Stereophile: Pay your Bill???

This thread's probably worth an occasional bump just to remind us all to read the small print.

That said, that sort of thing is getting more common for any subscription service. Be especially careful signing up for any "trial offers", as a lot of those bump up to full price automatically if you don't cancel a certain amount of time ahead of the end of the trial. Had that happen here for satellite tv service, and although I cancelled those channels immediately upon receipt of the bill, they still wanted to charge me for the first month at full price "because I didn't give them proper notification of cancellation" or some such shite. Happy to say, they soon saw the error of their ways, but I imagine a lot of folk just figure it's easier to pay them than argue.

It's not all bad though. I've been paying half price on my phone/internet for years now. Every time that "introductory offer" is set to expire, I just go to the local office and request another year. You can try to get the same deal over the phone, but good luck with that ...
 
Well, I got the $14/2year earbud letter today and maybe I will sign up. I've wasted more on worse and the issue isn't them, it's me not reading them.
It's really a killer deal for less than $0.58/issue...
 
I got the earbuds. They're pretty lousy.
I too got their earbuds...and was appalled that an audio magazine was handing out something so horrid sounding!
Yesterday, I received a letter saying "we have written to you four or five times already...you subscription is fixing to expire
next month (May, 2017). Renew now to save yourself some money and to avoid missing any issues!"
The funny thing is...my magazines clearly state that they don't expire until this coming October!
 
I've been a subscriber since 1996 and I think they've been bought out at least 3 times. I know they moved from Santa Fe to NYC. I used to read every article but I've skipped the ones about streaming music.I don't plan to start that but it could possibly happen.
 
I'll chip in here with some information on how magazine subscriptions, and many magazine subscriptions work. Stereophile, like nearly all magazines, if not all, use a subscription service to sell subscriptions. Stereophile uses the same one that the vast majority of other magazines use.

Nearly all magazines, if not all, also don't print or mail their magazines. They use a service to do that. Magazines write, compose, and publish. There's nothing new about that. The New York Times and USA Today, among other newspapers, also don't print, distribute, or sell subscriptions to their newspapers. They use services to do that. There is one local to me that prints and distributes USA Today in this part of the country.

When you buy a subscription to USA Today you don't buy it from USA Today, you buy it from the subscription service that they hired to sell subscriptions. It's the same deal as with Stereophile and nearly every other magazine.

Stereophile doesn't give away the ear buds. Road & Track doesn't give away the tire gauge. The subscription services that they hired to sell subscriptions give those away. And in the case of Stereophile, for a subscription that costs less than $1.00 an issue, I think it's silly to believe that any gift would be of even decent quality.

Stereophile, and other magazines, are looking to pay for the printing and distribution of their magazines with their cut of the subscription. They want to do the same thing with the jobbers who they have hired to put their magazines on magazine racks. There is no profit in subscriptions to magazines and newspapers for the magazine and newspaper owners. The printers, mailers, jobbers, and subscription services make the profit on the physical magazines and newspapers.

Magazines and newspapers make their profit on the advertising they sell. It's been that way for a couple of centuries now.

On the subject of subscriptions, you can work backwards from the last issue date and figure out roughly when you need to have a renewal in. In the case of Stereophile, if you last issue is October, you typically receive that issue around the beginning or September at the latest. That's because the October issue is printed in mid-August and distribution begins the third week of August.

The final draft of the magazine goes to the printer at the beginning of August, and the subscription service sends the current subscription list to the mailing service the last week in July. These subscription services are usually pretty slow in getting changes made. My personal experience is that it can take them two months to get their mailing lists updated after you send in a subscription payment. If that were to happen in this example, you would need to have your subscription renewal in around the end of May or risk missing an issue. And this is why some services err on the side of caution and continue having the magazine mailed after a subscription renewal is past due. But I've found that you can't count on having that happen.

Happy listening.
 
I subscribe to 3 magazines, and I always let them lapse and wait for the deal to renew, they always send several months anyway. It does drive me crazy to receive a copy and the $9.95 a year card is in it as they ask me to pay 3 times that amount on the first renewal letter. :dunno:
Regards,
Jim
 
My last issue of TAS was December 1980; I dropped them when I couldn't deal with the belief systems and bloated egos of the "reviewers" any longer. For some reason I hung on to Stereophile till 1989; probably because I believed that JGH had more of his original integrity intact than the other writers. But he wrote less and less, and the magazine became unreadable. TAA went the same way; from a nice DIY concept periodical to one infested by the same sort of fantasy drivel that ruined the subjectivist mags.

I still haul a copy out of storage occasionally and read through it for the giggles, but the day arrived long ago where you could glean more useful info about a piece of audio gear from the manufacturer's advertising than the hi-fi press (think about that for a moment) and I was tired of subsidizing their power trips. The internet forums have plenty of silliness too, but overall there is a common core of knowledge that is lacking in the for-profit publications. And they do encourage discussion.
 
I still read them in a attempt to keep up with technology but I get tired of watching all the bandwagon jumping. Now all of a sudden everyone online think technics is high end. I still like the gear recommendations
 
Absolute sound wants around 34$ a year and I call them and say I've got this card out of the magazine and it says 14.98. Then they'll take that for a year.
 
Can just imagine the accountant staff saying...can't we just merge all these into one big mag for 'guys who like stuff'??

stereophile.jpg
 
I gave up on the magazines a while back. Stereophile was always silly to me, lots of cable nonsense and reviews on stuff I could never buy, and wouldn't even if I hit the lottery. Now I get a lot of laughs reading and watching kook videos and posts on web forums. I kind of miss the High Fidelity/Stereo Review/Audio days.
 
I kind of miss the High Fidelity/Stereo Review/Audio days.
I really do miss Audio. That one was a cut about Stereo Review in terms of equipment, and they had some interesting columnists. I will say that Stereo Review had some really good music reviews though, and some of their music articles/interviews were quite well done. Another one I really liked at the time was Wayne Green's Digital Audio & Compact Disc Review; it cost me a lot in new CDs I ended up purchasing. :D
 
I too dropped TAS recently. The renewal letters have been rolling in since then. Does anyone at that stupid magazine know what is going on? The letters being sent want me to pay $40 plus for a subscription when the cutout in the magazine is less than half of that. All the more reason to drop them.
 
I use the $14.95 postcard/magazine inserts when I renew.
Why pay big $$ when I get several of those post card inserts each year in my TAS issues.
I have noticed the newest renewal cards have blue highlight ink, the older ones were red.
I always wait a couple months, and I have received a free issue or two after my sub. ends, trying to entice me to renew I guess.
 
Back
Top Bottom