Magazine Subscriptions On The Cheap

[Carl Eyman]

I got my renewal notice for Fine Woodworking today. I've been a subscriber since issue #1; so will renew,of course. 3 years are $83.95. I went over to e-bay and can get 3 years for $49.95. How come? Why would the publishers make a subscription available through a third party at less than their own renewal rate? I can see them doing it for a new subscription in order to snag a new customer, but can this be for real or will FWW kick the subscription back - reduse it? Anybody have any insight? Should I be wary of anything?

[Karl Laustrup]

Don't have a clue about that difference and that's a huge one. Maybe you only get the ads at the ebay price. :eek:

I'm always leary of deals like that, but having said that, I've missed some good deals because I just couldn't pull the trigger, so to speak.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Carl,

The ebay subscriptions have been posted in the past. I don't know what the reasoning is on why they are cheaper, but I haven't see very many people who did not receive what they subscribed to. I subscribed my dad to a golf magazine through ebay. It took 6 weeks to start, but he is still receiving it. The time delay is one disadvantage of ebay magazines.

[Erin Stringer]

I don't have any firsthand experience but I have heard that these "deals" are often used to gather information for selling to mass mail companies. For a $30 savings it might be worth it. If you go for it let us know if the amount of junk mail picks up.

[Dan Gill]

I don't have any firsthand experience but I have heard that these "deals" are often used to gather information for selling to mass mail companies. For a $30 savings it might be worth it. If you go for it let us know if the amount of junk mail picks up.
Junk mail almost always picks up after any magazine subscription. It's the way of the world.

[John Weber]

I renewed FWW on ebay and didn't miss a beat.

I've bought several other mags without problems.

John

[Dave Anderson NH]

Hi Carl-

I let my subscription to FWW expire a couple of months ago. Our guild has a deal with FWW on books, magazines, and DVD/ videos. We have a wholesale account and buy at a great discount. I renewed FWW at our last guild meeting, as did 9 others, to get the 25% discount. Our deal requires us to send in one check for the total and have a minimum of 10 subscriptions.

[Tom Saurer]

I've noticed the same thing with other services. My wife and I wanted cable modem service to our house and so we ordered it through the cable company. The next day we were in Best Buy and we noticed that we could get the same service, through the same company cheaper by ordering it through them. We quickly canceled our first order and went through Best Buy.

[Darren Ford]

Carl, I'll share what I know firsthand about the subscription business. Its very little I must warn you upfront. My wife works for a fairly large company that is very much into the publishing business (in addition to hundreds of other industries).

A subscription agent gets the subscriptions for a tremendous discount. The amount varies between magazine and upstream distributor. Each magazine has its own set of sales rules and pricing standards.

My wife signed up as an agent, and some rough examples would be some magazines that have an annual subscription of $20 are available to her for $2 (or even less). Can she turn around and sell these for $2.25? Yes and no. She could of course, she collects the money and pays the subscription fee to the publisher, but her contract states that she is not allowed to sell a subscription for less than 15% of the publishers annual rate. Most of the magazines also have an explicit warning that they are not to be sold over the internet.

Apparently those policies are not strictly enforced, because we all see the cheap subscriptions on the internet. So technically it can be done, but I can feel pretty safe in saying that everyone who sells a cheap subscription on the internet is violating at least 1 provision in their sales agreement. Personally, I choose not to trust people with my money who I know are not following the rules.

BTW, FWW is *not* one of the hundreds, if not 1000+ that she has access to :(

[Kent Cori]

I bought my last FWW subscription through eBay at about that same rate without a problem. I hope it is still around in a couple of years when I need to renew.