When Good Discounts Go Bad

I would have loved to sign up for the Wall Street Journal at the new subscriber rate they emailed me today: $119 for one year. Wow, that's terrific, especially when compared to the $299 I already paid for the Journal in December! Apparently, as a ten-year subscriber, I was given the loyalty subscription rate. This really smarts,though, because my husband, Eric, called in to complain in December about the rate (and remained on hold to talk to a supervisor) when it was not only outrageous but had increased $100 since the last renewal. Apparently he called the customer loyalty line rather than than the new customer line.

So why didn't I just cancel? I thought about it for a long-time but two decision factors came into play. 1. I love the Wall Street Journal and 2. I'm in a business that needs media of all sorts to stay in business. In the meantime, blogging about this has lessened the blow. You know what has really irked me through the years, though, now that we're on the topic of customer loyalty? Car ads where the advertised price is for car company employees only. Can you imagine if Macy's advertised their clothes on sale with an asterisk? *All prices will be 20% higher for actual customers. With Macy's and the car companies all on the skids maybe these aren't good examples, but loyalty in general is supposedly not as important of a sales factor as we are led to believe. How do I know that? I read it in the Wall Street Journal. I guess they follow the advice of their experts.