Economist Reviews

Horrible cancellation experience

Subscription, address & email update and payments are miserable managed.
You can only change your details by calling or chatting them.
You will not have any evidence of what was discussed and decided.
Suggestion: Only chat them and take screenshot of the chat.
You rely on the person on line with you to do what he agrees to do correctly. Again. All seems to be manual and I had multiple problems with this. I.e. I had to contact them twice for account cancellation and found out that they still had a 5 year old address and a non-existing email address.
Seems they do this on purpose.

So difficult to cancel, really puts me off ever subscribing again in the future.
Making it difficult to unsubscribe may reduce your churn but it is also really really aggravating and I will probably never subscribe again because of this.

The magazine is good, but the cancellation experience is the worst I have ever had; the advisor was pushy, really took his time, and the whole experience has completely put me off ever subscribing to the Economist ever again. I received a transcript of the chat (you are not able to cancel online) which show the appalling experience I received, and I was going to make a complaint, but realised that there is no mechanism for doing so by email and that I would have to go through the same process again. A terrible service that I really would not have associated with a title like the Economist. Dreadful.

Great magazine, horrible cancellation procedure. Is forcing parting customers through a highly annoying sales chat really profitable? Wanted to temporarily cancel my subscription but this business practice left me with a sour taste.

A great source of economic and geopolitical insight. They provide much needed, critical guidance powered by actionable intelligence required to win in the world's markets.
The depth of coverage is indeed remarkable and the independent journalism is quite commendable.
5 stars from me.

The Economist is a great magazine. It should be waaay below their class to make it difficult to end subscriptions like it was a greedy kitchen catalogue from the 90’s...
It ruins a good experience to not feel in friendly hands regarding your subscription.

The digital magazine itself is great. Unsubscribing is a pain. They should realize that this is the last impression you have of them. Why not just click an "unsubscribe" and confirm this by email.
Times are tough for all and I need every penny for living costs. Have to jump through a lot of hoops and wait ages to be unsubscribed, Shame on you, The Economist.

So, this is getting really exciting. The Economist Communications Director Holly Donahue completely ignores my polite emails where I just ask for some feedback. Meanwhile, I have found out the subscriptions are handled by a third party, AIr Business Subscription, headed by the MD Stuart Lacey. He claims that their "...aim is to grow and retain your customer base using our sophisticated ‘web-first’ platform to expertly manage subscriptions and fulfilment..". So, it's really the company "Air Business" that are running this highly un-ethical scheme towards their customers...wondering if some of their clients, e.g. The Economist, The Guardian and The Time, are aware of their methods? They might find out shortly...

What was once a bipartisan newspaper has now become far from it. I have been a subscriber to this paper for years, but recently it has stopped reporting the news as just facts and instead it is filled with opinions. It's incredibly difficult to find a non-biased media outlet these days, and it seems another outlet has fallen to the craze of selling entertainment rather than information.
Still a delightful read though with plenty of great content. However, there are better media outlets out there with superior reporting and editing that are unbiased.

First of all I don't understand why there isn't an unsubscribe button: you have either to chat or speak with someone from their customer service.
I've contacted them via chat this morning and after a long queue the operator assured me I was unsubscribed.
I've just checked my settings and the auto renewal is still on. That means I'll have to waste more time by contacting them again. I'll advise everyone I know again subscribe to them.

The magazine is fine, bit much to get through each week for myself personally but interesting splatter of opinions and positions.
However upon cancellation I found I was hounded by various calls and letters pushing for a renewal despite me telling them that I want it cancelled and don't want to be contacted.
Very pushy and not respectful