Comment by setopt
2 days ago
I love their writing, but I hate their subscriptions. The only way to cancel is to talk to customer service via chat or phone, who will keep begging and insisting that you not cancel and offering discounts to try to stop you. When I finally did manage to cancel, it required at least half an hour of insisting to some salesman.
I originally planned to just take a break, but after that distasteful cancellation procedure, I didn’t feel like resubscribing.
The Economist regularly goes on sale at discountmags.com. For years it was $1/week, but recently the price increased to $75/yr. It's not on sale at the moment, but for anyone interested, I recommend setting up a deal alert at slick deals [1] to get notified the next time it's on sale - probably around Black Friday / Christmas.
I have been subscribing to the Economist through DiscountMags for over a decade now, and consider DiscountMags to be a totally legitimate business. DiscountMags does automatically enroll you for their "DiscountLock" auto-renewal when you place an order, but you can turn it off at any time through their website without talking to anyone (and I would recommend turning off DiscountLock as it no longer locks in the original price like it used to... so better to just re-up during a sale period).
[1] https://slickdeals.net/f/18290980-the-economist-magazine-1-y...
For what it’s worth, they offer subs via IAP in the iOS App Store. If you subscribe that way, unsubscribing is just a couple of taps.
That €349 per year is pretty steep, though.
I sent them an email to unsubscribe one time to take a break too, though I'm European that was many years ago. I hope it didn't get worse.