Tech Forum

I am looking for feedback on magazine subscriptions. How do you subscribe, renew, and receive your magazines. What do you like about the process, what would you change about the process, I am especially interested on feedback from those who live outside the United States. What challenges are you experiencing with subscribing or renewing church magazines.

I just renew on line every year works well for me.

Have been renewing online for years. Never had a problem. Works like a charm.

I renew online, usually for 2 years at a time, but I can't recall if an automatic reminder is sent near expiry time. If not that would be a nice enhancement!

When I receive a reminder notice in the mail, I log into the LDS Distribution site and renew my magazines. I wait until the last minute, though, because usually the site will not let me link my existing magazine subscription with my renewal request. The last two times I wound up with a new subscription, new account number, and two months with an extra copy of the Ensign which I shared with my friends.

If I cannot get a confirmation from the web site, I call the store and confirm that the renewal took. Once it did. Once it did not.

And no, the last reminder notices I have received mentioned nothing about online renewal service and did not include a URL.

Followup. I received a renewal notice in the mail. I logged into the store and found three expired subscriptions (the ones described in my previous post.

I was able to successfully search for my current subscription and renew it online.

However, I do not recall having to pay tax on magazine subscriptions before. When did that start? And if I had just mailed in a check it would have been for the subscription amount only without any tax because there was nothing in the mailer about tax.

Could I have saved some money by mailing in a check, or would the Church have had to eat the tax amount on my behalf? It would hardly have been worth separately billing for it.

lajackson wrote:However, I do not recall having to pay tax on magazine subscriptions before.

At first I thought that what you were claiming to be a tax was a shipping charge. This was because I recalled an official notice of distribution center charge begining in January. But then I found the 6 December 2013: Distribution Center Shipping Charge (U.S. and Canada) official notice. After reviewing the letter it specifically says "there will be no shipping charge for magazine subscriptions."

But it appears the letter gives some insight that the Church needs to recover some of the costs it had previously been obsorbing. Thus the tax may be one of those costs, just as lajackson suggests, maybe the Church is now collecting the tax. -- Just a guess.

jdlessley wrote:But it appears the letter gives some insight that the Church needs to recover some of the costs it had previously been obsorbing. Thus the tax may be one of those costs, just as lajackson suggests, maybe the Church is now collecting the tax. -- Just a guess.

And if they are, they ought to collect the correct amount, I would think. They did not have the right amount on my order.