Doing Whatever They Can to Survive

We all know that the print industry is hurting, countless magazines have gone under in the last year or two. I'm beginning to worry about my Paste subscription as it seems to be getting smaller all the time. So how should they stay afloat? I've heard a lot of suggestions by former EGM staff while reflecting on the death of their magazine. Stuff like making it more premium, increasing the quality of paper its printed on and putting more work into making a nice thick superior product that people will want to pay for. What are they doing to stay afloat? Pestering the hell out of their customers.

It first started with my subscription to the previously mentioned EGM. It was set to expire with the December issue and since I didn't have much expendable income around that time do to the holidays I had resolved to let it expire and perhaps resubscribe later. Soon I got a letter saying that my subscription was automatically renewed, and that I should now send them the money I owe them. That was weird since I had recieved it as a gift more then 2 years ago and the giver had paid with a check so automatic renewal wouldn't have been much of an option. So I thought nothing of it, I figured it must have been a ploy to dupe people into just resubscribing without thought and that if I ignored it then they'd get the hint that I wasn't going to.

Upon showing up to my parents house (where my subscription was still being sent) one day however I went to grab my mail and realized there was a small pile of letters from EGM (or whoever handles their subscriptions, I forget who now). The last of these letters claimed that this was their final warning to me and if I didn't pay that more drastic measures would be taken. I was pissed off at this point and responded as such in email form. Only then did they apologize and say that any extra issues sent to me were my gift. Of course there were no more issues of EGM as news broke of their shutting down soon after this whole ordeal, so I'm not sure if it would have been solved differently had EGM been healthy and successful still.

Within the last month though, I got dealt another annoyance in this manner. We were repeatedly getting calls from Conde Nast, Wireds parent company, at least every other day. Eventually I answered so I could end them. The woman on the other end of the phone relayed to me their excellent offer if I were to resubscribe to Wired right then. My subscription wasn't even close to expiring, and I had no interest in giving her my credit card number so that I'd get a charge at some random time after I had already forgotten about it. Now I love my Wired magazine, I read it almost front to back every month. I have every intention to resubscribe, but I want to send in a payment myself when I'm sure I have the money, not be charged whenever they decide to renew it.

I explained to the woman that I didn't want to resubscribe right then and I would send in one of the cards when I wanted to. The response was a repeating of their offer, and that she would go ahead and do that now. I was kind of peeved at this point and told her no I did not want their offer, and I in no way wanted any sort of automatic renewal. Instead of backing down to this she tried to force me into it again! At this point I told her that she was talking her way out of my resubscription and I wasn't interested in any offer they had, and hung up.

I write this rant now though, because I am going through this yet another time. My wife has received issues of a magazine she has never even heard of, along with letters claiming she owes them money. So this is a third company, using the same shady tactics to try to trick people into just handing over money. I completely understand that they are in a tough spot right now, and I sympathize. Working for the newspaper industry means I've seen my pay cut several times, I've seen my routes dissolved into nothing and been forced to scramble to take new ones that might be available, and I've seen my list of customers grow shorter and shorter everyday. I know how it feels to be working in a slowly dying industry, but I would sympathize more if they were taking different approaches to finding a solution. Approaches that weren't deceiving their very own customers.

At this point I almost welcome their demise, because they've pissed me off one too many times. Fortunately I know better than to blame the people behind the magazines I read, it's not their fault that their parent companies are doing this to their customers. Unfortunately a lot of people might not realize this, and might get annoyed enough to just outright cancel their subscriptions. The companies that own these magazines see this scenario as a loss on their annual reports, but the people who work their asses off everyday to put these magazines out see it as no more job to go to everyday. So who's really losing here?