Recently I read an article explaining how digital subscriptions are here to stay and at some point in the future we will all have one digital subscription or another. I don’t doubt the author’s premise, in fact I myself have and like several digital subscriptions which I find to be convenient,1 environmentally friendly,2 and content abundant. However, one area that I hope will get better is the payment management systems for digital subscriptions. Unlike traditional subscriptions were you would normal order for a set amount of time and be billed by the provider according to that time3 many digital subscription get your credit card information with the initial order and keep it. The problem that I have run into with this is digital content providers have automatically renewed my subscriptions without me knowing.
For instance, last October or November I signed up for NFL.com’s GAMEPASS monthly Regular Season subscription. Originally, I just wanted to try it out for a month and erroneously thought that because the name of the subscription included the term “MONTHLY” to continue service, I would have to renew it each month. After viewing for a few weeks I decided that I did not want to continue and made no other attempt to “re-up.” Several months later, I was reviewing my credit card statement and saw an $85 charge from the NFL for December, January and February. Not understanding why I was being charged for a service that I did not renew I contacted their customer service. Their response was: (1) that that the subscription “automatically renewed” until you actively told them you wanted it stopped, (2) refunds are available with they are informed within a few weeks of the charge in question and (3) even though the regular season was over as of the first week of January you were still being charged for the service because you could use it to watch or re-watch games already played. What that meant in reality was that this multi-million dollar organization was not going to refund me the almost $400 that they got from me. All that I have left to do is suck it up, write this blog post and recommend that anyone considering subscribing to GAMEPASS think twice and read the fine print.
Similarly, I have been a long time member of the New York Times’ online subscription. When they decided to put up a pay wall, based on my history as a member they offered me about a six month’s access for free. As that initial period was ending around January, they offered me another deal: $0.99 for full service till the end of March. I took the offer and used my credit card to pay the $0.99. About the same time that I noticed how the NFL was billing me for services I did not want I also noticed that I had been billed $35 twice by the NY Times. Confused, I went into my account to see how this could be and what I found is that even though I had the discounted service till the end of March, I was also being billed at the regular price for January and February.4 I tried to remove my credit card from the system to cut off any further charges but found that I could not do that on my own but had to contact NY Times Digital in order to stop service. I contacted them but they had absolutely no answer as to why I was granted the discounted service but yet also being charged the regular price. Frustrated I just decided to end completely my subscription. Like to NFL … no refund from one of the biggest papers in the nation.
So, back to my original point … while digital subscriptions may be here to stay … we all need to rethink how we manage them because at least in terms of how we pay for them, they are nothing like traditional media.
