Magazines for Miles and Headaches for Jane

The small slip of paper in front of me was succinct and immediately appealing.

“Redeem your unused miles for magazines,” it trumpeted. “No cash cost to you!”

Reading material for free. What could be better than that? I had no loyalties to any one airline, especially after I’d read about Midwest Airlines, with its wonderful meals and excellent customer service, and urged Chris to buy a few shares in it. The shares only went down (and this was before 9/11), and the wonderful free meals were later discontinued and offered for individual purchase only.

So I had no regrets about giving up my frequent flier miles for free magazines. True, the list of magazines in the program didn’t include Chris’s favorite, Foreign Affairs, which cost an expensive $6 per issue, nor People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly (both of which I liked reading, but not if it involved my own money).

“I wish I could just get five years of Time Magazine instead,” I sighed. Then I glanced at the small print on the paper. A phone number was listed at the bottom. I dialed the number and listened to a recording that instructed me that should I want multiple terms of a magazine, I could select them by simply writing the number of years up to 3, then a X, and then the magazine code.

Yippee! After much calculation and jiggling of my available miles, I came up with a combination I thought was perfect. One year of Wired for Chris. One year of something called Cargo Magazine, which sounded like a shopping guide for guys, for Chris. Two years of Newsweek for me, and three years of Time. I sent in the form.

A few months later, I finally received my first issues of Time and Newsweek. Immediately I noticed that the expiration dates on the label were for 2005–yes, that meant they only gave me one year for each magazine.

Online, I looked up my accounts. Time Magazine informed me that my subscription had been placed through NewSub Subscription Services, so I called them.

The machine asked me if I wanted to order a new subscription (”please say yes or no”). I said no.

“Do you want to report a missing issue?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you want to check your billing history?”

“NO,” I said, more impatiently.

“Please enter the credit card number you used for faster service,” the machine instructed me.

That put me in a jam, because I hadn’t used a credit card. After all, that was what “free” meant.

With nothing to say, I waited out the machine until it sent me back to another menu.

“Do you want to cancel your subscription?” it inquired.

I bellowed, “NO!” and evidently the machine was not built for bellowing because it said politely, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Please hold for the next available customer representative.”

Eventually a customer service rep, whose grasp on English was tenuous indeed, came on the line. She professed no knowledge of the multiple terms issue, once she understood my question, which occurred only after I substituted “years” for “terms.”

If I understood her correctly, her company did indeed fulfill subscriptions for airlines, but I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was talking about. I hung up with her and went back online.

Surfing the airline site, I found information about exchanging miles for magazines. They had a different phone number listed for the subscription agency, so I dialled it.

Other than an initial greeting that announced the airline’s name, I went through about five of the same questions recited by the same uncaring machine that I had gone through with the other phone number. I wondered if I had merely reached another division of the same company.

Then the questions began to diverge. Instead of asking for my credit card number, it wanted to know my name.

“Please say your last name now. Do not spell it now,” the machine advised me.

I said my last name.

“Thank you. Now, speaking normally, please spell your last name. For instance, you could say O C O N N O R.”

I spelled my last name.

The racist machine said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. Please hold for the next available representative.”

The next available representative appeared to know English this time, but said that the computer wouldn’t let her enter multiple years of Time and Newsweek.

“It’s only letting me give you double issues, so that you’d receive two of the same issue each week. Or you could just sign up for a new subscription next year,” she said.

“Well, I was just worried about my miles expiring before then.”

“Here’s the airline phone number–you can call and check with them.”

I called the airline. I got another recorded woman, with the mechanical voice I’d grown to hate. But this time I made the lucky mistake of coughing while she was still reading the introduction. Immediately, there was silence. After a minute, the recording said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you want to …”

I ignored the rest of what she said because I was coughing again. The voice cut off, and then said, “I can’t understand you. Please hold for a customer representative.”

If only I had known earlier that coughing would be the key to jumping straight to real people!

A woman came on the line. I wondered briefly why no men seemed to work for these places, and I asked her about the Magazine for Miles program.

“Oh, we send those out all the time,” she said. I heard a note of surprise in her voice. Apparently not many people called them to ask for more telemarketing materials to be mailed to them.

I asked her for my frequent flier member number, and she asked for my last name and zip code. I gave her the zip code of our current home, figuring that since their last promotion got to this house, they must have this address.

Apparently not, because she said, “That zip code doesn’t match what we have. Could it be under another zip code?” She had that tone of voice that told me I had to guess the right one before she would release my membership number.

“We’ve lived in three houses in the last five years,” I mumbled, almost to myself. “So there’s 01801…”

She didn’t say anything.

“Or 01970,” I continued, not even sure if I was remembering that zip code right. Then I reached way back in time and also gave her the zip code of my parents’ home, where I haven’t lived for about six or seven years.

01970 was the winner, and she gave me my membership number. “I should update your address as well,” she added, unnecessarily.

I hung up the phone and felt I’d accomplished something. Maybe I didn’t get the extra years on the magazines that I wanted, but next year I could just go online and subscribe to something else. Hey, if I had to, I was willing to subscribe to Seventeen just to make the airline pay for a magazine. I figured they owed me something for my time with the mechanical woman.

Posted by: ssjane | May 4, 2004 | 5:46 pm
Posted in: This Life