Type www.newsagent.com.au into your internet browser and see how iSubscribe is conning consumers. This online magazine subscription business is making itself out to be a newsagent. They are not a newsagent.
Type www.newsagent.com.au into your internet browser and see how iSubscribe is conning consumers. This online magazine subscription business is making itself out to be a newsagent. They are not a newsagent.
If you (or a reasonable member of the public) believed iSubscribe is “passing itself off” as a newsgent, that’s legalise for impersonating a newsagent, then you may be able to challenge the name in court.
That looks like a website where you can by-pass your local newsagent and get a subscription online. Not a newsagent at all.
Nice to see their associated website is Australia Post! Looks like another thing the ANF is letting through the goals. I’m pretty furious about this.
What is a newsagent? The industry is no longer a stand alone identity. Isubscribe can do this because not too meny of the younger generation knows what a newsagent is. We just put on a trainee and the first question we asked was do you know what we do and his answer was that we sell mags and cigs. These days everyone sells mags and cigs as well as every other product we offer.
I don’t condone isubscribe but our industry is out of touch with the youth that should be our present and future customer base that no wonder someone else has slipped under our guard.
No strong industry body means no strong industry presence.
By the way did you read that Aust post has posted a multi billion dollar profit and they have the hide to put postage prices up.
You Newsagents are right, other entities are surpassing the Newsagent channel because of the many years of fragmentation between the various associations.
Newsagents could of have possibly owned isubscribe or similar if you were not so disfunctional.
This is in my opinion and it is very sad and if you want the honest truth, their is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Newsagents should demand from each of their associations or their representatives to organise a Australia wide summit, every board member will attend, they will hire the best facilatator in the business outside the channel and after one week it will come out with many casualties but ever so important one Association and one office in each state. Then the 4500 newsagents can vote who they want to represent them, no tickets, = number of board members from each state and away we go.
Merging into one, each board member of each entity they are service in now should ask themselves why should they not do this! It is in the best interests for each member they represent across the whole of Australia.
Not to do this indicates doom for the channel. It is up to each member to write to, contact by email, telephone their association and tell them its TIME!
Members of the various bodies must also share the blame for lack of interest and laziness not to tell their various bodies that they need unity. Fiscally time is running out which means being bypassed by Entities like Aust Post, Isubscribe, new entries into channel that will compete with you.
I am sure to cop some flak but I am happy share this blunt comment for the cause of unity.
Derek
Hi Derek,
From me, well said. So many sitting on their hands waiting, waiting waiting.
1 Association with lobbying on a national basis from one office.
2. State branches supporting at a state level.
3. No commercial deals that cross over groups and dilute offers.
If everyone was a member, they wouldn’t need additional funds to run the business. And everyone will only be a member when the association structure gets it right.
Have a great day
Lorraine
I’m less concerned about online stores like isubscribe and magshop than I am by the fact they obviously given a better margin to be able to discount as heavily as they do. Some of the discounts way over our 25%, and they often have free additional gifts as well, with no additional postage charge.
Offer Newsagents the same margin and support. I feel the sole reason that margins are capped at the rate they are and pratically taboo to even debate about is precisely because the publishers/distributers want that control over the ways a newsagent can market themselves and have the room to offer special deals to entities like magshop.
Derek good insight but it won’t happen because all the newsagents want to be managers as someone else wrote here, and why not? they are the one that own the business that they run.
Luke said “By the way did you read that Aust post has posted a multi billion dollar profit and they have the hide to put postage prices up” Didn’t you mean million not billion and most of the profit was through the parcel division no wonder there is problems in your industry as you don’t read articles correctly and then tell all what you think you read.
Clem
Sorry Clem, my mistake but with all these millions/billions/trillions flying around at the moment I miss read, but it does not change the fact that postage price went up because they were crying poor but once it went up they suddenly produce a profit.
If my industry is the only one that misreads an article and gives an opinion then I’ll be buggered. Good thing blokes like you are around to keep us honest, you should contact a bloke called Kevin in Canberra and offer your services.
Luke, I own a small LPO and which is a small business just like others and we have coped all the abuse from the price rise so putting a few issues straight hopefully will help other LPOs, which in many cases are newsagents. And yes I have been employed by the Government in my past life and I am not going back. Much better where I am now. Clem
I actually tried iSubscribe recently. As a publishing industry insider I wanted to see how it worked.
I took out a year’s subscription to New Scientist for about 30 percent less than the cost of buying a subscription directly from the publisher. My money went into the iSubscribe account five weeks ago. Within 24 hours I had a confirmation email, since then nothing. Nada. Zilch.
So, the offer is good. The promotion is good. The delivery is, at this stage, not good.
I don’t see iSubscribe passing themselves off as a newsagent at all. Looking at the site I can’t see the word newsagent mentioned anywhere. The fact that the domain newsagent.com.au goes to their sites was just opportunistic purchasing of the domain when it became available, to redirect people looking for a similar service. Maybe Mark should have purchased the domain when it became available and used it to host his newsagent tv advertisement. If you look at the google stats on http://www.newsagent.com.au and http://www.isubscribe.com.au it becomes clear that newsagent.com.au is not even their promoted web site url.
And more on the newsagent.com.au domain, it appears it was only registered on 23rd July 2008 so someone should have their domain expiry alerts updated to be notified when relevant domains expire. newsagent.org.au is still available.