Magazine Subscriptions…Oh My!

I hate magazine subscriptions.

Not as a gift per se, but once you give them as a gift, the renewal notices bombard you from ever angle. Eventually, you end up not knowing if you renewed the darn thing or not. You have 20 notices for the one magazine from 10 different return addresses.

I imagine that scammers are crazy sending fake renewals every ten minutes, in the hope that you will choose their renewal service to pay and never get the product.

There is also the fun of them making it look as if the a partial payment is all you owe. Only to find out later that the balance is due. Special deals are rarely special and never a deal.

After years of “renew now” offers, I have decided to just mark my calendar with the renewal date and throw out all of the rest of the envelopes…I mean recycle. Most with me never even opening them. I go directly to the website, not the “subscription” website, and look up the account to be sure the renewal date matches mine. Then I renew. Just about 30 days before expiration, maybe a bit more, I do the deed. In the age of computers and credit cards, nothing takes 6 to 8 weeks anymore. Don’t let them fool you. Just ask anyone addicted to Amazon (as I may or may not be) if the start to drool over their purchase arriving within 2 days. My digital books are even better! They appear almost instantly on my Ipad for my consumption.

But anyway, I still like print magazines. Even though you can’t enlarge the type by spreading two fingers across the page. It is convenient when I don’t have my ipad with me, or when Comcast goes down again, or when you forgot to charge up, etc.

Until they stop sending me millions of renewal notices, I will continue to hate subscriptions. It’s how I roll.