Ever try to let your subscription to the Hartford Courant lapse?
A friend of mine did. He was getting the Thursday, Friday, Sunday package and got tired of picking his paper out of a puddle on the street, so he decided just to let his trial subscription expire.
Oddly, the paper continued to be delivered — and, unfortunately, in the same fashion — and he figured it would just take the paper a few days to figure out his subscription had lapsed. It kept coming, however, along with a bill for $12.50 from a collection agency.
Okay, he figured, rather than squabble with a collection agency over 12 bucks, he just paid it, thinking that would make it go away.
I didn’t, however. The paper kept coming and, eventually, so did another scary bill from the collection agency. So he called the paper.
The collection agency, he was told, is just the company that routinely collects for the paper, the intimidating language on the back of the bill notwithstanding. And they also brought him up to speed with their subscription deal:
” At expiration your subscription will renew automatically unless you contact us directly.”
Is that legal?
I don’t know — and would be interested in the opinion of a consumer watchdog, say — but even if it is, doesn’t it seem like what my father used to call “sharp practice?” (He didn’t mean it in a good way.)
Clearly my friend didn’t have a clue that he had gotten into such a deal, and I wonder how many subscribers do.
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Same here. It took three attempts on my part for The Courant to finally cancel my subscription, two by mail, one over the phone, and I’m still dreading them continuing without my approval.
Customer service is obviously nil at The Courant.
How can you keep delivering something that the reader has failed to renew? I don’t believe other major papers or major magazines would do this unless possibly you were a subscriber for decades. I believe it has to do with circulation numbers and it’s probably more cost effective for them to keep their numbers up then stop delivering the paper to people who don’t want it.
The easiest way to have your subscription canceled is to get laid off. It’s one of the few perks (not having to witness, day by day, the further deterioration of a once-fine newspaper). It was very efficient, too, done within a matter of a couple of days.
Well, I gotta disagree with you on this one. When I left the paper, it continued to arrive and they started billing me. When I called and asked about it (like how can you start charging me without my consent), they didn’t have an answer.
You can’t just voluntarily leave to enjoy the full package of perquisites for refugees; you have to be uprooted — laid off. If you’re laid-off, they strip you of everything.
The newspaper wasn’t missed, though, since it now has the weight and consistency of dandelion fluff (presumably to aid in wind dispersal over long distances, to support the questionable claim of 800,000 readers). Another similarity between the Courant and dandlion seed is the light, fuzzy, cotton-like nature of its front-page stories. Note that dandelions are also often found at the side of pavements, being somewhat “platform agnostic.” Maybe the Courant should now be classified as a garden weed rather than a newspaper.