SAGA Magazine lifetime subscription - compulsory shift to digital format

Successfullion

IvanOpinion said:

Well I will be the first to congratulate Saga on moving towards a greener more environmentally friendly distribution of its content.

No they are not doing it to be greener. If they were they would not be providing printed version to new subscribers nor would they still be sending countless Saga Holiday brochures and letters about their services. Their claim about cutting costs and postage is nonsense when you consider how much they spend on sending out advertisements and brochures. They could easily afford to honour the contract with Life Members by still providing the printed version and stop adding the heaps of charity and advertising leaflets that they add in the envelope. They clearly have totally forgotten how the money the Life Members gave them at the time kept Saga afloat when it was in difficulty. Saga was not offering life memberships for the benefit of the customer it was because they badly needed money at the time.

Successfullion

born_again said:

Successfullion said:

 Mum has decided not to subscribe and when our insurances etc are due for renewal we will be looking for alternative providers.

Given that is a MSE must. Should be doing it for all insurance every year 👍

We compare insurance but usually Saga was about a fiver more as we believed in loyalty a fiver is not very much but now since Saga can’t be trusted to honour their word. There is no reason not to go to a cheaper provider.

Aylesbury_Duck

Successfullion said:

born_again said:

Successfullion said:

 Mum has decided not to subscribe and when our insurances etc are due for renewal we will be looking for alternative providers.

Given that is a MSE must. Should be doing it for all insurance every year 👍

We compare insurance but usually Saga was about a fiver more as we believed in loyalty a fiver is not very much but now since Saga can’t be trusted to honour their word. There is no reason not to go to a cheaper provider.

Just be careful.  The motoring board is full of people who went with the cheapest provider and have come unstuck.  Whoever you choose, read the policy terms carefully.  I have no idea whether SAGA's insurance is any good, but racing to the bottom is probably not a good strategy, either.

Aylesbury_Duck

Successfullion said:

IvanOpinion said:

Well I will be the first to congratulate Saga on moving towards a greener more environmentally friendly distribution of its content.

No they are not doing it to be greener. If they were they would not be providing printed version to new subscribers nor would they still be sending countless Saga Holiday brochures and letters about their services. Their claim about cutting costs and postage is nonsense when you consider how much they spend on sending out advertisements and brochures. They could easily afford to honour the contract with Life Members by still providing the printed version and stop adding the heaps of charity and advertising leaflets that they add in the envelope. They clearly have totally forgotten how the money the Life Members gave them at the time kept Saga afloat when it was in difficulty. Saga was not offering life memberships for the benefit of the customer it was because they badly needed money at the time.

It's uninformed statements like this that undermine the otherwise reasonable argument you and others are making.  Unless you have intimate knowledge of their accounts and business operations, you can't possibly know whether it's true or not.

1. Do you know how much the lifetime contracts will cost them if they honour them?
2. Do you know the advertising revenue from the leaflets you mention?
3. Do you know how much charities pay for the inclusion of inserts?
4. Do you know how much it costs them to print/receive and include the inserts and leaflets?

If the answer to all of the above is yes, what's the amount they would save from doing as you suggest, and does it cover the known cost in Q1?

Doc_N

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Successfullion said:

IvanOpinion said:

Well I will be the first to congratulate Saga on moving towards a greener more environmentally friendly distribution of its content.

No they are not doing it to be greener. If they were they would not be providing printed version to new subscribers nor would they still be sending countless Saga Holiday brochures and letters about their services. Their claim about cutting costs and postage is nonsense when you consider how much they spend on sending out advertisements and brochures. They could easily afford to honour the contract with Life Members by still providing the printed version and stop adding the heaps of charity and advertising leaflets that they add in the envelope. They clearly have totally forgotten how the money the Life Members gave them at the time kept Saga afloat when it was in difficulty. Saga was not offering life memberships for the benefit of the customer it was because they badly needed money at the time.

It's uninformed statements like this that undermine the otherwise reasonable argument you and others are making.  Unless you have intimate knowledge of their accounts and business operations, you can't possibly know whether it's true or not.

1. Do you know how much the lifetime contracts will cost them if they honour them?
2. Do you know the advertising revenue from the leaflets you mention?
3. Do you know how much charities pay for the inclusion of inserts?
4. Do you know how much it costs them to print/receive and include the inserts and leaflets?

If the answer to all of the above is yes, what's the amount they would save from doing as you suggest, and does it cover the known cost in Q1?

Isn’t the real question, though, whether a company should meet its contractual obligations or not. 

And, linked to that, what message it sends out about the trustworthiness of said company and its other products if it chooses not to honour its contracts. 

Here’s just one example of the fate which met a company that chose not to meet its obligations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion

Aylesbury_Duck

Doc_N said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Successfullion said:

IvanOpinion said:

Well I will be the first to congratulate Saga on moving towards a greener more environmentally friendly distribution of its content.

No they are not doing it to be greener. If they were they would not be providing printed version to new subscribers nor would they still be sending countless Saga Holiday brochures and letters about their services. Their claim about cutting costs and postage is nonsense when you consider how much they spend on sending out advertisements and brochures. They could easily afford to honour the contract with Life Members by still providing the printed version and stop adding the heaps of charity and advertising leaflets that they add in the envelope. They clearly have totally forgotten how the money the Life Members gave them at the time kept Saga afloat when it was in difficulty. Saga was not offering life memberships for the benefit of the customer it was because they badly needed money at the time.

It's uninformed statements like this that undermine the otherwise reasonable argument you and others are making.  Unless you have intimate knowledge of their accounts and business operations, you can't possibly know whether it's true or not.

1. Do you know how much the lifetime contracts will cost them if they honour them?
2. Do you know the advertising revenue from the leaflets you mention?
3. Do you know how much charities pay for the inclusion of inserts?
4. Do you know how much it costs them to print/receive and include the inserts and leaflets?

If the answer to all of the above is yes, what's the amount they would save from doing as you suggest, and does it cover the known cost in Q1?

Isn’t the real question, though, whether a company should meet its contractual obligations or not. 

And, linked to that, what message it sends out about the trustworthiness of said company and its other products if it chooses not to honour its contracts. 

Here’s just one example of the fate which met a company that chose not to meet its obligations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion

It is, which is why it isn't helpful to the cause when people bandy around uninformed statements as facts.

Ah yes, the Hoover story.  An interesting one, but I'm not quite sure of the precise equivalence.  Whilst true that the Hoover and SAGA sagas have honouring contracts in common, Hoover customers weren't subscribing to monthly vacuum cleaners to get a cleaner home.  They were buying products with the express intention of capitalising on an ill-judged promotion, in some cases not even bothering to collect the product itself.  In the SAGA situation, people paid a one-off sum in anticipation of magazines 'forever'.  If SAGA fails to honour those contracts and goes bust as a result of the ensuing reputational damage, those lifetime subscribers won't receive anything and won't have the option of paying for a subscription, either.

"Give us what we paid for, or you won't be able to give us what we paid for!" isn't a great threat, is it.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

IvanOpinion said:

Well I will be the first to congratulate Saga on moving towards a greener more environmentally friendly distribution of its content.

It's rather simplistic but this article suggest if you access your digital content more than 3 times or plan to pass your paper copy to another then the paper copy results in less carbon emissions.

https://except.eco/knowledge/is-digital-more-environmentally-friendly-than-paper/#:~:text=The simple answer to the,table below summarizes this finding.

There are questions to be asked about where the paper comes from (you'd hope Saga would use recycled material where possible and material from sustainable sources), how you receive the paper copy, where the energy the data centre is using comes from and no doubt many other things I can't think of, you could even drill down to the environmental impact of building data centres vs building printing factories or building servers vs printers. There is a question of where printing takes place, a lot of books seem to be printed in China when printing in the country of consumption could possibly have a greater benefit to the environment than going digital. 

Last year Thames Water confirmed drinking water was being used to cool data centres, at a time when there were hose pipe bans

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/thames-water-data-centres-hosepipe-ban-review-b1020685.html

In 2021 Google used 3.3 billion litres of water in the US alone and another billion in other countries

https://www.watercalculator.org/news/news-briefs/google-data-center-water/#:~:text=Google data centers use water,water, both directly and virtually

Somewhere between 2 & 4% of global carbon emissions are from accessing data in the cloud and whilst there is obviously a carbon cost to printing and delivering paper magazines when you have a magazine you read one magazine, when you have access to limitless information at the touch of button you may well consume far more of it, increasing the environmental impact of your general consumption. 

There's a lot to analyse rather than simply assuming a company looking to cut costs is doing great work for our planet  

born_again

Perhaps a out here for Saga to sweeten their lifetime members. 
Is to say that the only way to get paper copies is if you have a current valid Insurance policy. Once they no longer hold a policy, any copy is via digital form.

Clearly keeping a product will help offset costs. 

HillStreetBlues

My personal opinion is  unless they stated it was a hard or printed copy then by supplying a digital copy they are fulfilling the contract.

You  might be entitled to a statement from a company and at one time they were all paper based,  now most are digital  and some you pay for a  paper copy. 

IvanOpinion

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

There's a lot to analyse rather than simply assuming a company looking to cut costs is doing great work for our planet  

Sometimes my satire is too subtle.

PS: I don't think I have ever read an article that has so many assumptions in it as in your first link.