In a recent post, I mentioned I was still subscribed to PC World<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 You would think that a “modern” publication like PCW would make this easy. You would be wrong.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0 a result of its poor website… Still, at least I can use the money for a subscription to Digital Camera or similar \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

[tags]Ubuntu, PC World, Bad Customer Service, Bad Shops, Rant, Technology, Linux, Computer Magazine, PCW[\/tags]<\/p>\n