The Athletic keeps growing .......

I see on Twitter this morning that the Athletic UK has signed some pretty good soccer writers.

 

They've even got Watford coverage!

 

What's rotten about this? When you sign up, it says you get one year at the introductory rate and that your credit card will be charged the full $59.99 the next year going forward. It's listed right there when you sign up. It's not sneaky. It's standard practice.

 

Ah, so that's who got James Pearce to leave the Echo after like 15 years.

About damn time. They hadn't had a single article all summer after Melissa Reddy left for ESPN.

 

Daniel Taylor, Michael Cox and Raphael Honegstein are all really good gets.

 

What's rotten? A good company would notify you that your introductory rate was about to expire and that, as of a certain date, if you don't cancel you will be charged a certain amount. Plenty of companies do this. I had the same experience with The Athletic last September. I got no warning that the introductory rate was expiring and was suddenly charged. I've forestalled this happening again this year. I've already canceled, and it becomes effective when that one year period ends next month. Then I'll wait out the likely cheaper rate. If I have to do it with another family member's email and name, that's what I'll do.

 

Newspapers do this all the time. The intro subscription rate expires and they bill the new amount without notice. Cable companies do the same. Bills just jump after the introductory rate expires.

Other companies, such as SI and AAA, send out notices that the subscription is ending soon and if you don't cancel you will be charged the new rate.

My Athletic subscription ends this month. I have cancelled and I'm waiting for an offer. Like Chris Long, I'll pay $30 again for the year, but not $60.

 

I tried to cancel my Boston Sports Journal subscription but I think I accidentally called Bedard’s house when I tried to find their billing department.

 

Honestly, the inclusion of Premier League puts this over the top, value wise, for me. I was already enjoying a lot of the content, but it wasn't always easy to find quality content on the non big-six PL clubs. I was already following the guy, Adam Leaventhal, who is covering Watford, so I'll be happy to read some in-depth stuff on the club. It's also been nice to have one-stop shopping for my weird variety of teams -- Caps, Suns, Orioles, Skins -- rather than trying to cull together subscriptions to several newspapers to read about all of them. $60 bucks a year is $5 a month. It's a worthwhile investment, in my eyes.

 

That’s true. I know that The Athletic doesn’t want to adopt shitty practices from the newspaper industry, but this is one of them. One of the most frequent complaints we get, which causes people to cancel their newspaper subscription, is the poor customer service and renewal without notification.