2012/12/15

An open letter to The New Yorker's international gift subscription complaints department


Hi,

Couple problems. I tried to gift my brother a New Yorker subscription just now:

https://subscribe.newyorker.com/subscribe/newyorker/71807

Because I live in Australia, I click the appropriate link ("Click here to send this gift to an international address"):

https://subscribe.newyorker.com/subscribe/newyorker/69923

Fill out my brother's details and click submit, because I'm not really paying attention. Oh, what? How in fuck's name is this a gift form? I've just ordered him a regular subscription with no indication who it's from. And he's the one getting the payment receipt.

Fine, whatever. I'll just have to tell him now that I ordered him a subscription. Luckily this credit card number runs out before the auto-renew kicks in, since, contrary to your claims ("If giving a gift, this does not apply to your gift subscription") on the order form for gifts, the subscription confirmation I received says plain: "This order includes the Subscriber's Automatic Renewal Feature". (Surely breaking some sort of false advertising / scam me out of my money law, at least in this country.)

I wonder if you've had many international gift subscriptions from this page. If not, maybe all this is the reason why.

* * *

Okay, so where do I go to try and sort out this mess? Ah, I see:

www.newyorker.com/customerservice

So I can't log into my account. Funny, I know that I have access to the online archive through my regular email login. Well, maybe customerservice needs a separate registration.

The next possibility asks for an account number. Well, since I bought my subscription on an iPad through the app I never received one. Never see a receipt since it goes through iTunes. Scratch that option.

Finally, aha!, "I don't have my account number, what should I do?" — perfect, right?

Oh.

Select a country.

United States.
Canada.

Fuck you too, Americans.

Luckily for all of us, I found a "Contact Us" page with a text box. Hopefully this will help to sort something out.

* * *

By the way, while I'm here, I also wanted to point out that having to use the clunky online archive mess for articles in the current issue behind the paywall is a pain in the arse.

* * *

Besides all this technology mess, though, love your work. Good luck sorting it all out.

Merry Christmas,
Will