Print magazines, don't you love them?

A guy told me a story once about how Alzheimer’s Disease was part of the Starbuck’s Coffee company’s marketing plan. They would put shops directly across the square from each other. Then some old buck would come out of one store, look across the street and think, “How about a cup of Joe?”

I think magazine subscription departments are involved in something similar. My magazine subscriptions all come due the first of the year. But I start getting dire warnings about the end of my subscription starting in June of each year. The tone of the message changes by August and suggests that I will be visited by an evil dominatrix if I don’t re-subscribe immediately. By October I am being told how awful it will be to go without any further issues of “Wine Enthusiast” if I don’t pay up today. I am offered datebooks, calendars, tote bags, personalized calculators, maps of the world and endless travel mugs to re-subscribe for years. Clearly, by December, I have suffered some type of memory dysfunction because I have not paid up, even though I actually sent the check in November.

In January and February I can re-join the preferred magazine reading group for far less money than I ever thought. Especially if I sign up for 40 years or so. And on and on. They must spend every dime of subscription income sending these endless offers. It got so confusing for an old man last year that I began receiving two issues of every “Better Homes & Gardens” each month. Apparently I re-subscribed twice.

Part of the problem is that these operations are located in third world countries at a great distance in time and space from the home offices of “Traditional Home” magazine. No one at the actual magazine knows a thing about my subscription and they are offended at the suggestion that they should. So the endless barrage of solicitations continues unabated. The print magazines lose money and go out of business.

By the way, if I do decide not to re-subscribe the magazine continues to come for months after the expiration date. How does that work to their advantage?