My co-worker, Kim Larsen, canceled her Wall Street Journal subscription a few months ago.
You would think that signing up to get the paper again would be a pretty simple process, right?
When she called today to reactivate her subscription, the service department at the Journal told her that reactivating her old online subscription for another year would cost $119.
Signing up for a new online subscription on their web page costs $79.
“It makes me want to get tell them to take a flying friggin leap,” Kim told me, “How ridiculous is that? Thanks, I’d love to fill out all this information again.”
In this particular case, they’re going to get a new subscriber anyway. But I think that getting a new subscriber is far more valuable than getting a new reader, and newspapers ought to be doing what they can to make it a painless process.
Especially since Kim is trying to sign up for the online subscription. Every operator on their phones should be pushing that option with deep discounts—the marginal cost for one more online subscriber is, roughly, $0.
So that’s $79 of profit for the Journal. Don’t discourage that.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Friggin right Jason!
A few months ago I was this close to cancelling my New York Times Sunday subscription. I called customer service to share the bad news, and without missing a beat, the woman on the other line told me she’d cut the monthly rate in half, from the $26 I was paying to $13. I was stunned, but considering the paper’s plummeting profits, not entirely surprised. I kept my subscription, and thank God — ’cause I don’t know what I’d have done without this Sunday’s summer movie preview.
Just got a Renewal notice by email from them…two problems:
1) My sub doesnt expire for another 4 months.
2) The renewal price is over $100 more than the call center renewal rate.
Sheesh. Seems to me, a company in the new business relies on customer trust…gouging typically doesn’t help build trust.
Rick,
We also received a renewal notice months before it was set to expire. I put it off thinking it would get cheaper …. wrong! Even the call center now quotes me the same as our paper renewal notice. The other ‘deal’ they are running right now would cost me $50 MORE than what they mailed me. Am I willing to pay the increase above the introductory rate for the paper? No. Is the other person in my house? Yes. So we will probably end up getting it. Makes for expensive compost in my opinion.