Boston Globe Online
My relationship with the Boston Globe’s new site has come to an end. It is a product I wanted to like. Here are some reasons I didn’t:
In hindsight the signs were there during the trial, when I needed to sign up for an account to see the free material. Why require registration for something you’re giving away? In any event, I tried it on day 1, set up the account, and promptly forgot the password. When I went back a week later and couldn’t think of it, the solution was to call or chat online with customer service.
It’s relatively expensive: I’m paying $9 a month for the Kindle edition of The Economist, which is an infinitely superior publication. The real price for the Globe is $14.99, unless I consent to let them ship me heaps of paper. Which is clearly what they want.
The layout on my phone includes enormous ads (like, three screenfuls) for most articles. Again, the Kindle Economist is ad-free.
The content on the site has only turned over about 50 percent this week.
So, anyway, it didn’t work out and I went to cancel this morning. The way to do that was to chat with customer service. Took about ten minutes of a person’s time to do. Ten expensive minutes.
My summary: an ineffective product delivered in a way which is really expensive for everyone involved. I’d like a good digital edition of my hometown paper. This isn’t it, yet.
