I cancelled my subscription to the Palm Beach Post

As a loyal subscriber to the Palm Beach Post for decades even as far back as to when they had a morning and an afternoon paper called the Palm Beach Post Times, I cancelled my subscription yesterday. It wasn't just the whopping price increase in the letter I received from them...there were a myriad of reasons for doing so.

On Friday morning I called at 9am...left on hold for 17 minutes listening to this message that said my call was very important to them. Decided to use the prompt and dialed 1 so that someone would call me back in the sequence of the calls in the queue. I wrote to the man whose e-mail address was on the letter...never heard back from him either. No one called. I waited until Noon to cancel. At that point, I got a real live person but by then I was highly annoyed and determined.

My reasons to cancel:

• Price doubling in 4 years. In my calculations, it was going to cost me over $511 a year.

• In 2014, I was paying $110.24 every 6 months. Now they will charge $218.99 plus 7% sales tax every 6 months beginning December 1.

• They are going to charge $3.99 plus tax for 5 special editions like Thanksgiving, Christmas.

• Never getting any customer service or technical service when needed. You have to listen to all these telephone prompts to get nowhere.

• Some of their reporters post to the Internet thus paid subscribers are subsidizing all those who don't subscribe.

• They had a policy a year or so ago that if you paid by credit card, you were charged a little less thus forcing you to use a credit card.

• And one of the reasons for cancelling is the simple fact they are a left-leaning newspaper. Even their Left and Right columns are always left leaning and Trump hating. The editor even wants to keep sanctuary cities.

The gal on the phone tried to tell me about costs going up. I know all that, but increasing my cost at a rate of 25% a year is ridiculous. I have to wonder how many subscribers they will lose with this latest poor management decision.

To make an irritating story short, my cancelling their paper was given to an employee doing damage control who called me around 12:30 and they are offering the paper to me for one more year at my old rate. I asked him to reduce it to writing via e-mail.  I'm still waiting for that e-mail confirmation. If the new fee is rescinded,  I will tackle this problem again, 365 days from now.