Incredibly bad service from TIME Magazine

Incredibly bad service from TIME Magazine:-

I am taking the time to record these events and put them on HelloPeter in order to inform other subscribers and prospective subscribers of the incredibly bad service that I have received from TIME Magazine. Quite frankly, I have never ever been treated so badly by any service provider in the past.

So here goes:- I have been a subscriber to TIME Magazine for about 60 years. The service I have had from them throughout that time has been pretty good up until recently. For example, whenever I missed a copy for whatever reason, they always obliged by sending another copy very quickly. When the South African Post Office deliveries deteriorated, TIME agreed without any fuss to extend my subscription for several weeks. Then, about 6 months or so ago, the Post Office workers in South Africa went on strike and we were receiving no post at all. I then asked TIME if they could, in addition to the print copy, give me digital copies on my iPad. This was no problem for them and ever since then until about 3 months ago, I have been getting these copies without any problems. Then, suddenly an issue of around the middle of March came on to the iPad but it had a lock next to it and when I tried to download it, I was told that I must subscribe or that I could purchase that issue for R59.95. I waited until the next copy was due to see what would happen, and the same thing happened. At the same time, although the Post Office strike was long over and issues were being delivered by them, my printed copies stopped coming! On the 26th March I sent an e-mail to TIME (the address that we have here for our subscriptions used to be in Holland but is now in the UK). I told them what was happening and asked what was going on. Almost immediately I received and automated response telling me that my “query is very important to us and will be dealt with as quickly as possible. You will receive a response within 5 working days”. Having had no reply by the 9th April (very annoying!) I sent another e-mail. Once again the same automated reply came to me. This time a response came the next day from Kristy H who told me that “a print issue was returned by the local postal services as undeliverable. Consequently your subscription has been suspended and no further issues have been despatched during this timeframe to avoid any further issues going to an incorrect address. This also suspends your digital account.” Can you believe this? They didn’t even bother to contact me and ask me if I had moved, or anything at all. Just cut me off, (including the digital edition which has nothing to do with my postal address) without any further ado!! And my subscription only expires in September of 2019. The message then went on to say “Could you therefore please confirm the full delivery address details and I will arrange for the account to be updated. In the meantime I have reset the account to ensure that you will be able to access the digital editions. Please allow 24 hours for this to work.” OK, although not good, the future now at least looked somewhat positive. But worse was yet to come. I, of course, sent them my delivery address details as requested and then tried to access the locked issues after 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours all unsuccessfully. On the 15th April I sent another message which complained bitterly about this, as well as the fact that they had not bothered to contact me when one copy had been returned as “undeliverable”. In spite of repeated messages since then, (all of which produced the automatic response telling me that I would receive a reply in 5 days) no response came until the 3rd of May from Vikki C who said “I am extremely sorry, I am still investigating this as a priority however I will ensure you are provided with an update within the next 2 working days”. Today is the 13th May – no feedback, no unlocking of the digital copies, (the last 8 issues on my iPad are all locked) and am also missing most of the printed copies as well. I have also tried their website, wanting to try and logon and see whether anything of interest can be found about my subscription. What do you think I found? For the past 4 weeks or so their website has been unavailable due to “maintenance”. It remains only for me to give them as much bad publicity as possible and to cancel my subscription. Will they give me a refund? Watch this space and I’ll let you know what happens. I am extremely angry! Shame on TIME Magazine!