[OPINION] About a month or so ago, Tiso Blackstar Group decided to take The Times daily newspaper online and in a demonstration of staggering generosity, offered subscribers a few more issues of the Sunday Times for free in exchange.
In a nutshell, this means that I will stop getting my The Times newspaper delivered to my home tomorrow (Friday, 15 December), which means that I will lose a total of roughly 90 newspapers by the time my subscription expires next April.
Thanks for nothing, Tiso Blackstar.
Frankly, you can shove you four free copies of the Sunday Times up your corporate backside and I will certainly not be subscribing to your online offerings.
Cutting off my nose to spite my face, you think?
No, because you seem to have neglected to realise that I, and many other subscribers to your daily print edition, already supplemented this ages ago with probably more online subscriptions than we can handle. Mainly because they are free.
So, I really don’t think I am going to have the time to download your new offerings or read them online when they eventually become available and I am certainly not going to pay you for it.
There is so much excellent local and international news available already I don’t have the time or the inclination.
I just hope you know what you’re doing with all this. And that you are not expecting the same success with the digital versions of The Times that you had with Business Day, because the latter is a largely corporate or government purchase where money is no object.
Your new offering is pretty much a personal purchase and I am not convinced that I am the exception rather than the rule.
But, in spite of all these arguments what really offends me is the way you went about just cutting off my supplies four months before my subscription ended and then having the gall to think I would be jumping with joy with your offer of a measly four editions of the Sunday Times.
I have to wonder whether this major alteration to a subscription contract falls foul of the Consumer Protection Act?
Chris Moerdyk is a marketing analyst and advisor, owner of Moerdyk Marketing with Many years of experience in marketing and the media as well as serving as non-executive director and chairman of companies. Follow him on Twitter @chrismoerdyk.
