Reports of their demise greatly exaggerated or not, I still subscribe to actual print magazines. With an ever expanding media consumption mix, I recently cast away one of these magazine subscriptions. It was painless and I can envision starting to let print subscriptions lapse with the reckless abandon of someone suddenly paying fewer bills. Hear that, magazines? You know I love you but, in turn, know this: it’s not a good time to piss off an old friend.

This is why we now turn our first-person plural attention to The New Yorker, the venerable anxiety-in-stacks weekly. (Added bonus for New Yorker subscribers: wanna be on A&E’s Hoarders?!). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great magazine, but the weeks roll by too quickly and I’m relieved when I can leave a few issues on an airplane or in burdensome bunches inside a curbside recycling bin. So it seems odd that now, during this precarious era in our print relationship, The New Yorker / Condé Nast is all but challenging me to cut my longtime subscription. Things started going south when I was prompted, via good old USPS-delivered chunk-of-tree-flesh, to renew the subscription that wasn’t scheduled to expire for months. There is no end to these non-urgent-urgent messages to act quickly to receive a generous renewal rate. In my case, The New Yorker was offering a “professional courtesy” rate of $69.95 for a one year re-up (or two years for $99.95).

Thing is, if you head on over to Amazon.com, you can subscribe to The New Yorker for $39.95 for a year ($69.95 for two). But wait—there’s (no need for) more! There’s also an auto-renewal Amazon option so, as the bulleted portion reads: “The publisher won’t send you renewal notices.” So I’d get a much better deal on the magazine if I simply let my subscription expire and then resubscribe through Amazon.

To add injury to insult, while on The New Yorker website to write customer care, I found that I could renew right there for $10 less than the “offer” I received in the mail–still more than Amazon, but less than the very extra super special offer that was sent to readers whom I can only guess the publisher is presuming not to be much of a digital creature. Gimme A Break!, Nell Carter-style. (In a web-generated message to New Yorker customer care, I opted to forgo rant, so I wrote out, “Give me a break,” and made no mention of Nell Carter).

Then I sent the message and off into some black hole it went. That was more than two months ago—or a sizable pile of New Yorkers later. These days more than ever New Yorker customer care has no business treating inquiries as if they’re unsolicited submissions to The Talk of the Town section. At a time where an opportunity to keep a reader isn’t simply an opportunity anymore, it’s especially symbolic to experience a magazine drop the ball.

Now, about re-upping that Hot Dog magazine subscription…

The subject, a subscribed to print publication.

Cross-posted on usblog.havasdigital.com