Sunday, June 4, 2023

The first one's free

 


          What with electronic bill paying, the advent of email and then texting, our mailbox is often pretty barren. Imagine my surprise when I received a magazine out of the blue. I used to subscribe to Good Housekeeping for years, but as time went by, ladies’ magazines have had less and less relevance in my life.

          I don’t want 25 ways to incorporate jalapenos into our diet. With only a small porch now, an outdoor living guide is wasted on me. I don’t need to know America’s best parks for camping with kids. And even though I’m sure I could use it, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I spend $89 on eye serum.

          After stopping payment but still receiving issues for almost a year, I only managed to peel Woman’s Day magazine out of my life this spring. This freebie Good Housekeeping issue was okay, but after reading that if I were to sign up for a subscription it would renew and renew and renew into perpetuity and the only way to cancel would be to call an 800 number, likely manned for 7 minutes of every other day, I decided NOPE.


 

11 comments:

  1. No magazines here. I have more than enough reading without them. I read magazines at the doctor/dentist - or I did until Covid ensured they were put away.

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    1. I know. When I was at the dentist's last week, I noted his magazine rack is still empty. It must put a crimp in stand-up comedians' routines that they can't make jokes anymore about the old issues in doctors' offices.

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  2. Everything I read is online these days. :-)

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    1. Good point. Probably why the magazine companies are doing everything under the sun to reel us in.

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  3. I cannot remember the last magazine I got. Or when. And I subscribed to so many.

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    1. Not when the subscription process reads like a contract with Lucifer.

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  5. I never subscribed to any magazines, just buying one occasionally, but soon gave that up in favour of puzzles magazines and these days I don't even bother with them either. They're all too expensive now.

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  6. My New Yorker auto-renews like that. It's actually pretty handy, except in those moments when I get frustrated that I have so many New Yorkers to catch up on!

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    1. That's the one magazine I will never cancel. And yet I don't have it on auto-renew. Thanks for the reminder, Steve. I'm going to look into that.

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