Noted without further comment.
From an email received on Sunday, March 16, from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Title: “Thank you for subscribing to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser ( Payment Reminder )”
Your newspaper subscription is due to expire soon and we want to make sure there is no lapse in delivery service. Please click the link below to make a payment. https://gateway.staradvertiser.com/myaccount/login.php.
Then, yesterday, just a day later, this email followed, with the title: “Important message from the Honolulu Star Advertiser.”
And the message:
Yesterday, you may have received an email regarding your subscription. Please disregard the message as it was sent in error. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
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Yes, I received the exact same messages. Oh, for the good old days when we had two decent daily newspapers.
I got the same two messages. After the first one I immediately replied to it citing the confirmation number from my phone call just a few weeks previously when I had paid for a year using a credit card.
Then later I got the second message, and thought it was solely directed to me on account of my earlier reply. Now I’m wondering how many thousands of people scrambled in the same way.
I also got both.
After the first, I checked my account status, as I knew my renewal was coming up soon. Turns out it’s in early April, so the notice was about when I’d normally get a renewal notice via snail mail. I renewed for 3 more months, but wondered if they’d stopped mailing the renewal notices.
I also received both, and then today, a repeat of the first one came. Maybe the leprechauns are in their database.
We also got a second renewal reminder late this afternoon. We hadn’t received one in many years, so I actually thought the first one was from someone phishing.
Perhaps this is a business ploy. I recently got a letter from the Atlantic magazine saying “Thank you for your ten-issue subscription. For just $10 more, you can get 20 issues.” Of course I never subscribed in the first place. (Who would subscribe for just ten issues?) But with the statement below that my first payment is due toward the end of April, I did feel pressure to just write a check and mail it in. These kind of ruses work, but I am disappointed with the publisher for their dishonesty.
as datapoint, I got one of those super cheap subscriptions because of my location … It looks like These can be renewed for $20 for another year by paying online through the account access … Also right now online only subscriptions can be gifted for 6 mo for $10 …. YMMV
Speaking of the news, I think that we might note the recent death of Shari Shima, the former local weatherperson, at the age of 52. She was the first weatherman in Hawaii to have a degree in meteorology, and maybe the only one, and perhaps the best weatherperson in Hawaii. But she was also one of the first to get the ax in the local media consolidation. This seems to confirm the theme on HBO’s The Wire that it is always the best journalists (and cops) who get laid off first. Before her firing, however, she did show signs of illness.
If you google Shari Shima’s name, you will come across a number of local forums that go back years and that have hundreds of comments uncharitably referring to Shima as a “drunk” and “crackhead”, without any evidence. There are a few comments from those who knew her, saying that Shima had a genetic disease that runs in her family, but these are ignored. There are no comments on the effects of media consolidation.
What kind of society is this?