If you're like me, you're always getting magazine reminder notices just about the time that you've forgotten whether you, in fact, did renew only a couple of months ago. I usually recycle the reminder until something screams FINAL NOTICE!!!, then I send in my cheque...and the cycle repeats itself a couple of months later.
In mid-March, my in-laws received a notice from Maclean's magazine. Nicely designed, not to scream-y, kind of businesslike. At the top, it said INVOICE #6, and the due date was March 30, 2010. In the lower portion was a box containing the word "CRITICAL".
The message began: "Your subscription payment to Maclean's is several months overdue – please take immediate action. Attend to this right away!"
Funny thing, though. When I went to the Maclean's website and entered my in-laws' account number, I discovered that their subscription expires on November 15, 2010, fully 7.5 months after the 'due date' on the 'last-minute renewal' notice.
OK, so let's follow the money.
The subscription rate was $48.59 including GST. If we had paid the way-too-early renewal, our payment would have gone into an account somewhere that would pay Maclean's interest until such time as the subscription really need to be renewed and the GST paid.
In short term bonds at, say 1.5% interest, Maclean's (or rather its owner, the Rogers Media Group) would have reaped a total of 45.55 cents in interest from my in-laws' payment.
Multiply that small amount by the number of subscribers to Maclean's, TV Times, Canadian Business, Flare, L'Actualite, Chatelaine, Money Sense and Today's Parent subscribers, and you're talking about a huge money-grab, based solely on the fact that most of us are too busy to remember details like when we renewed a subscription.
Forty-five cents is not a lot of money.
It's the principle, though: Why give someone money if they're scamming you?
And as far as I'm concerned, the wording of the mid-March Maclean's notice was, indeed, a scam.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
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