This site lists on-line magazine merchants that offer incredulous sounding deals on subscriptions. $1.18 a year for Discover sounds to good to be true.
My brother just ordered a subscription to Men’s Health through them, and was concerned that it is written that he wouldn’t receive his first issue for up to two months. He was thinking that this being the amount of time that credit card companies give you for putting in a complaint might be more than coincidence. Does anyone know if this is on the up and up?
I googled it and didn’t find anything except ads and recommendations for the site, and they’re not mentioned at all on ripoffreport.com… (I searched for magazinepricesearch, magazinepricesearch.com, and magazine price search)
You may want to also research Amazing Bargains, since a register search for the domain name pulls up amazing-bargains.com as the owner of that domain name. I didn’t find anything under either name in the BBB website. It seems to me that they don’t provide the services themselves but they are associated with the businesses that do.
Hi there! I’m Michael Coley, and I run MagazinePriceSearch.com (and Amazing-Bargains.com). I noticed some traffic to my site from this thread, so I thought I would check it out. Cool message board! Can’t believe I never ran across it before.
Nah, I think we should cut him some slack. I mean, how often do questions about specific sites (or specific anything) get a response from people actually involved with it?
Maybe we could ask him to answer any questions people have about magazines & subscriptions.
Like why do magazines I subscribe to arrive days of even weeks after the new issue appears on the newsstand? Do the publishers care less about me, a long-time subscriber, than new customers from the newsstand?
I’d be glad to take a stab at any general magazine-related questions. I don’t know all the answers, but I can guess with the best of them!
Cynical answer: Probably because the publisher already has your money.
Likely answer: Newsstand issues are delivered by jobbers who are able to deliver on a specific day. Subscription issues are delivered by the USPS at perhaps the cheapest rate available, so who knows how long it will take to deliver. Some may come before they appear on newsstands (and I think that’s more typical, but I don’t visit newsstands very regularly) and some may appear after they’re already on the newsstands.
I can vouch for Amazing Bargains. I never order anything online without consulting that site for discount codes. It routinely saves me 20% to 25% and often gets me free shipping to boot.
Welcome to the SDMB, MichaelColey. It is understandable that you would want to answer the question about your own site. However, I have edited your first post to remove most of the text and your second post to remove the links to your sites. Your posts contained advertising, which we do not allow here. You are of course welcome to purchase advertising here. See http://www.chireader.com/readerinc/Onlinerate.html for details.
I am going to ask you not to post links to your commercial sites in the future. This includes the signature line in your profile, which you will want to update. Failure to comply with our policies will result in the loss of your posting privileges.
With the noted exception of Consumers Reports- the publisher wants you to be counted as a “paid subscriber” far more than he wants your subscrition money. I used to work for Hearst, and I was having problems figuring out the economics of Newspapers subscriptions. This was explained to me, and now I’ll share it with you.
Advertising is charged on an audited PAID subscription total. Mostly- those handed out “free” aren’t counted (advertisers figure that dudes who don’t want a mag/paper enough to pay for it won’t read it). And ads pay for the bulk of what is printed- not subscriptions. Thus- very cheap sub rates- and worse yet, when some of these subcontractors get your subscription- nothing really is left over for the actual publisher. The Publisher might well lose some $ on this, even after advertising- it could be a loss leader (see below)
Not that your $$ is scorned mind you. Many dudes, if they like something will re-subscribe for years- if not decades. And, that means a constant flow of cash coming in- not to mention another “paid subscription”.
Mike- please stick around. Sure, they edited out the link, but the Mods did keep in the actual site addy, so if we REALLY want to-we can find you. You’ll build up some goodwill, anyway.
Thanks, guys! I certainly plan on sticking around. Like I said, this is a cool forum.
I’m only going to be online about 3-4 hours a day for the next couple weeks (versus 18+ hours a day), so you probably won’t see a lot of me during that time.
