Bay Area News Group
reviews and complaints

Copy of my email to: The Manager/Supervisor, Subscriber Services, San Jose Mercury News.

I am a long time subscriber of Mercury News. However, of late I have had difficulty with your customer/subscriber services.

In August 2018 I had received an invoice for around $300 for a 6 month renewal. I felt that was excessive and called on 9/9/2018 to cancel the subscription. Your representative offered to renew for 1 year (ie. till Sept 2019) for about $180 and I had agreed and paid $225.14 by credit card (conf no. 86305). I believe the difference of $45 was for the period between August to September 2018.

I was surprised to receive a notice that my subscription will expire 12/16/2018 with a bill for $307.85 for a 26 week renewal. I called your customer service on 12/4/2018 explaining the error. The representative said the account will be updated to reflect that the subscription was for 1 year and I asked for a written confirmation. Since I had not received the wriiten confirmation, I called again on 12/6/2018 and was surprised to learn that the subscription was extended only to 12/31/2018. I explained the above to the agent who said that a supervisor will contact me.

The other problem with your customer/subscriber service department is that none of the subscriber payment, expiry date and renewal information is available on your website. We are referred to call [protected] for all customer services but we are put on hold for a intolerably long time when calling this number. Further, the email address is difficult to find. I had to find your customer/subscriber service email address only after a prolonged search.

I am waiting for a call back from the supervisor. If the above issues are not resolved, I do not wish to continue the subscription.

Thank you
Subir Nag

[protected] is my home phone number against which you can pull the account.
I am a 72 year old senior citizen. I was charged $312.40 via auto renewal of the paper San Jose Mercury. Last year, it was $180. I cannot afford the new price, so I called immediately to cancel, and give me refund. The operator agreed to give me $140 credit by visa, and said she will send it to "Finance" for approval which will take three weeks.
I called repeatedly, no refund. Today I was told the policy is not to refund. This cannot be right, because this would allow a business to increase the rate to any amount without a recourse to the customer. Suppose the rate was increased to $1000/year, and auto renewal charges me that amount, and I cannot afford it, I cannot cancel and get refund? THIS HAS TO BE AN ILLEGAL POLICY. What if you auto renewal to $7500/year charge? Per your policy, the customer is stuck with $7500?
Please cancel my subscription and give me a full $320.11 refund, or continue my subscription with a $140 refund as your operator supervisor agreed to do.

This is an ongoing delivery problem and appears to not going to get fixed. This morning, with thunderstorms having been forecasted, my paper is delivered uncovered (ie. not placed in a plastic bag as is usually done/supposed to be/has been done) so, of course I have totally wet and useless paper...again!
In the last 4 weeks I've had, including today, 4 wet newspapers and one wrongly left newspaper ( left a Mercury News and I live in Antioch!) and an instance where the wet paper was to be re-delivered but wasn't. That translate into an almost 15% chance of us getting a wet or wrongly delivered paper, for which you guys charge me. If I missed paying my bill, you'd be calling me morning, noon and night to get your money! Well, I can't be calling morning, noon and night to get a dry paper..! I'm a photographer so, if I had a fail rate of 15%, that means out of 100 photos I give a client, that they've paid for, they will receive 15 bad photos...! Not good for business, wouldn't you agree...?
I remember that the paper once was left on my door step...! Nice touch...! What happened...? Service is unpredictable and going from bad to worse...!
Acct #472949
Jerome Gibson

Some person has been throwing the Sunday news paper at my door step without my consent. Bay area news group does not list their contact ph # anywhere on the green cover that encloses the news paper and is difficult to contact the news group asking them to stop the forced and unwanted subscription. This is really annoying . I found a phone # online to call them but no live person answers my calls. Please take necessary action.