I just dealt with my print newspaper again…they have an offer of $1.99 for new subscribers for just Thursday and Sunday. I called to inquire, and of course, it’s almost twice that amount for current customers. I’m sorry…but am I the only one who is tired of new customer offers, and zilch for longtime customers.
I was ready to cancel entirely.
I tried that with my print newspaper, too. Same thing. I know they want new subscribers but it’s unfair to those who paid more for years.
The country club my dad belonged to for years did that. Made the fees almost nothing for new members but those who had belonged for years (like my dad) had to pay the higher rates. They lost a lot of long time members including my dad.
I called to cancel my print newspaper subscription after yet another rate hike and miraculously the customer representative came up with an excellent offer for the next year. We kept the print paper (at least for the year - I marked the end date of the deal in my calendar!). I do have a nagging feeling that we had been a bit ripped off by not getting a discounted offer earlier (as long time subscribers). I expect we will eventually move online (once the offers dry up).
Well…new members could get four day service for about $4 a week. Our bill for the same was $158. We cut back to two days per week…and it’s $45.37. And I don’t think I would have gotten that price if I hadn’t said “then cancel my subscription”.
And in the past with other things like cable…which we did cancel…after the cancellation, we got tons of offers “we miss you. Please come back”. Which we ignored.
I feel like Verizon does this often.
Our paper is maddening. They tease you with the digital version $1 for 13 weeks. Great. After that, I got a letter that it’s going to $X, but they didn’t tell you if that’s a weekly, month, or yearly rate. Online said you could manage the subscription online, but nowhere did it tell you how much it was, nor was there a place to cancel. You had to go through phone hell to do that. So I did, and continued to have access for 6 more months.
After awhile I got it again for the $1 deal. Now, they seem to have some prices on there. But it’s $130/year for the online version. If you want print, it’s $275 for 7 days/week or $218 for 3 days. And they only have ~1-3 local articles a day now. I usually just read it for Dear Abby and the horoscope. I am going to cancel again. It’s not worth it.
Cell phones are the worst! I switched from AT&T to Verizon because we were buying 4 new iphones (model 7s at the time). AT&T gave me (A customer for YEARS) NOTHING! Switched to Verizon and I got 2 free, $200 in Starbucks gift cards, and bonus 16 GB of data for life.
Our newspaper does that. So we take turns putting the newspaper under my name or my husbands, cancel when the price goes up, get a new customer offer under the other name. It’s a matter of several hundred dollars. Quite ridiculous.
They are onto that here. They do it by address…
I did this dance with our paper for a few years. We get it 7 days/week. We’d cancel but they’d keep delivering (well that could be the terrible delivery subcontractor who never did our vacation holds like we requested) and then they’d offer lower prices to renew. the longer we held out, the better the deal got. And we’d ultimately renew at a good price. But also, because we were having such ongoing challenges with delivery, over several years, we finally got managers involved. Every time they’d screw up the vacation holds (deliver when supposed to hold, hold when supposed to deliver, etc) they’d extend our subscription. Ended up with probably 5 mos of free papers! So when they finally offered a price last year that was $20 more than the year before, I felt it was fair, given all the extension we’d gotten. Ours happened to just come up for renewal now too. And the renewal rate is exactly what it was last year. So I renewed. No more needing to cancel and re-subscribe. But I agree, you’d think they would want to keep current, longtime subscribers happy. Harder to get a new customer than keep an existing one.
I cancel and often receive a better offer to come back. This happens with newspaper, cable, online subscriptions. It even happens with membership groups like WW.
This is a problem with internet and cell phone providers. New customers get sweet deals that existing customers can’t get.
Totally get that it would be nice to get an offer “thank you for being a loyal customer! For the next year we’re going to give you a 20% discount in thanks”
…probably what we have to realize - especially for something like a newspaper is that it’s not fiscally possible for them to survive on discount subscriptions for a higher % of their customers. Not if you want any quality/variety in the words on your news print. And not in these days of news offices closing left and right.
I think there are different subscription animals. Newspaper and magazines much different than internet and cell phone providers or cable for instance.
It is a “sweat deal”. We all probably sweat trying to get the deals!
I did a deal with online local paper, very cheap at first. Then $12/month. When it went to $18, I called…and they offered me enhanced digital plan, $12. OK fine, I took it. But after just one month it went back to $18. I like to support journalism (especially local), but I have New York Times online and opted to keep that and cancel local. Maybe after gardening season I will take a new deal.