clifp
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2006
- Messages
- 7,733
I have been charter subscriber to the digital edition of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and have continued more on than off the last nearly 15 years.
It started of at $79/year and has been steadily increasing. For the last 7 or 8 years I have been engaged ongoing fight with the WSJ and their automatic renewal policies and pricing.
They insist on automatic renewal,and even when I deliberately give them a credit card which will expire before the renewal but they still charge the card. This is evidently legal .
What pisses me off is the renewal is always much much higher (say 50%) more than the teaser rate for new subscribers (which they don't actually track). So each year we do this dance, the Journal auto renews my membership. I call up to complain about the price and cancel and get a refund. A few days or a few weeks I find new subscriber coupon and start the process over any time I talk to customer service I request I be taken off auto renewal. They never promise to do it but do say they'll put a note on my account.
This year, they sent me a notice that my credit card on file was expiring. I ignored it and then in July they auto renewed at 12 x monthly rate of $23= $258 which floored me. A pretty massive increase from the $120 I paid last year. At no time did the WSJ send me any type of notice of how much I was going to be paying or even that I was being automatically renewed. Nor have they ever done so in the past.
I wondered if there was a law against this, and to my delighted found there was a new law. Evidently Hawaii and 1/2 dozen other states, lead by NY which has the strictest laws require notification for renewals.
Of course later today when I clicked on WSJ subscriber article link I am invited to try the WSJ digital edition for $1 a week for 12 weeks = $52 a year.
So my questions are.
1. Does this practice annoy people as much as me.
2. Does it appear that WSJ is violating the law.
3. If I wanted to pursue this further should I contact the state attorney's general office or some place else.
It started of at $79/year and has been steadily increasing. For the last 7 or 8 years I have been engaged ongoing fight with the WSJ and their automatic renewal policies and pricing.
They insist on automatic renewal,and even when I deliberately give them a credit card which will expire before the renewal but they still charge the card. This is evidently legal .
What pisses me off is the renewal is always much much higher (say 50%) more than the teaser rate for new subscribers (which they don't actually track). So each year we do this dance, the Journal auto renews my membership. I call up to complain about the price and cancel and get a refund. A few days or a few weeks I find new subscriber coupon and start the process over any time I talk to customer service I request I be taken off auto renewal. They never promise to do it but do say they'll put a note on my account.
This year, they sent me a notice that my credit card on file was expiring. I ignored it and then in July they auto renewed at 12 x monthly rate of $23= $258 which floored me. A pretty massive increase from the $120 I paid last year. At no time did the WSJ send me any type of notice of how much I was going to be paying or even that I was being automatically renewed. Nor have they ever done so in the past.
I wondered if there was a law against this, and to my delighted found there was a new law. Evidently Hawaii and 1/2 dozen other states, lead by NY which has the strictest laws require notification for renewals.
So I call up the WSJ customer service dept. They apologize, (but now days customer service reps are trained to apologize if sun isn't out.) and refund my money. However, when I ask to speak to a supervisor I am told none is available and then ask have someone from their legal contact me. I am pretty sure the CSR ignored me at that point, although I didn't raise my voice or anything.Such legislation also provides that any person who sells or offers to sell any products or services to a consumer pursuant to a consumer contract that has a specified contract term of twelve months or more, under which the contract will automatically renew for a specified term of more than one month unless the consumer cancels the consumer contract, must notify the consumer clearly and conspicuously:
(1) That the consumer contract will automatically renew unless the consumer cancels the contract;
(2) How to cancel the contract; and
(3) The deadline by which the consumer shall respond to cancel the consumer contract and prevent automatic renewal.
The notice provided to the consumer must be sent to the consumer no less than thirty days and no more than sixty days before the date upon which the consumer must respond under paragraph (3) above.
Of course later today when I clicked on WSJ subscriber article link I am invited to try the WSJ digital edition for $1 a week for 12 weeks = $52 a year.
So my questions are.
1. Does this practice annoy people as much as me.
2. Does it appear that WSJ is violating the law.
3. If I wanted to pursue this further should I contact the state attorney's general office or some place else.