MBY Magazine Subscription Crap

[Irish Rover]

Because I have plenty of socks and jumpers and little use for them here in Turkey for most of the year I suggested to my wife to buy me a 12 month subscription to Motor Boat and Yachting when she told me our daughter was pestering her to buy my Christmas present mid December. My daughter was delighted with the idea especially as it allowed her to arrange for a personalised e mail to be sent to me on Christmas morning announcing my present. My wife duly went online placed the order and gave her credit card details etc and got an e mail confirmation. On Christmas morning nothing from MBY so I had to lie to my daughter and pretend I got the e mail with her personalised message which thankfully my wife had told me about.
We were busy since Christmas so my wife only got around to e mailing MBY this week and got a rather stupid message saying the "account is suspended as there are no payment details on your account". What happened to the details she entered up on their website? What indeed? She replied immediately but heard nothing since. They did invite her to call a number which I assume to be a UK local number and the fact they didn't include an international dialing prefix always says something to me about the professionalism of a company.
Rant over although I'm not sure what I'm going to say next month when my daughter asks me if the magazine came.

 

[Jack Haines]

Hello,

I'm sorry to see that you are having issues with your sub to MBY.

Could you please contact me at jack.haines@timeinc.com so I can get some details from you and get to the bottom of this?

Thank you,

Jack

 

[Irish Rover]

Thanks for your response Jack. I've sent you an e mail.

 

[Sneds]

Can't say fairer than that

 

[Jegs]

If it helps, Irish Rover, they have been treating me in a similar fashion in spite of the fact that they sent two emails admitting payment.

ATB,
John G

 

[Irish Rover]

Thanks John. Jack replied to my e mail saying he would get someone on the subscriptions department to contact me. Hasn’t happened yet but I’m still prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. Having said that if a customer of my business had been messed about as we have and had to resort to posting on a public forum to get a response I would be taking the situation very seriously. Hearing from you that I am not the only unhappy customer does little to inspire confidence.

 

[Irish Rover]

I'm disappointed I've heard nothing further from MBY since last Friday afternoon. It seems a strange way to run a business. I could just go back on their website and try subscribing again but I'm reluctant to entrust my credit card information to them as I don't know what happened to my wife's CC info which she provided to them in mid December and Jegs@#5 is also having credit card woes with them.

 

[Nick101]

Hi, I am now using Readly which gives me most motoring and sailing magazines every month. For 6.99 a month I get Motorboat and Yachting, Passagemaker and about 5000 other publications every month. I phoned MBY this summer for a bit of advice but still waiting for a reply!

 

[[2068]]

I'm disappointed I've heard nothing further from MBY since last Friday afternoon. It seems a strange way to run a business. I could just go back on their website and try subscribing again but I'm reluctant to entrust my credit card information to them as I don't know what happened to my wife's CC info which she provided to them in mid December and Jegs@#5 is also having credit card woes with them.

Computer says "No".

 

[Bigplumbs]

Not making any excuses for them but I think loads of hard copy magazines are oh their way out because of the web. I had the same issues with an aircraft mag that is now dead and gone

Dennis

 

[jrudge]

I subscribed under a recent 50% off offer to the magazine.

I had not had it for maybe 2 years prior to that.

The advertising at the back is way down.

Their challenge is meeting everyones needs - big boats, small boats, UK cruising, Med Cruising and along the way saying nothing at all controversial so as to upset the remaining advertisers.

I am only interested in big boats in the med - so of course i just read snippets. Other will have different interests but I would be surprised if many read it cover to cover.

The forum of course gives allows us to dip into what we want, participate, and is endlessly fresh.

I used to fly and the issue was the same. The formula was seasonal. Winter flying, accident reports, summer destinations and so on. The advantage they had was that most people were flying from the UK in planes that were at the end of the day pretty similar - so they were a simpler group to keep happy with relevant articles. One - Flyer- used to feature free landing feee vouchers ( maybe it still does) - so there was a reason to subscribe to save you £20 on your sunday morning burger flight.

YBW used to organise some events but these seem to have stopped now - presumably as the staff keep reducing.

The forum keep people involved but they don't invest in it and the software is old and compared to Facebook ( photos, likes, threads) difficult to use and find things - so even the bit that works is not invested in which is a curious strategy to be honest. The folly of this strategy was shown when 99% of "their" picture content vanished when photo box changed its pricing.

 

[DTIM]

Not had my Feb edition yet that is being shown on this site as out on 4th Jan, I presume other people have had theirs?

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

Not had my Feb edition yet that is being shown on this site as out on 4th Jan, I presume other people have had theirs?

Yep, last week.

 

[rafiki_]

At the risk of drifting the thread, I had a discussion about paper mags with the Autocar Editor. He tells me that their circ is now increasing. This is a weekly mag, and of course focussed on new car launches, which of course, there are many more of than new mobo's. I visit their on-line site occasionally to look at the Blogs. It is much inferior in my opinion to the YBW website, which offers quite a lot of info, and the video's which are usually worth a gander in a quiet moment. I take the paper MBY, and read it over breakfast, 10 mins a day, over a couple of weeks, unless I'm travelling, in which case it is my flight mag of choice. There really isn't much industry news in MBY, but lots of interesting tests, new and used boats, so I still look forward to it on a monthly basis.

 

[Irish Rover]

I'm disappointed I've heard nothing further from MBY since last Friday afternoon. It seems a strange way to run a business. I could just go back on their website and try subscribing again but I'm reluctant to entrust my credit card information to them as I don't know what happened to my wife's CC info which she provided to them in mid December and Jegs@#5 is also having credit card woes with them.

I had a couple of e mails from Jack Haines today after I e mailed him a link to my post above. did our subs department not contact you, they told me they had yesterday, they tried to call you, etc etc. He asked for my phone no and when I'd be available for a call. Here's my number call whenever and I'd like to know what's gone wrong until now. Sorry I can't call you, I'm editorial, I've no idea what went wrong, not my department, I've asked subs to call you. I got a call from a lady in South Africa offering to take my CC details. I said I'd like to know what went wrong previously before I entrusted my CC details again and got no meaningful answer. Give me your CC details and we'll get you signed up at the December discounted rate. Eh, the published rate now is cheaper. Yeah but you signed up in December. Am I inspired with confidence and inclined to give these people my CC details and hard earned cash? The good ship MBY may not be in imminent danger of sinking but she's listing badly and the on board communications network is knackered.

 

[Anders_P42]

I emailed 27th Dec querying why my renewed sub can't see digital version like it used to. No reply yet.

 

[longjohnsilver]

I had a couple of e mails from Jack Haines today after I e mailed him a link to my post above. did our subs department not contact you, they told me they had yesterday, they tried to call you, etc etc. He asked for my phone no and when I'd be available for a call. Here's my number call whenever and I'd like to know what's gone wrong until now. Sorry I can't call you, I'm editorial, I've no idea what went wrong, not my department, I've asked subs to call you. I got a call from a lady in South Africa offering to take my CC details. I said I'd like to know what went wrong previously before I entrusted my CC details again and got no meaningful answer. Give me your CC details and we'll get you signed up at the December discounted rate. Eh, the published rate now is cheaper. Yeah but you signed up in December. Am I inspired with confidence and inclined to give these people my CC details and hard earned cash? The good ship MBY may not be in imminent danger of sinking but she's listing badly and the on board communications network is knackered.

So Jack did as he promised, which seems normal for him, but his hands are somewhat tied because he is editorial. You were then offered a discounted rate that you have rejected because the lady who called didn't have the reasons for your previous problems. You of course have the right not to take them up on this better offer, but don't say that they haven't tried.

 

[Irish Rover]

So Jack did as he promised, which seems normal for him, but his hands are somewhat tied because he is editorial. You were then offered a discounted rate that you have rejected because the lady who called didn't have the reasons for your previous problems. You of course have the right not to take them up on this better offer, but don't say that they haven't tried.

Thanks indeed for your input. I didn't think I was being unreasonable. Let me clarify-
- the "discounted rate" the lady in SA offered me is higher than what is currently [today] available on their website so why would I pay more than I need to,
- the reason I wanted answers about what went wrong previously was because I'm concerned about the security of my credit card details. They told me it was a problem with their payment system but were not more specific. If their system is not fit for purpose then it may be easily compromised or hacked and my credit card details could end up in the hands of criminals,
- I meant no personal criticism of Jack. I run a business myself and I would not find it acceptable for one of my team to tell a customer in correspondence "I don't have any answers" for you because it's not my department. My instruction would be to get the answers from the relevant person and pass them on to the customer or make sure the responsible person contacted the customers immediately with answers. MBY obviously take a different approach and that's entirely up to them but from where I'm sitting it doesn't inspire confidence and that's what I said.

 

[markc]

- the reason I wanted answers about what went wrong previously was because I'm concerned about the security of my credit card details. They told me it was a problem with their payment system but were not more specific. If their system is not fit for purpose then it may be easily compromised or hacked and my credit card details could end up in the hands of criminals,

To be fair, the payment system will just be a 3rd party payment processor and if there was an issue at the time, maybe due to an API issue on the site, then the customer services lady would have no idea what happened. Rest assured though, just because a CC payment failed, your CC details won't end up in the hands of criminals. Even if they did, the CC company will cover you for any losses.

 

[Irish Rover]

To be fair, the payment system will just be a 3rd party payment processor and if there was an issue at the time, maybe due to an API issue on the site, then the customer services lady would have no idea what happened. Rest assured though, just because a CC payment failed, your CC details won't end up in the hands of criminals. Even if they did, the CC company will cover you for any losses.

I hear what you're saying but I asked the question in my e mails and no explanation was forthcoming apart from "I don't have any answers". I'm aware that the mere failure of a CC payment won't in itself result in my CC details getting into the hands of criminals but it may well indicate an inferior system which is potentially less secure and especially so when no one can tell me what went wrong. I use my CC to pay subs to a number of publications and I also use it for automatic payments to telephone, internet, toll roads, sat TV etc companies, health insurance etc. It's a real pain when you have to change your CC details with all these providers and inevitably one will be forgotten. I also don't want to be a party to making life easy for criminals just because I won't incur any direct personal loss when they defraud my CC. I am not anti MBY and I'd like to be getting it every month but it's not a big deal and if I don't feel my custom or potential custom is valued then I just move on.