PCW madness

In a recent post, I mentioned I was still subscribed to PC World until this week, despite a claim I made many months ago to the contrary. I made a big enough deal of it last time, that I felt I should explain what happened – and this gives me the chance to explain why I finally did cancel the subscription.

Months ago, fed up with crap articles and over the top Ubuntu coverage (to the extent you would think PCW was sponsored by Ubuntu…) I decided enough was enough and planned to cancel my subscription. I went online, checked the details and realised I had paid for another two months. On a whim, I decided there was nothing much to be gained by cancelling now and that waiting until after I had the next two issues would be better. Obviously this is where the flaw was hidden. Two months later, I again forgot to cancel until after the direct debit had been taken out, and again decided to wait.

This carried on for months, and to be fair to PCW the general standard of its content did improve quite a bit – albeit only for a while. In the end, I decided to stop pretending to myself that I would cancel it and just enjoyed the subscription a bit longer.

You may be aware of the fact I have recently moved house to the middle of nowhere (granted, as I moved from the middle of nowhere this is not much difference). As part of this, I needed to notify everyone who writes to me of the new postal address.  You would think that a “modern” publication like PCW would make this easy. You would be wrong.

There is a subscription management site where you go to deal with all the problems. I went there, entered by 10 digit customer number and not once managed to gain access. Each time it claimed it could find no trace of my records. I filled in the helpdesk type page with other details (address etc) but it continued to refuse to acknowledge my existence. I tried telephoning the customer line but got stuck in a queue and I fail to see the reason why I should spend money to rectify their mistakes. After a short while, I finally gave up and got round to what I should have done ages ago. I cancelled the direct debit. I wonder if, now, PCW will accept my account every existed?

In the end, PCW managed to retain me as a subscriber by the skin of its teeth. It is ironic that a technology magazine finally lost me as  a result of its poor website… Still, at least I can use the money for a subscription to Digital Camera or similar 🙂

[tags]Ubuntu, PC World, Bad Customer Service, Bad Shops, Rant, Technology, Linux, Computer Magazine, PCW[/tags]