I subscribe to half a dozen or so magazines, and for about a year I’ve noticed that their renewal notices have included “shipping and handling” as a separate cost added to the subscription, and it usually is in much smaller print. One I got today offers
just $2.29 an issue
plus $0.30 for shipping and handling
So are they just trying to fool inattentive customers that their offer is better than it is? If so, that pisses me off because since when does a magazine subscription not include sending you the magazine? Hello, subscription.
Or is there some kind of new consumer law that requires itemization? Like the post office is making them do it, or a few states have passed this truth-in-subscription law?
I’m kind of happy being pissed off, but I’d also like to get my magazines.
My guess would be is that this magazine sells on newsstands for $2.29 so they don’t want to advertise a price that’s higher than the newsstand price and at the same time don’t want to eat shipping costs, so those costs are advertised as separate.
You’re free, of course, to be pissed off, but I don’t see you as having any leverage. It’s their game; play it or not.
I see no reason to consider them any differently from any other advertisement that shows a very low price for the item in large print, followed by a shipping/handling fee in smaller print.
Ditto.And I’ll be pissed together with you, but I have to admit that they aren’t doing anything technically wrong.
To push you to the online version maybe?
Last summer I renewed my subscription to Entertainment Weekly by sending in the little postcard that came attached to the front of the magazine.
After several weeks of no magazines showing up in my mailbox I tracked down their website and found I was automatically switched to receiving the online magazine, which was now their default offering and needed to pay more to receive the paper copy.
I’ve found that the best procedure for this is to toss all these offers until your subscription runs out. At that time, they will say ‘we really want you back’ and will offer you their best (cheapest) price to re-subscribe. Their earlier offers won’t have been as good, even though they call you a ‘valued subscriber’, they still want to charge you more.
Note another trick being used by companies, especially software ones, that push automatic renewal on you – they often renew at a much higher price than the product is offered at in the market. For example, I recently received an offer for Iolo System Mechanic for $10 a year. I’ve used it for a couple of years now, and knew that it was abut time for my subscription to expire, so I was saving that email. Then when I went to look at it, I found they had automatically renewed my subscription – at $29.95, about 3 times the market rate. That has sure influenced my user satisfaction about their product.
To borrow and bastardize a quote; I hope it’s a long and healthy pissed!
I’m not sure how you can be pissed though. EVERYTHING has fine print. At least the renewal notices are something you can hold and examine, with a magnifying glass as needed.
I’d be more pissed at the flash of a paragraph of tiny print at the end of so many TV ads - but I’ve got a DVR now and I can pause them if I really have to…
A con that I’ve come across a lot lately is the bargain priced renewal offer, which entails being a sport by providing a one-year “gift” subscription for someone else - Free! You can’t get the bargain price unless you take the gift offer. And, of course, if you are nice enough to get someone that subscription, they’re bound to get swamped then by frequent requests for renewals, which, of course, is the profit motive behind the original offer to you. I get these offers even though I have close to two years left on my regular subscriptions, too. #!!!#@! Why, I oughta pound you!
Yes. That would be the point of the small print with additional pricing details.
Fine print is typically used to include details in an advertisement that the casual consumer wouldn’t need to know, like “professional driver, closed course” or “may cause explosive diarrhea,” and in this case the marketing department decided that the actual subscription cost of $2.59 per issue is something people don’t really need to know.
There are also shady businesses which send current subscribers mail which looks like a renewal bill from the magazine publisher. But they’re really acting as a middleman. They claim to be “Maxim” magazine or whoever. But they’re actually “Conniving Bob’s subscription renewal and double-billing service”.
You pay him $2.29 +0.30 per issue = $31.08 for a year and he dutifully sends $2.29 per issue * 12 = $27.48 to Maxim’s publisher on your behalf and pockets the $0.30 * 12 = 3.60. Nice markup for no work.
Meantime, Maxim’s publisher has been watching and would have sent you a renewal notice at the normal price when your subscription was about to expire. But since you renewed early, they never do that. So you don’t see double renewal notices. Except ones coming from Conniving Bob’s competitor Thieving Pete.
The publishers are often in cahoots with these guys. They sell them the subscriber list knowing what’s going to happen. It saves them the cost of soliciting, and they get their renewals sooner which improves cashflow.
Like Christmas decorations in late September, I’ve noticed this scam happening earlier and earlier. IOW, after you renew directly for a year the first 3rd party renewal offers arrive about 6 months later, fully 6 months before the subscription runs out. They used to wait until more like 10 months.
The advertising copy and pseudo-invoice paperwork is carefully written to strongly imply, without actually saying it, that you’re dealing directly with the actual publisher. Usually not.
I thought the OP was going to be about the trick where they send "important; don’t miss a single issue"renewal notices even though you still have many issues left on your subscription.
It’s been a while since I’ve subscribed to a magazine but from what I remember the price was generally a lot lower than the cover price. Playboy had a $5 cover price when I subscribed to it but I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay more than $25-30 for a yearly subscription. Remember, most magazines are just delivery vehicles for advertising and that’s where the money is made.
