New Scientist Reviews 

I came on here while trying to decide whether to re-subscribe to the latest offer and it was interesting to read other reviews! I had trouble before but was beginning to question whether or not I was somehow at fault - I now see I wasn’t alone in my experience. Basically I had to call 3/4 times to try and cancel my subscription and each time they had lost the record of my previous call. Eventually they agreed to refund me some of the issues, however I was sent less than the agreed amount. And when I called, guess what... the record of that conversation had once again ‘disappeared’! From the beginning I also found the information in my account online misleading as it it seemed to imply I did NOT have an active subscription with no info on next payment date. I gave this feedback to the call handlers and they seemed uninterested. Not great! However, I do like the magazine itself, and find it a stimulating read.

I have been a subscriber for years and liked the publication. The admin and their systems however are useless and infuriating. Their database seems to be based on post-it notes stuck on a fridge. They can't cancel an email address, they can't communicate a renewal, they change subscriber number at will and are reluctant to give refunds based on their errors. Friendly customer service don't do what they promise. I am convinced they are in breach of data protection regulations and am about to report to the ombudsman how they handled my personal identification data. What a shame that a good writing is spoilt by incompetent administration.

Monthly update for August 2021...

This has been going on all year.
So here's a copy of email sent this month. (ho-hum!)
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Hi Charlotte,

Humbly suggest that you check your database for all the other complaints that I've made this year on exactly the same subject.
Look carefully at previous complaints and you'll find my account/membership number, which NS keeps asking for and which I keep sending.

It's printed on the address label when my paper copy of New Scientist arrives.
So, in the past, I've scanned this and sent it to you. Not that it made any difference.
Unfortunately, I can't scan the label this week because the paper copy of New Scientist is late . . . Again.
I guess it might arrive Monday.
Or maybe Tuesday of next week, a day or two before next weeks issue is distributed.
But not to worry. I went down the supermarket last Thursday and read this weeks copy there.
Ho-hum!

But you should be able to find my account number in any of the previous complaints I sent.
There are plenty of them, given that I complain each and every month for most of this year.
It's now August and I'm still complaining . . . doesn't time fly!

And especially given that I can sign in to my account with this email address.
So I can guarantee you that it's on your system, and has been for many, many months.
. . . On & off.

Oh, and by the way, this is the standard reply I get every month from New Scientist:

We would like to apologise for the service you have experienced with New Scientist.
Please contact customerhelp @ newscientist.com and we will investigate this further.
Kind regards,
New Scientist Customer Help

After cancelling a gift subscription 7 days after ordering, I am still waiting for a full refund 2 months later.

I find that this website is mostly garbage. It lures you in with usually a nice picture and a quick title. Then when you read the article you find it's like something you'd expect to see in the national enquirer which for those over in Britain is basically a garbage newspaper. Most of the scientific evidence they have is unproven at best. Personally when I see it more often than not I just scroll right past because I know it's not worth reading because like I said in most cases a lot of it is garbage

This is the worst paid for app I have ever used. It just does not work, reporting errors every time time I try to drill down on an article. I agreed to be a beta tester for audio offering, Doesn't work either. Website okay apart from adverts , rather annoying since I paid a yearly subscriptin

Same as the majority of the reviewers, I signed up to the trial offer expecting paper copies of the magazine delivered to me.

When I realized that I was only given access to the online version, I emailed them asking how much it'd be to upgrade to the print version. They switched it for me straight away, no questions asked. Considering I was only inquiring, I thought it was suspiciously easy at the time but hey, that's what I was after.

I realized my gut feeling was right when I checked my bank balance a few days later and realised they'd charged me £65 for the joy! I had in no way agreed to that charge in my communication with them so I emailed them straight away asking for an explanation and a refund.

This happened over a week ago and despite me chasing this payment once already, all I've had was a few robotic responses back and no real timeline given for when I can expect to see it.

Never would have thought the operation behind this publication was so terrible. Avoid if possible

Misleading offer. I was charged two times. The first was when Iaccepted an offer and then a second time without even receiving a receipt. The bank informed me about a charge of 99 euros for a subscription which I did not select. I only wanted the offer and as soon as I entered the payment info in my profile they charged me an extra 99 euros. Absolutely disappointing!!!!

Just to note that, as with others, my experience of their subscription offer was absolutely dire. I’m not sure what’s going on in sales and marketing, but they seem to have hit on a surefire recipe to get rid of readers.

After my experience, I am always tempted to wish them good luck in this disastrous project, except that I wouldn’t want to see the magazine disappear.

I signed up for 10 Issues for £10. But now they're telling me it was ten issues on App and Website, which is not what I wanted.

The offer I used is still in my cache. It says: "Subscribe online today and receive 10 issues delivered to your door for only £10."

This isn't good enough. You can't have one thing which actually means another...

But it's the customer service, which took 3 attempts to get them to actually answer my email, that really rankles. It's just a huge waste of everyone's time if the people reading emails don't actually READ them.

Very disappointed. I'm sure they'll post a message here asking me to contact the customer services, but considering the track record, is it really worth it?

You start a trial with the intention of giving the product a go. You set up a reminder on your calendar to either cancel or continue with subscription. They process the renewal charge more than one week in advance.
No transparency on agreement, poor response from customer services, makes you doubt these products have got any sense of honesty.
They don’t care if you’re a happy paying customer, they just want your money. Better to buy the magazine from the shop and keep control of your money. Avoid subscribing.

I was going for 1-2 stars, but that would be highly unfair, for a poor customer service is "standard" these days and has been established as the "golden rule" by Amazon: Don't listen to customers, don't read their mails, just send empty apologies that have nothing to do with the problem at hand.

That out of the way: The content offered for the money is good. No, it is not "intellectually challenging science-of-the-day", it's more of a glimpse into recent discussions, semi-more-in-depth essays about what you find everywhere around the interwebs (including all the latest hypes), but for the most part the articles are well written and at least *feel* like reliable first-step-sources. If there were more scientifically founded discussions of opposing views on a matter, less pop-science "for the laywomen", the high price for a subscription would be even more justified.
However, the presentation of that content is poor at best or outright unacceptable. A website from the late 2ks, an Android app that is simply not working properly (see reviews on G's "play" store) and Amazon-like support (see above: Doesn't even READ questions coming in, just sends out copy&paste texts) is NOT what you expect for the money you pay.

Personally, I would prefer more audio content, but for now I am going to cancel my subscription since the content isn't DELIVERED to me. I simply do not have the time or the will to keep "trial and error" my way through malfunctioning apps or slow websites, thank you.

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Response to response from vendor: I did report problems "immediately", first response from support took over three days (so much for "immediately") and was non-sensical. After I gave a negative feedback on the support I received, support escalation clicked in. I provided screenshots and detailed information about the issues I experienced and got back a response that my input was being forwarded.
That happened over a week ago. My "issues" are such that I can not enjoy the content (for which I am paying) and that products offered (the app) malfunction. Over a week of response-time is neither "immediately" as you say nor is it creating confidence in a satisfying customer-vendor relationship.
The copy+paste response published here on Trust-Pilot really nudges me to drop my rating from three stars to zero stars.

-- UPDATE: After way over a month STILL no response to my mails. My fear that "support" is only interested in paying customers and give a bleep once you are ready to go was correct. A garbage app and content you can easily find for free elsewhere isn't worth the high price. Downgraded from 3 to 2 stars.

I have subscribed to NS on paper for almost 40 years and still look forward to and enjoy the content every week. Good content costs money I understand but the publisher has apparently allowed costs to spiral out of control. May 2019 I paid £37.25 pq, May 20 £47.50 pq, up to £55 pq in Oct 20, and now they want £65 pq from April 21. Almost DOUBLE in two years, what is going on? Are they trying to get rid of customers? Reminds me of the loyalty penalty on car insurance and electricity.

I subscribed to New Scientist so I had a source of reliable information during the pandemic - this after some 25 years absence as a subscriber - and have been enormously pleased with the content, which is hard to fault. The commentary pages can be somewhat political from time to time, and that's to be expected, but the majority of the content is well written, well researched and a joy to read in these troubled times.

In that regard I can't recommend NS highly enough.

My low rating is solely down to the delivery of the 'paper copy' which is at best erratic and at worst regularly delayed by up to a week.

What is particularly frustrating is that other weekly subscriptions I have consistently arrive on time - delays appear to be peculiar to NS. While I understand that there may be delays due to Covid, an analysis of deliveries since January has shown NS as a significant outlier.

Having contacted Subcriptions and Customer Services, I've either received a stock response, or that delivery is within 3 days of the dispatch and is therefore acceptable (a criteria which isn't in the T&Cs and something I wouldn't have mentioned had they not brought it up).

My advice to NS is firstly to apologise to subscribers when they contact you - "sorry to hear you're not happy" is not an apology - and to perhaps either be up front about continued delays, or even to offer some token gesture to subscribers by way of thanks for enduring the current problems and sticking with the magazine.

At the moment I feel like I'm talking to AI - a far cry from my previous subscriber experience.

I came on to leave a positive review and was a bit surprised when I read the other comments for New Scientist.
I signed up for a new subscription last autumn and have been very happy with the magazine and the experience since. Sure, the delivery is occasionally a day or two later, but that seems pretty normal these days.
What prompted me to write a review today though was receiving an email informing that my next issue might be a bit later due to delivery issues. I was really impressed with the proactive communication and thought some Kudos was due, as it's above and beyond the service I've gotten from some other subscriptions recently. This thoughtful update has saved me the worry and hassle of contacting separately to check the status, and fortunately I don't think the pace of scientific development is such that I will be late to the party by reading my updates 4-5 days late for one occasion.
Aside from the above, the quality of content is always really good. There are always thoughtfully written articles on a broad range of subjects that I think are great for people with an interest in science and technology subjects.

I had a free trial of 30 days before a paid subscription started.

Customer services first I didn't have the free trial of 4 issues (which seemed extremely unusual) and when I corrected this, they said I cannot cancel during a free trial and would have to be charged the full quarterly amount.

This of course goes against the whole meaning of a 'free trial' and seemed exceptionally deceiving.

Gift yearly subscription for about 5 years now for my father in law. The amount just keeps going up, things do go up!, but gone up by £50 this year. Had a look on the internet and found other web sites that are upto £33 cheaper for exactly the same item, yearly printed copy.
Ask subscribe New Scientist .com why and just said thats our price !

I subscribed for New Scientist on 3rd November 2020. There was a warning that it could take up to 4 weeks to start supplies.
After 6 weeks, on 15th December, with nothing received, I contacted customer services. 6 days later, I received a reply asking for further information - which was already on my original email.

I immediately replied and, 8 days after that received a response trying to blame postal delays due to Covid - absolute nonsense, as all other expected mail, first and second class, has arrived in expected timescales. How come the up to 14 expected copies of New Scientist were singled out?

To date, I have received a total of 2 copies 'on time' plus one back copy that was apparently ordered by customer services.
No sign of any results from reporting 'missing copy' via the web site.
I have again written to customer services (last time before I shall be writing legally to their company secretary) and will look out for a further response in around a week (48 hours - pah!). I have asked them either to sort it out finally and let me know what has been going so wrong of cancel and refund my subscription.

... 3 weeks on ...
Well, I did receive the expected response blaming Royal Mail.
However, telepathy is alive and well - 2 hours after writing the above, the previous week's edition popped through the door (5/6 days later than expected), The following day, the then current edition arrived (when one would expect it). Thereafter, I have received the following 2 editions on the expected Friday or Saturday.
How wonderful that the Royal Mail was suddenly able to overcome its Covid-related delays. We will see whether the good news continues.

I signed up a an annual exhibition for a years subscription to the magazine. I discovered a year later that a second years payment was automatically taken. When I told the magazine that I did not want this I was given a complete run around and told that the policy was to take recurring payments unless I stopped them. I pointed out that this was never agreed and asked for contractual documentation that showed that this was something I had agreed to. Amazingly the next day I received an email saying I would have a full refund of £99. It was even confirmed in a letter which came to my home. Two and a half months and several emails later they have not repaid. I am now threatening to sue them. Do not sign up this is a scam.

After paying money and subscribing online nothing would activate my account. 12 hours later their support was able to activate my account, with the wrong subscription "app + web" when i have paid for "print + app + web". Trying to use their "manage subscription" online with the details they provide just results in "Subscription number could not be found, please check and try again".

The website is outdated, doesn't work properly and i would advise everyone not to bother with this junk.