But having endured several months of renewal intimidation from a publication I’ve subscribed to for a decade and a half, now I’m not so sure.
With time pressures and an overabundance of other material begging to be read, I’d been reading their magazine with decreasing thoroughness. Sometimes I wouldn’t read issues at all and they’d end up becoming mere fodder for the recycling bin.
Concerned that neither environmentalists nor my accountant would approve of my wasteful ways, I decided to let my subscription lapse for a while.
Of course, I hadn’t ‘forced’ them to do anything. So I let the matter go, figuring they’d get the message and that would be the end of it. But in October I heard from the publisher again. And I was incensed.
Before explaining the main reason for my feelings of outrage, let’s consider his letter.
The unsolicited missive I’m referring to stated that ‘At your request, we have mailed you several invoices for your subscription – so far we have received no response!’ He was right about the lack of a response, but dead wrong about the other point – I’d never requested a single invoice, let alone several.
So what are you trying to tell me, I wanted to know. That you’ve been sending me the magazine or not? That you’ve been sending it as per my request or are you now asking me if I want it?
I was also curious as to why the envelope was postmarked Oct. 10 but the letter was dated Sept. 4. What did that say about their efficiency?
This time the publisher wrote, in a letter that again took them six weeks to insert into an envelope, ‘Dear Ex-Subscriber, Some months back, as you asked us to do, we started a subscription in your name. You received a dozen or more weekly issues, an invoice for your subscription…and then several reminders.
He sounded so certain I’d ordered a renewal that I began to doubt myself. I started sweating that perhaps I actually had authorized a subscription…maybe in my sleep or something. So I sucked up my courage and phoned them to clear the matter up.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, Methinks thou dost not protest enough. Or to coin a phrase myself, Methinks thou hast been trying to bluff me into thinking I owest thou money.
Incredulous, I asked the Circulation man how I could have been sent so many notices claiming, with increasing ire, that I had renewed when, in fact, I hadn’t. He said that it was because I was on their automatic renewal plan. But how can that be? With those plans, you authorize a subscription to be renewed automatically until you tell them to stop. If I was on their automatic plan, why hadn’t they been cashing my cheques or debiting my credit card, instead of sending threatening letters?
Experience has taught me that, while you may get away with tricking your prospects, it rarely pays to try pulling the wool over the eyes of customers. It’s invariably better to forgo one sale in order to make many more sales to the customer in future.
The entire business made me think, if this is the way they treat a subscriber of 15 years’ duration, a less loyal subscriber might do well to remember National Lampoon…and keep a close eye on the family dog.
P.S. To the parents of Santa fans: Get your kids to visit the Canada Post Web site which has some excellent seasonal games…and NORAD’s www.noradsanta.org which tracks Santa throughout Dec. 24, presenting fascinating ‘real-time’ video clips of the man in red as he journeys around the world.