I recently received one of those offers to use up my inflight miles for magazine subscriptions. So I ordered about a dozen subscriptions.
In this day of rate base pressure, it quickly became clear which magazines were suffering the most. One title used especially aggressive back-starting.
One of the bi-monthlies I ordered sent me two old copies, and the very next day I received the current issue. What that meant was that as a customer, I was :
- Offered holiday recipes in the summer.
- Invited to enter drawings for merchandise that expired months earlier.
- Asked to renew immediately (since I had already received 6 months worth issues).
While backstarting is a legitimate rate base management tool, it seems publishers should use a little more common sense and have the decency to not send out stale issues. Or, if they do, they should be prepared to have lower renewal rates and higher customer service costs.
Incidentally, just out of curiosity, I decided to call the toll-free number to lodge a complaint and see how this very successful publisher would handle such calls. I was told by the CSR on the phone that the reason they sent me those issues was so I could "catch up" on recent issues I might have missed.
When I told her I didn't want to catch up on holiday recipes this summer, she offered to extend my subscription by those copies, which helps to keep me on the file longer and stopped the renewal efforts, at least temporarily.
One other note: I have seen examples where
ABC auditors did not catch those who backstarted in violation of ABC rules, but it's just a matter of time before they also catch on to that trick.
I recently heard that this magazine is folding. Maybe if you are continuosly back-starting to the point of bad customer service, it could be a warning sign of failure.
Here is the complete set of rules from
ABC about backstarting:
F 7.2 Back Copies
(a) An issue of a publication shall be considered a back copy immediately upon the appearance for sale of the next issue for newsstand copies and the mailing of the next issue for subscription copies.
(b) Back copies served in connection with a subscription offer shall be recognized as paid up to three months preceding the date of the order, provided the subscription offer has specifically included the offer of back copies, or the subscriber has requested a back dating of the subscription, and provided consecutive copies served and are paid for in accordance with rules governing paid circulation. The number of subscriptions resulting from specific offers involving the distribution of back copies shall be reported in the paragraph of the Publisher's Statements and Audit Reports devoted to general explanations.
(c) Only copies that have been distributed in connection with orders dated during and 30 days after the regular Publisher's Statement period may be included in paid.
(d) A new subscriber who has not specifically ordered back copies as part of a subscription is eligible to be served one issue preceding that which is currently being mailed in the case of monthly publications and two issues preceding that which is currently being mailed for publications of greater frequency and such copies may be included in paid circulation. (In order that publishers conform to a consistent policy of start issues, the above applies irrespective of different cover dates and/or mailing schedules of publications.)
(e) Single-issue sales of back copies shall be recognized as paid for a period of three months following the on-sale date of an issue provided the purchaser has specifically ordered the back issues. With prior approval from the managing director, back copies sold from three months to six months following the on-sale date of an issue, and therefore not eligible for inclusion in paid circulation, may be reported in Paragraph 1 as "Other Distribution, Back Copies" with complete explanation in the Explanatory Paragraph. When back issues are packaged with current on-sale issues, only the current issue shall be recognized as paid and only if the amount paid is the full single copy price of the current issue or 50 percent of the combined full prices of all the issues in the package, whichever is highest.
Posted by Rebecca Sterner at 11:01 AM |
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