Newsquest Reviews 

Do not Subscribe. Part way through my subscription of Bolton News advertisement started to obscure articles. I tried and failed to explain to Bolton News but even though I sent through a screen shot of the problem, they politically avoided answering why. I forwarded my subscription email when requested 18/03/25.

This is my point I emailed a reply to Lewis Rusz at Newsquest when asked for the email details 18/03/25. I am not going to put my email details on this open forum.

As I can now see that my problem has affected others,£52 was taken from my account with no forward notice I contacted an arrogant person who continually wanted to quote terms an conditions, should be banned and definitely no stars. this a 83 year old person with memory problems, says a lot does it not.
Kindly refunded today.

I wish I could review with a no star. A £52 renewal subscription was taken from my account without any notice or contact. It is impossible to cancel from the account page. After several contacts, the company just said No and refuse to refund my money. My advice would be to avoid this company as they do not follow correct business procedures. I am still trying to contact them to get my refund, but they never get back. This is for the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald.
Refund now received.

I have been banned from commenting on the website of my local paper for breaking the rules.

They won't tell me which rule I broke. They won't tell me which comment was the offending one. They won't enter into discussion or even acknowledge emails.

However, racist comments and complete lies about migrants and asylum seekers are permitted. Complaints against them are not upheld. Apparently, illegal migrants receive free accommodation and £35 a day in benefits. No they don't. Illegal migrants get nothing. And apparently illegal migrants housed in a hotel locally (no, they were asylum seekers, who are not illegal) attempted to snatch a woman from the street in broad daylight. The Police know nothing about it, there were no witnesses and no woman reported the attempt. But it is okay to report this as 'fact' in the comments section.

Disagreement is fine. Racist lies are not. But Newsquest / my local paper permits the latter but censors the former. And we have to ask why a paper is happy to let dishonest claims about asylum seekers remain on its pages. In the 1930's, Germany had Völkischer Beobachter. Today, England has Newsquest.

FURTHER UPDATE

The March edition arrived as promised.

I’m keeping the rating at 3 stars, although the issue was resolved it shouldn’t have had to come to the point where I had to email the CEO to get a response or a resolution.

UPDATE

After emailing the CEO the response was filtered down and I was contacted by the Group Customer Care Manager who
Advised that there had been a problem in the ‘systems’ and that the coding had been changed in order to rectify this. There had also been issues around communication in the call centre and this had been dealt with.

Mum has now received the ‘freebie’ February magazine and is still waiting for the March edition, which is the first magazine of the subscription.

ORIGINAL POST

Took out a subscription to Dumfries and Galloway Life in December 2024, a Christmas gift for my mum. She activated the subscription on 26/12/24 which meant that she missed out on the January edition but should receive the February edition (which would be sent out in the 3rd week of January)

I have sent a number of emails and have spoken to someone at the customer care centre - each time I’m told that the magazine has been sent and that I should wait for 7 working days before I make contact again.

Apparently the magazine has been sent today (again) so I have to wait another 7 days.

The March edition is now being released next week.

I enquired about cancelling the subscription (due to the magazine being paid for but not materialising) and was told that I can’t cancel because the 14-day grace period has passed ! Ridiculous.

I would not recommend using this organisation as they do not fulfil their promises. They took my £50 and didn’t send any magazines.

FEELING RIPPED OFF

Hoping Trading Standards can help

I have an online subscription to a local newspaper and from time to time minor issues arise - a subscription not recognised or a link to an article not working.
I have always found the Newsquest Customer Care Centre to be quickly responsive in resolving problems.
They compare very favourably with Customer Service depts of much larger organisations.

This company should be banned from trading . I am a small business and they got in touch with me when I was advertising for staff . They promised me over the phone to sen me 200 CV’s they had on file for suitable applicants . They sent me out 12 CV’s of people who were unsuitable or who lived 3 hours away , they then wanted £1200 for their service . After numerous phone calls and emails letting them know I was not happy with their service , the threatening letters started arriving from debt collectors . PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY THEY ARE ABSOLUTE ROGUES !!!!!!!!!

This company is everything that is wrong with media standards in the UK .... genuinely the worst journalistic, editorial, copy example of an accredited publisher. I can't speak to one example without pointing to one hundred examples. These are s holes need to be not just fined, but dismantled for SO many reasons. Mostly for normalising toxic, unchecked content, combined with such a low standard in writing standards it's beyond funny. (If this reads like someone with a grudge, it is, but it's not a personal one. I'm just sick of 'local' publications reading like a teenage conspiracy website that doesn't even spell check!)

Took out a subscription for the first time ever to the (Glasgow) Herald only to find I was immediately banned from commenting on articles. How could I be banned as brand new subscriber. I contacted various 'contact's' on the Papers website to try and resolve and no one could or would resolve for me so I cancelled my subscription and got my money back.

Edit 17/01/2025 So as you can see Newsquest asked me to e-mail them below which I did on 17th December. A month later and since I e-mailed, I've had no response.

Edit 20/05/2025
Its May, still no response from anyone regarding this. At least I got my money back.

I am paid up for Hereford times via Newsquest i guess but can't get my digital addition. I would give no stars like the previous customer. I have sent many emails getting reset password emails that don't work!! Hopeless and I am trying to set up a telephone call with Newsquest to no avail so far! so frustrated!

If only I could give no stars! An age to get answered on the phone, then pressing lots of buttons to get where I needed. When they told me my payment wasn’t accepted and to try again I found they were trying to take the full subscription price and not the offer price. I gave up in frustration and disgust.

Subscription payment method stopped working through no fault of my own. Added two more payment methods, but no way of specifying those as the new default payment method. Emailed customer service. They took over a week to reply and when they did, they told me how to add a payment method and that I would then be able to specify that as the default payment method. Tone deaf customer service.

Surprised they asked for a review on here following survey where I gave them zero marks. Paid for a subscription service that does not work, complained and radio silence. Awful at every touchpoint

I read the Somerset magazine and can't fault it. I was invited to a food event hosted by the magazine. No food options or menus were given, so I emailed to see if they could enlighten me. I received an email back telling me to contact the venue! They are the hosts, don't they know what the menu will be? If not, don't they think it might be a good idea to find out?

Oxford Mail (Newsquest) ... What a useless website ... The email links never work & a simple operation to update payment card is a joke - gets stuck on processing ... Total rubbish

Owner of the Colchester gazette who favour failed Lib Dem candidate Martin Goss over all others in news stories and remove any negative comments about him on social media yet allow comments against others to remain.
Poor journalism and unethical practice

Look at the data this company collects about you, every single thing possible including pictures, stay well clear of this cancerous tumour of a company

Prompt and excellent response, efficient, thank you

90% clickbait, doesn’t accept feedback, will only speak to good feedback ignores the rest
Provides inaccurate information
Charges to see key news articles
90% of website is adverts so can’t read articles
Subscriptions are waste of money and useless only difference is you can read anything but it’s not worth the £5.99 each month
Use Wiltshire news 999 as they are not click bait, they have a few advertisements but doesn’t charge to read all articles they post everything and more, bigger following. Swindon advertiser was good before 2009 but since then it’s been going downhill and unless they change what they do I can’t see them lasting which is a shame given how long they’ve been doing newspapers for

You have clearly not read my message reguarding blocked articles which I should not be getting as a subscribing customer to the Dorset Echo. All you have done is reply with a standardised e-mail and have done nothing to resolve the problem. Your customer service is appalling or you don't care. There is no wonder you are loosing subscribers.