frustration in the discussion on this post. (Contest ends at 12:01 am Tuesday morning.)
GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve your financial goals.Savings interest rates may be low, but that’s all the more reason to shop for the best rate.Find the highest savings interest rate from Ally Bank, Capital One 360, Everbank, and more.
This article is about Books, Odds and Ends, Real-Life
Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.
Discover is a paid advertiser of this site. Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES
What a mess! Here’s mine:
I recently worked for a company that paid for my home internet connection through Time Warner. Since I was already a Time Warner customer, I just had them switch my bill over to my company. Done and done.
While at that job I got married and moved in with my husband. We were able to switch the Time Warner account to the new house and replace the one he was paying for already, which was through Earthlink (managed by Time Warner).
18 months later I was laid off and my internet needed to be switched back to me. I found this out one morning (while unemployed and job hunting) when the internet was suddenly not working. I called them and we straightened it out, they turned it back on immediately (after telling me it would take two weeks and unleashing my rarely seen ire), and I waited for a bill to come in so I could set it up in my online bill payment system.
My husband at some point after this called Time Warner to switch us back over to Earthlink, since somehow the rates are cheaper for the same service through the same company. Go figure.
Three months later we get a call from Time Warner saying that we have an overdue balance of $100+ and if we don’t pay they’ll turn off our account. Yeah, we should have noticed that we hadn’t been paying them and been proactive, but because we do all of our bill payment automatically (and hadn’t paid them in almost two years) it slipped our mind. But I used that phone call as an opportunity to let them know that they have a billing problem, and though I was happy to pay my balance over the phone I’d really like to start seeing monthly bills so this won’t happen again. The woman on the phone agreed with me, took my credit card info, and promised everything would be fixed.
A couple of days after that we got a bill from Earthlink… for $8. That didn’t make sense, and thinking that we’d already settled with Time Warner, we ignored it.
This month, a month later, we got an overdue notice from Earthlink for that $8 (and still no bill from Time Warner). My husband called them this week and found out that it was for some online security package that he hadn’t signed up for when he called them last time. He canceled that and asked them about fixing the billing problem. Naturally, they can’t do anything about it.
So we’re still waiting.
loading....
Those merry pranksters over at Fast Company have a similar routine going on. I’ve read the magazine since its inception and enjoy it a lot. So far, so good. My current subscription ends in May of 2010. Last year I must have received 6 emails suggesting I renew my subscription. I’d love to renew and I will, but get in touch with me about a half year or so before my current subscription expires – not when it’s a couple of years away. Sheesh!
loading....
This happened with my gym membership. They said I would get a special rate through my employer of $150 for a year. I signed up in June and they neglected to tell me a “year” meant till December and that I had to fork up another $150 in January. When I called and complained their rep was rude and told me I wouldn’t get a better price anywhere and I should be more grateful. Normally, I would drop them and find someone else but even though my effective rate for the year will be $300 I’m still getting a good deal. Argh!
loading....
I lost my job. I’ve got a new one, but at a greatly reduced rate. So I called California’s low cost healthcare plan for kids so I could enroll my daughter. I followed the directions on their website to a T.
And waited. And waited.
Finally I called. They told me I didn’t date the form. I did, but they didn’t see it. So I redated and resubmitted the form per their instructions.
And waited. And waited.
Then I called for a status check and was told I didn’t include a statement that my letter was a true and accurate staetment. So I resubmitted.
And waited. And waited.
Frustrated, I called for help. Not a single supervisor was available. They’d call back in 3 days, they said. When I persisted, the rep hung up on me.
And I waited. And waited.
Finally, after three reps in a week, I was able to reach a supervisor.
And do you know what she said?
I make too little money (even though I’m honestly employed in the first job I could find to support my family).
So there you have it. And for that, California just raised my taxes.
Keep up the GREAT work, GRS! You’ve helped change my life for the better.
loading....
JD, you are right on, and keep holding the line. We’re working hard to do the same here, although with four teenage daughters it’s a little difficult at times.
One question for you, and I hope it doesn’t disqualify me from your giveaway: I hope you are not paying for the subscriptions, or at least would let me if I were to win one to pay a bit for myself. Seems to fly in the face of being frugal, but then again, maybe you are right…part of being frugal is doing the right thing, and helping others out is doing just that.
Again, keep up the good work. I enjoy your blog and find value from it regularly.
loading....
How frustrating. Don’t businesses make life so much more complicated than it needs to be? My most recent financial frustration is this: I was in a car accident a year ago that was the other driver’s fault. I had back and neck injuries that required several months of physical therapy, an ER trip, many doctor’s appointments, a few MRI’s, and a lot of missed work. We are trying to reach a settlement, but for now, the medical bills are in limbo and have been sent to collection in spite of a medical lien filed by my lawyer. My insurance refused to pay, the other guy’s insurance refused to pay, and I never received 1 bill before they were automatically sent to collection. So now I get harassing calls daily from creditors for bills I never received in the first place. Bleh–sometimes you just have to hate “the system!”
loading....
Thanks for the heads up. In the interest of instant social feedback, I’m retweeting this.
loading....
One strategy would be to always let your subscriptions expire, then only subscribe as a new customer, at the lowest promo rate, to the magazines you really miss receiving. You’ll save money by getting the cheapest rates, and not buying the ones you don’t miss. Sometimes you can get taken off the automatic renewal program with a short email to the magazine.
loading....
Go, J.D.!
For all the whining that companies do about how much more expensive it is to attract a new customer than keep an existing one, sometimes their tactics just don’t make sense. One would think that a ‘smart’ money magazine would have a greater proportion of readers paying attention to such things.
loading....
You can go to http://www.smartmoney.com and you don’t need to pay anything for a magazine subscription. (This article doesn’t sound like it was written by you).
loading....
Something very similar happened with a Sports Illustrated subscription I purchased as a Christmas gift for someone – imagine my surprise a year later when my credit card was charged again! Took me forever to actually find someone I could talk to on the phone.
I love periodicals and I like to support them – but practices like this make me cranky, too.
loading....
My financial beef is with Yahoo.com
I have a local listings account that I’d like to cancel. I’ve tried at various times over the course of the past few months to either speak directly to a customer service rep or to receive a response to the emails I send to Yahoo. No response in either case. Yahoo’s CS doesn’t seem to exist anymore as I can only reach an automated service. The bank tells me that I have to cancel the debit card that Yahoo.com is using to keep charging me. I shouldn’t have to do that Yahoo!
loading....
Reader’s Digest (here in Canada at least) does the same thing. This year I thought I would opt out and re-subscribe at a lower rate. I watched the magazine delivery like a hawk for a few months looking for the “cancel or we’ll resubscribe you notice.” Well, I never saw it. Reader’s Digest does enclose a lot of crap with the magazine, so it is possible I missed it somehow. Of course, the demand for payment comes in it’s own clearly marked envelope…
I’m cancelling regardless. They allegedly refund any unused portion.
loading....
How frustrating this is, but unfortunately, not an uncommon practice. Businesses think they can fatigue you into buying their products by running you through a maze that leads nowhere, thus you opt for doing nothing, just as you said. I am embarrassed to say my husband and I both have been duped by special offers that claim you are paying for “shipping only.” The truth is, they are getting your credit card number so they can put other charges on it, which in some cases is not even put in the fine print. Then, when you call the customer service number, it is automated, or you are put on hold, or you get no answer at all. I did this once and ended up having to dispute charges on my credit card. Needless to say I learned my lesson.
These days I am not spending money and stay away from “special offers” or anything that says “free.”
loading....
I have had this happen to me with another magazine… I ended up canceling the subscription… Thanks for the great article.
loading....
JD,
You needn’t have canceled your subscription. You simply had to get the Amazon rate and your subscription would have continued.
Magazine orders go in from all kinds of places. When you already have a subscription and order another, no matter from where, it’s added onto your current subscription.
A few issues after completing the order with Amazon you would have seen the updated expiration date on your mailing label. No drama.
From Amazon’s subscription FAQ:
Need to renew a magazine subscription you didn’t buy from Amazon? Simply place an order today at our everyday low prices and keep the subscriptions you love coming to you. We will pass your renewal along to the magazine’s publisher to ensure that you keep receiving your subscription. You don’t even have to tell us that it is a renewal.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=602292&#renewals
loading....
@Sandy E (and others)
I do pay to subscribe to PF magazines, and I don’t feel guilty about it. Here’s why:
1. They’re legitimate business expenses. What this means is that I’m buying the subscriptions with pre-tax money, making their effective price much less.
2. The magazines do provide excellent, well-researched information. They help me to build my base of knowledge.
3. They give me an off-line source. Yes, I could try to get the same articles online, but to be honest, most of the sites are difficult to navigate. Plus, I spend too much time online anyway.
So, I’m happy to digest PF magazines and to pass them on to friends when I’m finished. It doesn’t feel un-frugal; it feels like business.
loading....
I love all these stories, because they’re the “why” behind businesses cutting back or failing. Bank A buys Bank B, jacks up the fees, fires half the tellers, transfers all customer service to India and cuts its CD rates, and then wonders why it can’t retain Bank B’s customers. Oh, and its business plan included getting even more of Bank B’s customers by offering extra services like insurance and investments. They assume their customers are stupid sheep, and are shocked and horribly disappointed when customers turn out not to be.
Cable companies, phone companies and of course magazines–the list goes on and on. If a business treats its customers like @#*@#, it can’t be surprised when its customers find better alternatives. What keeps some businesses going is that there are no alternatives–when those alternatives come, the customers are gone and so is the business. For myself, I can’t wait to cancel Charter Cable when that sweet alternative arrives.
My frustrating customer service calls are valuable in one sense, though–they remind me to see that my own business treats clients fairly and deals with problems quickly–I’m pleased to say we’re always improving in this area.
loading....
Being married to a librarian has its benefits – virtually any magazine I want is available through him.
loading....
So a month ago a friend on Facebook sent me an IQ challenge which I took on their website for fun. I registered on the site to take the test. Well a week later I start getting annoying text messages with strange and uppity trivia facts. This continues for about 3 weeks, silly me I think nothing of it. Well finally they send me a text saying I’m being charged for all these stupid useless messages and so far I am at $10! I cancelled it but ouch! I didn’t know they could just randomly charge it to your cell phone even if you don’t give out a credit card number. I won’t be taking anymore stupid online “tests”.
loading....
Wow. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I bet a lot of other magazines do this as well…but for SmartMoney (aka The Wall Street Journal) that’s a low.
SmartMoney is my favorite finance magazine. For the past two years I buy every issue of the Best Stock picks and browse through them all. (Actually how I found SmartMoney) Not all finance magazine cater to the same audience so I connected with SM the best. Last year I bought a subscription because I kept buying it at CVS. So I actually saved money at $20/12 issues.
Well good luck and I hope SM sees this and changes their set up.
loading....
My tale of frustration is when I was told by the Washington Post that a story I wrote would be published in one of their columns and I would be paid $100. Week after week I didn’t see it, so I called the newspaper. I finally spoke to someone who said she was the newly appointed head of that column. She had decided that the topic I wrote about did not fit her needs, so she decided not to include it. “Uh, were you ever going to contact me?” No. “Why, thank you very much. I appreciate your professionalism.” I promptly cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post and haven’t renewed since.
I don’t care for Smart Money much either. I like Kiplinger’s and Money Magazine much better.
loading....
I can’t say I have much experience with magazines – I haven’t been subscribed to any since I was a doe-eyed girl reading Teen and Seventeen magazines! But I feel your pain – bad customer service is all around us.
You know what I hate? When companies make it difficult for me to give them my money. Why don’t they want my money? Here’s an example – it’s from a few years back, but it still annoys me:
I wanted a friend of mine to see An Inconvenient Truth, so that he and I could have lively debate about it over the phone. He was in Washington State, and I was in California. I offered to pay for his ticket, since I really wanted to talk to him about the movie. Well, I figured that would be easy, given modern technology. Turns out the only theater near him showing the movie used MovieTickets.com, and not Fandango. That’s fine, I’ll just purchase a gift certificate to MovieTickets.com, and give it to him, and he can buy the ticket and see the movie and all will be good.
Wrong. At that time (I have no idea about now, because I have never used MT.com since), they didn’t offer gift certificates. In fact, there was absolutely no way to buy a ticket for someone else. You had to physically take the credit card you bought the tickets with to the theater to pick them up. Which wasn’t going to work, since I was three states away!
End result? I still don’t think that friend has seen An Inconvenient Truth. I should really find the DVD and lend it to him…
But seriously. I wanted to give them money, and they wouldn’t take my money. Why?
loading....
Wow, that IS lame. Magazine subscription service seems to be on average craptastic. Mine is, I subscribed to Mother Jones digital, and I discovered they were sending it AFTER the print version was on newsstands! Kind of defeats one of the major points of subscribing to a magazine (and in this instance, for me “getting it before it hit newsstands” was a major reason).
loading....
When I was a silly 18 year old, I signed up for one of those “get entertainment weekly for four months free!” at best buy and planned to not renew it. That was my first experience with auto renew- it took me three tries and two autorenews to cancel it! Since then, I never give my credit card to magazines and choose the bill me later option – then pay by check.
loading....
As for my tale of financial frustration, I could write a series of horrifying tales called, “The Financial Aid Office,” and market it to college students. I’d be rich.
The worst, by far, was last year when my financial aid office lost the tax return they requested of me.
No, they didn’t lose it once. They didn’t lose it twice. They lost it THREE times. It was months before I got everything straight, and once I talked to someone with half a brain, I found out they didn’t even NEED my tax return.
As for where those three copies of my tax return, with SS# and everything, disappeared to? No one knows to this day.
loading....
When I gave birth to my child in 2005, I got a FREE subscription to Parents magazine with the purchase of the hospital’s photo package. I read everything attached and it clearly stated it was a free 2 year subscription and after the last issue I would choose whether to get another or not. That was soooo not true. I sure did get my last magazine come 2007 and to my surprise I also received a bill! It was around $20 and I could have easily paid it off but that wasn’t the point. I tried the customer service line and that didn’t work (mind you that it took me lots of searching around to find it) the website asked me to put in my account information to access my account and when I did it said it could not find it but I was still being sent reminders once a month of that owed money. Finally I subscribed to their email service so that I could try to talk to somebody. It was useless! I just decided to ignore those bills.
loading....
We attempted to cancel cable by phone a week ago. After being on hold for 32 minutes before even speaking to someone, the rep tried to offer us “deals” to stay with cable. We were cancelling cable but keeping internet and needed to be between $15-$30 so she is offering us $60 packages. This went on with the required hold while I check for an hour. At that point she stated we could not have the lowest internet rate unless we had cable also, like this was impossible. Ultimately, we could not cancel over the phone, we had to return our remote and box to their office. So over an hour and a half for nothing. We drove 35 mins to the office, handed in the box, asked for the cheapest internet and they gave it to us with a free upgrade in speed for 7 months because we are “such good customers”. What a laugh!
loading....
I must say this is extremely similar to my own story of dealing with Sports Illustrated (now I realize it isn’t a personal attach but just ineptitude).
My wife got me the subscription originally through a magazine drive at the school in which she was teaching. At the time of expiration, we received the automatic renewal at almost double the school’s magazine drive price. We canceled the subscription and renewed through the school again.
We have since found out that if you renew before the subscription expires they will add the duration to your existing subscription automatically. So I get the better price and avoid the annoying “your subscription is about to end” notices.
loading....
At our former place we got suckered into an alarm system. They sales guys worked hard to get us a good deal and the install went very smoothly. We were happy and started paying our bills every month and things seemed to be going fine.
Then we planned on going on vacation and wanted to set up a special access code for our house sitter. And that’s where things got crazy.
First, the installers had written down our secret passcode literally (for example “qwerrty spelled with a ‘q’ and two ‘r’s”). So when we called and said “qwerrty” they wouldn’t accept it. This took an inordinate amount of time to sort out.
Then we discovered that the installers never submitted an alarm form to our local police department (or told us that we needed to) so for all the months we’d been happily paying, no police would have some to our home if the alarm went off.
The phone rep kept saying “well, the alarm would have gone off, so it was working.” And we kept saying “but if there’d been a problem no police would have arrived so it wasn’t working!” She said the sales/installers were subcontractors and they therefore weren’t responsible for their work!
We finally settled on half our money reimbursed, but were still locked into a two-year contract. Idiocy!
loading....
I find this sort of “gotcha” capitalism very, very frustrating. I stop doing business with any entity that tries to trick me into buying something I didn’t intend to buy, or to pay more money than I intended pay.
loading....
This happened exactly to my sister! Except in her case it was People magazine. They gave her an automatic renewal with not only a higher rate but also some hidden fees of which even THEY couldn’t explain when we called them. Needless to day, they lost a subscriber for good.
loading....
I always try to pay an additional $50 on my credit cards minimum due each month. I opened my Chase account and the minimum due was much higher than it usually is. I have not used this card. I examine the bill and the interest rate had gone up 5.99%. I have never been late with a payment. I have very good credit. I call them up and they tell me they have raised all the rates due to the economy! I said excuse me? you were bailed out, I was not. They then tell me since I called they would reduce my rate back down to the original rate. I have noticed this in other bills too. Time Warner just went up $6. My garbage service went up when the cost of gas was so high. It has not gone down and they do not plan on having it go down. Service fees, adminstration fees, because we can fees. it is driving me crazy.
loading....
My biggest frustration has been with register.com – and I havent taken the time to call them. I have registered a few sites over the years and they defaulted them into auto-renewal. I usually get an email a few months before with a “special rate” – which I usually don’t look at because they don’t expire for a few months anyways. Then when they are coming up – my login or password or something does not work – so I can’t get in to turn off the auto-renewal. What’s a shame is that they charge over 3 times! their competitors. I know it will take me some time to address the whole thing, and one of these days when I have a few hours I will deal with it… hopefully before the next one renews.
loading....
My worst customer service nightmare involved Juno “free” internet back in the early 2000s. They now operate under the name NET ZERO, and I cannot say enough horrible things about them. I had signed up at age 19, not realizing that a company should never ask for a credit card for a free service. I was only able to use the service once or twice – it would always say “you’ve been online too much, you cannot sign on again until tomorrow after 11 pm” and the next day I would be unable to access it.
About 3 months later, I started getting billed for $15 a month, which was certainly not the cheapest dial up at the time, for a service I had never really used. I called to cancel, they asked me to verify the expiration date on my credit card to verify my identity. I told it to them, and they said it was wrong. They asked for my password to verify the account, I couldn’t remember it. Since they “could not verify my identity” they refused to cancel the account. I spoke to various managers, no one would do anything for me. I probably spent 6 hours on the phone over the course of a week on hold, getting hung up on while being transferred, and speaking to managers. I finally started writing my credit card company every month disputing the charge. 4 months of disputing and they stopped billing me.
I am interested in Mother Earth News if I am chosen, thanks
loading....
We somehow got subscribed to Computer Games magazine. What a disaster to try to get “unsubbed”. I was so frustrated. I hated the magazine and was embarrassed to have it even coming to our house. I followed their advice about getting off the list. It kept coming. I did this a couple of times and then we finally had to call the credit card company and have them cancel it.
Since we never knew how we got subscribed in the first place, the whole thing just made me angry!
loading....
I’ve run into the same problem with other things I have ordered, including mineral makeup. You can’t get it unless you sign up for automatic renewal then they hit you with the increase. Automatic renewals suck. The worst by far was signing up for credit monitoring, Triple Advantage, through FreeCreditReport.com which was awfully hard to get out of. It took three phone calls and the first one, an obviously overseas operator used my less than perfect understanding of her heavily accented spiel to hoodwink me.
loading....
Hi JD,
I noticed that XM radio offers a lot of different management options when I use IE instead of Firefox. You may notice the same thing.
Bill
loading....
This recently happened to me with a magazine that I have subscribed to for many tears. It was automatically renewed and billed to my debit card for $29.97. When I called to cancel, they offered me the same # of issues for $14.97, I declined. A week later I found the same # of issues at a discount mag site for $3.50. It seems like a common practice with magazine subscriptions for them to offer a low rate and the loyal subscribers get a higher rate. This makes no sense to me. I often will let a subscription lapse and then re-subscribe at the low intro rate.
loading....
My tale of financial frustration happened earlier this month when I tried to upgrade my internet speed. I am currently a Brighthouse customer, but wanted to take an advantage of a deal that Earthlink offered where they would give me six months of the faster speed I wanted at the price I was paying now, and then the price would go up $12. I called Brighthouse to see if they could match the deal. They couldn’t, but said that they are Earthlink’s providers. So they connected me to Earthlink. Cue long holding time followed by a rep from an Indian call center. They then told me they couldn’t provide service to my area, despite both their own website and Brighthouse saying they could.
Sigh.
I haven’t upgraded my internet yet.
loading....
Not to play devils advocate, JD, but Smart Money seems to have gone the distance to notify you that they were changing to an auto-subscription (they put a full page ad on the front of your magazine, they didn’t bury it in fine print). And the super low rates you’re scouring the internet for may not even pay the cost of the magazine–it may well be sold at a loss in order to get you interested, so that you’ll eventually renew at a rate that allows them to, heaven forbid, make a profit. I’ve seen companies take advantage of customers, but you’re kind of being silly on this one. We’re talking $10 a year, for a subscription you-yourself say is vital to your business. Pay up, man. Ad revs are dropping and these guys are probably trying to find ways to keep staff.
loading....
@Starving Artist (#90)
Believe it or not, I half-way agree with you. For me, the $10 a year isn’t a big deal. And I understand that magazines are losing ad revenue in great big chunks. But what gets my blood boiling is the fact that they’re not just doing this to me; they’re doing it to all of their subscribers. And what they’re doing is trying to pass a price increase off as a customer benefit. If they had simply mailed me a re-subscription notice in the mail with the new rate, and hadn’t tried to do the auto-renew thing while touting how great it was for me, I would have probably paid the extra money. But auto-renew? At twice the price? And saying that they’re giving me this “benefit” because I’m a “preferred subscriber”? That’s pretty lame, SA. Pretty lame, indeed.
loading....
Martha Stewart Living did it to me!!! I was going to renew (in my time), but after getting nasty renewal notices I called and found out their new renewal policy. They did treat me well when I complained and canceled my subscription; but once again, I feel duped! Trust in business is melting further.
Along the same line, I received a text message for solitation of ring tones. I ignored it since I was not interested. When I noticed a $9.99 charge on my cell phone bill, I called they said I had subscriped to that service. After reviewing the text message (I still had it) the message said I had to opted out for this not to happen! I now throughly read my test message. What a ripoff!!!
And we wonder why people are getting cynical!
loading....
I also had the same troubles with a magazine company….
I purchased 5 magazines on a website for 2 year subscriptions. I started receiving the magazines a few weeks later and had favorites but for the most part liked them all. After a year and half of receiving the subscriptions I started to receive notices that my subscription was ending. Some of them were offering the same or better pricing than I had originally paid and a few of the prices went up. I canceled the ones I did not feel like they were of value to me and renewed the ones that I wanted to continue reading. Then…I received a notice from one magazine that I had not received. I was confused because they sent me a notice I would automatically be renewed unless it was canceled. I had never received any magazines from them, yet they have my address to resubscribe me? I called and they were very sorry that they did not end them. They were going to send me a few old magazines and they can then resubscribe me for a discount. Wait…where are my other 24 magazines…just sending me 4 doesn’t solve the problem…subscribing me for 2 years in the future would. Long story short, got my money back and no longer subscribing to them!
loading....
The same thing just happened to me–I got the same issue with the same wrap-around cover. I, too, called the automated number (but, unlike JD, I don’t write about personal finance for a living, so I decided to cancel it because I’ve never loved Smart Money). Not only is there no option to speak to a person, but you have to stop the continuous service and THEN they still plan to charge you for renewing your subscription–you can un-enroll in “continuous service”, but then you also have to tell them to cancel or they’ll still charge you what they were planning to charge you. I did end up canceling the whole thing, eventually. But I was *so* unimpressed with the whole thing. I’m with JD–the whole thing, and then giving a current customer a crappier price, is totally lame.
loading....
The Wall Street Journal is trying to do that to me right now! Renewing at the “subscriber’s” price is over $200, while a new subscriber gets under $100.
loading....
Auto-renew doesn’t bother me in the slightest. If some service is useful enough that I need it every month, I don’t want the default case to be that it gets turned off if I forget to fill out a form. What if you had to renew your phone or electricity service every year?
Auto-renew at double the previous rate is pretty shady though.
Here’s the main reason I think people are upset at automatic magazine renewals, but not automatic phone service renewals: We actually *care* about having phone service. We don’t really care about most magazines.
Magazines are, by and large, a waste of money. They’re more advertising than content, and even the content tends to be pretty non-compelling in most of them. I don’t have any subscriptions at all to any periodicals, and I don’t feel like I’m missing a thing.
loading....
Eh, I won’t belabor the point, because I half-way agree with you, but it’s really not that nefarious. It is a benefit, not having to waste time resubscribing, and every company calls their customers ‘preferred’ (unless you (grin) write an article lambasting their services to the world). I’m glad things sort-of worked out for you, however, and I agree it’s good to keep companies more-honest.
loading....
Thanks for the information. This has not happened to me yet. I normally get the “renew now” letters or covers after the first issue for the next 23 issues saying, this is your LAST time to renew at this special price. If you sign up a friend, it is free for them and costs you money! I usually ask for new subscriptions as gifts from family. It is easy, cheap and useful. Then I pass the mags onto friends/family to recycle.
loading....
This is a great post. I love what you are doing in response to them. I currently frustrated by the lack of customer service EVERYWHERE and that when I call to talk to someone about a bill, I can’t get a real person on the phone. Grrr. I waste so much time on hold or with a machine, that when I do get to a real person, I take my frustrations out on them and had they simply answered the phone in the beginning, it would have been much more pleasant for all involved!!
loading....