Here's a new one on me: raising the price of my subscription
while I'm in the middle of the subscription. It's certainly the worst customer-service
move I've seen in a long, long time.
I subscribe to the
Wall Street Journal online. It's marginal for
me at $79 a year; I use it, but find it barely worth the price. Along with
my subscription to
WSJ.com, it includes access to
Barron's online. I haven't
used Barrons.com much, frankly, but it's included and I actually have found
it handy three or four times. My subscription expires, oh, I don't know, but
I think it's September or so.
Well, over the weekend I got an e-mail from
Gail Griffin, general manager of the online
WSJ and
Barron's, saying that they have decided to split the two
subscriptions. They want $20 more a year for me to keep getting what I
already bought. Not at my expiration date, which would be the only
moral and ethical way to do it, but as of Sunday. Nice for them, but not for
me.
I'm not sure about the legality, but nevertheless it's a great way to offend
customers -- telling them you won't deliver what they bought. I've canceled,
and am demanding a full refund. And I hope thousands more of
their subscribers -- who are essentially being ripped off in midstream --
do so too. (I've also sent a complaint to the crusading New
York State Attorney General,
Eliot Spitzer.)
I have no complaint about them raising their prices. At the end
of my subscription. Which they're also doing. They're taking the $79 annual
subscription up to $99. That's OK at the end of my term. (I'd drop it for
sure at $99, but that's their prerogative, and mine.) But to raise the price
in the middle of the subscription outrages me, and my first step in fighting
back is to post this blog item.
(As a contributor to
E-Media Tidbits, and a consultant with a
contact database that includes several
WSJ and Dow Jones executives, I actively
considered being in touch with their executive team to ask questions before
posting this item. But why should I ask them to treat me differently from
anyone else? Or why should I behave differently from anyone else? So I'll
follow their channels and send in a cancellation and refund request, and
see how I'm handled. I'm cognizant, of course, that people from the
WSJ and
WSJ.com read this blog -- so from here on, I probably won't be treated like
"just any other customer." We'll see if the manure hits the fan for them
from other directions, and see how they respond to this and other complaints
that I'm sure they're receiving from other customers.)
