The Economist Reviews 

Great content, terrible customer service. What started off as a minor issue just got worse with every interaction with Customer Service. Have been a long standing subscriber and just wanted to tweak my subscription yet after 5 interactions cancellation seemed a better option! The response to an email even appeared to come from Chat GPT referring to The Economist in the third person!

I have prescribed for one year . I have my received my printed copies since Dec ( although I paid until Nov 2025)
The economist staff call centre didn’t know what they were doing and weren’t of much help
I am surprised at the low level of service of this much loved Economist

I was promised a refund of over £300 given that I was being charged for two subscriptions on the same account. Having finally realised this discrepancy, I contact customer services. After going back and forth with customer services, sharing bank statements and account details and screenshots of my account (which felt more than slightly uncomfortable), two weeks later and my promises refund has still not arrived!

It is incredibly poor service. Just return the money you owe me please!

The worst subscription cancelation. You can’t cancel it when you want. You have to chat/call hours. They just don’t give you a chance to cancel it. It’s illegal in the UK to process it this way!!!

By far the hardest and worst subscription to cancel with no button online and you need to speak to chat or call in which I think might be illegal in some markets or countries. Quite surprising for the Economist!

I've canceled my personal subscription planning to re-subscribe via my work account. They kind of trick you on what I assumed to be the confirmation page of cancelling - it is just a page forcing you into a chat or phone conversation where an agent tries to persuade you to stay (he didn't even read my messages properly). If you leave this "confirmation page" they will further charge you fees.
This procedure really makes me question my plan to re-subscribe.

They make it incredibly high friction to cancel a subscription. Do better.

A horrendous cancellation procedure with repeated stalling tactics, forcing you to speak to someone who then continues to stall with useless questions to try and prevent you from leaving, very shoddy business practice you'd expect of a less prominent business.

The content itself is great but this leaves a sour taste and will mean I won't be resubscribing in future.

The most cumbersome and disrespectful exit procedures. Why? I would like to be a loyal customer, but you seriously do your best to scare me away.

The cancellation process is ridiculous.
Not allowing automatic cancellation is extremely old fashioned and seems greedy and tasteless.

My son has given me gift subscription ever year to this magazine. And every year has been a struggle for me to receive his gift from the Economist company. For a magazine that reports on businesses success and failures, they need to address their own failing at selling their own product. Shame on you for making it so hard to simply receive your magazine in the mail.

Cancellation process is annoying and probably illegal. You cannot cancel a subscription on your own. You have to contact the chat or call them. Not a good experience.
It is a shame that such a good magazine does not allow users to cancel their own subscriptions.

I am not surprised at the reviews, and yet…. They do not change. We cancelled 2 months ago and now they pretended like we did not. Charged us another >$100 and say you do not get a refund.
That is clearly not legal, but again- It seems to continue and none of the higher ups in the company seem to care about their reputation, I guess.

They removed possibility to cancel subscription online and when I speak to online agent they are not proceeding cancellation it’s very cruel way of keeping customers I like the content of newspaper but if I have no choice to subscribe or unsubscribe this is not a right way of keeping customers. People please be careful for me I paid way too much

Cancelled my subscription over 2 years a go and never updated my credit card details as they requested as I had (Ithought) cancelled. On my account page said (no current subscription). However discovered that they have been taking the money over all that time. Totally dishonest and shady for a pubblication of this reputation .

Very dishonest with subscriptions. I signed up in September, then cancelled the subscription in October through Apple Store on my phone only to discover in February that I was still being direct debited every month. They wouldn’t issue a refund or even acknowledge that the process is misleading. It took me about 2 hours on online chat before someone finally cancelled the subscription for me but in the mean time I paid them 175 euro unknowingly and for nothing! Don’t sign up in the first place!!

A great publication

Recently changed my subscription from print to digital only (as much as I love the hardcopy I was reading everything on phone/tablet) this was easy to do.

When reviewing my usage of what the economist produces it’s a lack of time not want that prevents me from enjoying all aspects my subscription- I engage with the app daily- espresso/audio download and just enjoying the articles..
Cheers.

Multiple pages designed to make it hard then you have to phone or chat.

I chose to chat, they delayed and tried to sell me a discount for a lock in.

Oh man, I would have thought they had more respect for their customers.

The content of the news is excellent. But for reasons I won't go into here I wanted to cancel a subscription. To do so, I was taken through several webpages before finally being told I needed to call or use live chat. They were quick to start the chat, but it took 25 minutes of slow conversation, and a lot of pushback from the agent, before he cancelled my subscription.

After I published the below, they have responded to my requests online and cancelled the subscription immediately

“I am getting really annoyed with the economist as it is extremely hard to cancel their subscription or get in touch with them. Easier to call the bank and ask them to reject payments. Never again I am subscribing or buying their magazines.”