FTV: Subscription Blues

 

     I mourn the loss of brick and motar bookstores.  Book World in downtown Houghton was my favorite because when we would stop by to browse, I always managed to find the newest issue of Classic Rock Magazine or Mojo to keep me in touch with the music scene.  When the entire Book World franchise folded up in the north central states, I found myself missing my monthly dose of musical tidbits and album release news.  Due to magazine costs spiraling upward in the last couple of decades, I decided if I wanted to keep getting music news, I would have to choose one of the two.  Classic Rock Magazine was my final choice.  All I had to do was pull the trigger on starting a subscription.  A few months went by before I got around to it and when I did, I got an unpleasant surprise.

     I went to their portal to finally start a subscription only to find a brief note stating the magazine was in receivership and in the process of finding new owners.  In other words, “we aren’t taking new subscriptions because we do not know if we will be here tomorrow!”  Needless to say, there had already been a large gap since I had last acquired a copy of CRM and it sure looked like the magazine’s future was dim.  Then a Christmas miracle occurred which we chronicled in this space on May 30, 2018 under the title FTV:  The Power of Print (all FTV articles are archived on our website at www.woas-fm.org) .

     Looking for more information about what exactly had happened to CRM (and her sister publications Hammer and Prog), I ran into a brief article stating the publications were NOT going under as previously mentioned.  It all started with singer Ben Ward from the British band Orange Goblin.  He and his wife felt bad about the employees at the above-mentioned magazines losing their jobs just before Christmas.  Ward explained that Orange Goblin was but one of many bands whose careers had been supported by this trio of music trade magazines.  This compelled the Wards to organize an online site to collect funds so everybody involved with the publications would not have to endure a payday-less holiday.  It started out as an act of charity and it certainly raised the spirits of those affected by the closures, but then the miracle wheels began to spin.

     The previous owners stepped in and made a last minute bid to buy back their former properties.  They negotiated a deal (literally paying pennies per the dollars they had sold the mags for) and announced they were going to continue publishing after all.  Their offices had already been reduced to a skeleton staff in order to put out the (presumed) last issues and suddenly, they found themselves short staffed as they began putting together new issues.  Remarkably, they never missed an issue of any of their mags and before we knew it, they were offering subscriptions again!  After waiting too long to get mine started, I jumped on it and sent them a check.  

     Things were rolling along smoothly and for the next couple of years.  I would annually send off my check to renew my subscription.   It was a little pricey, but having lost several of my other long time subscriptions as other magazines folded, I figured I could indulge myself.  When he was just a wanna be rockstar, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nillson subscribed to the premier British trade magazine, The New Musical Express.  NME was expensive for the day, but it checked all the boxes Rick needed to keep tabs on his favorite English bands. Nillson loved the sound of the Brit bands and there was no better way for him to keep tabs on them.  I certainly didn’t expect to parlay my CRM reading into a career like Nillson did with the NME, but my interest in bands and musicians was enough of a reason for me to subscribe.

     So, where exactly does this feel good story about the resurrection of Classic Rock Magazine, Hammer, and Prog fit in with the title of this FTV?  The fourth time I renewed my subscription, it stopped arriving on schedule.  There had been some shipping troubles during the early days of the COVID 19 Pandemic so it didn’t register with me at first.  All of the magazine shipping during this period had to be shifted from air freight to ocean freight.  The folks at CRM were apologetic about the delays.  In some instances, the May issue would arrive after the July issue, but again, they never missed one.  When the delay stretched to a couple of months, I contacted them via their web page to find out why I was no longer receiving my magazines.

     The answer I got was not what I expected:  “We are sorry, we have no record of your subscription or payment.”  I followed up by emailing them a copy of my mailing label and the latest invoice I had sent.  “Sorry,” they repeated, “We have no record of your subscription and have not received your payment.  Would you like to start a new one?”  I said, “Sure, I sent you a check and when you find it, then you can use it to restart my subscription.”  “Sir, perhaps your bank has a policy of not cashing checks for companies in other countries.”  To humor them and myself, I checked.  “No,” I replied, “they have no such restrictions and you had no trouble cashing my previous checks.”  The ‘help desk’ then suggested I call them to discuss the issue.  “Hmmm, how much does an overseas call cost?” I wondered.  I informed them that the cost for the call and time difference between EST and London made e-mail the better option for me.

     My frustration with the whole situation grew.  They then suggested I use my credit card to pay for my new subscription.  My response was a bit terse, but I had already made up my mind to simply let it go:  “You lost my check,” I countered, “and now you want me to give you my credit card information?  If you can not cash a check, how safe do I feel about you having my card info?  How do you people stay in business if you can not process a check for a simple subscription renewal or for that matter, not even have a record of my many years subscribing?  If and when you find my check, renew my subscription.  Until then, I will (sadly) let it go.”  My last email went unanswered so I was content to simply mine the internet for my music news..

     Three months later, I got the envelope with my lost check back in the mail.  It sported a big red stamp from the Royal Postal Service stating ‘Receiver has went away’!  Armed with this information, I scanned the invoice, envelope with the Royal Post stamp, and my check and started the whole mess with the help desk again.  The answer from subscription services gob smacked me: “Sir, you sent it to the wrong address.  We have moved our offices (at which point they gave me their new mailing address).”  I could not help myself when I asked, “If you moved your office, why were you sending out invoices with your old address?  Doesn’t the Royal Postal Service forward mail to your new address?”  I repackaged my check to the new address with a note that said, “ should you receive it, cash it and renew (or restart) my subscription.”  Do I need to even tell you that the check was never cashed and my renewal was never processed?  I was done.

     Having shared this tale with Elizabeth and Todd at the WOAS West Coast Bureau in Eugene, Oregon, they decided to surprise me with a new subscription for my birthday.  Their first attempt was not successful as the magazine’s site would not accept their credit card.  They ended up actually calling the home office in London to find out what the problem was.  When they were satisfied things could be processed correctly, they did indeed sign me up for a new subscription.  When the first issue arrived, I was even able to sign up for their ‘members only’ web page (something I had never been able to do with my old subscription).  All the data was there – my name and address were correct.  It even listed Todd and Elizabeth as the ‘payers’ of this gift subscription.  I logged off and on several times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

     A year later, I was notified it was time to renew.  I told the WCB that it would probably make more sense for me to take over the payments to which they replied, “Maybe you will get as good a deal as we got.  They never charged our credit card for your subscription and you still got a whole year.”  Perhaps this should have darkened my sunny skies a bit, but the eternal optimist in me said, “Well, they did sign me up so maybe they are getting their act together,” and I pulled the trigger and renewed . . . successfully.  I signed on to their web portal and miraculously, it all matched my most recent transaction.  All was well in the world of Classic Rock Magazine. . . until this past spring.

     Some time in the late spring of 2024, I noticed that I had (again) not received a recent copy of Classic Rock Magazine.  When I renewed the last time, I even put myself on the auto-renew system that would simply deduct the cost of the subscription every three months.  Back to the customer service center for another round of emails which (unsurprisingly) ended with ‘Your payment was declined so your subscription was terminated’.  Sigh.  I had received a notification from my credit card that a charge had been made on the card;  “Do you recognize it?”  I had been on the road that day and by the time I saw the message, it was too late.  Without me saying ‘Yes, it was me!’ my card company denied the charge and the subscription service cut me off.  Sure, go paperless in all your payments – it will make your life much easier!  Piff!

     I let it sit for a bit before deciding to start (yet again) another new subscription.  Just before I pulled the trigger AGAIN, they sent me an offer to lure me back into the fold.  The three month subscription price had gone up a little, but they baited the hook by offering me three months for three dollars.  Low and behold, my card was charged three dollars and a few weeks later my first magazine of the new subscription arrived.  Now it just remains to be seen if the auto-renew works (well, it will if I get to answer ‘Yes, it was me!’ in a timely fashion next time).

     I shouldn’t complain too much.  This really is only the second time in my life I have had this much trouble with a subscription.  When I was regularly doing science workshops back in the 1990s, I subscribed to Science Teacher Magazine.  I do not know what possessed me but instead of using my full name, I signed up as K.Raisanen.  All was well until that subscription went AWOL several years into my run.  This publication had a domestic (as in, ‘not overseas’) toll free phone number so I called to inquire.  The nice lady looked it up and asked, “Is this K.Raisanen at . . .” at which she rattled off an address in Hancock.  I laughed because I actually knew this other K.Raisanen person and apparently she had started a subscription using her first initial also.  When I renewed, they extended her subscription and not mine.  “Maybe you could change mine to Ken?” I suggested and with a few key strokes, all was right in the Science Teacher Magazine world.

     There was a period of years when I was asked to oversee the annual magazine fundraiser at the school.  It started out with all classes in grades 7 to 12 participating but it took only a couple of frustrating years for me to whittle it down to just grades 6, 7, and 8.  Each class advisor was supposed to compile their class’s orders and give them to me to process.  A couple did but the others just dumped all the orders, money and checks in one envelope for me to sort out.  The number of orders from the high school classes were so minimal, so I finally said, “From this point on, this will be a Middle School only project,” and no one at the upper levels blinked.

     There were three types of kids selling mag subscriptions (which were a great deal, by the way plus we made a 40 percent profit on each new or renewed subscription).  There were the super go-getter kids who gave me an organized packet of money and orders.  On the other end of the spectrum, there were the ones who tried to give me an envelope ala the high school advisors, but I learned to say, “Nope, get it organized and then give it to me.”  Oddly enough (but not really odd at all), 99 percent of the mistakes in subscriptions and money totals came from this group.  The third group of kids fell in between and it only took a little instruction to get them cleared up.

This was a terrific program and I have to thank then principal John Peterson for getting us started with the program.  It kept the prices we had to charge kids for field trips and the annual Winter Recreation Day at the Porkies Ski Hill much lower than simply having the kids pay to go.

     Doing the magazine sale was like a time travel trip for me.  The company we worked with was based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin but they hired a local rep out of Marquette to come and explain the sale to our kids every year.  The local rep turned out to be Bill Laurich whom I had worked with one hour per day when I was student teaching at Bothwell Middle School.  Bill had used the program to fund their seventh grade camping event held at Bay Cliff Health Camp each spring.  When he retired, he was asked to keep repping for the magazine sale company.  It was like a mini-reunion everytime Bill came to town.  Bill’s motivation to keep working with school groups was two fold:  One, he always liked working with school kids and two, what he made paid for his annual golfing vacation in Florida.

     I have seen both sides of the magazine coin and have survived to tell the tale.  I will let you know if my auto-renew for CRM happens in January of 2025.  If it doesn’t go smoothly, I will go back to the drawing board, or rather, the subscription help desk!

Top Piece Video – okay. it isn’t Classic Rock Magazine, but it is a MUSIC magazine . . . Live on the BBC no less!