I assume the 25% off and free DVD subscription offer only applies to new subscribers? If so I wonder how easy it would be to cancel my existing subscription and take out a new one?

You can cancel and renew if you like but that’s going to be an arse for us. The promotion is designed to increase our subscribers in order for us to try and earn money. We have to do that to survive. The promotion is is response to the ever increasingly competitive market we are in. We have to fight for new subscribers like all the other mags do. We have bought a few hundred hip flasks that we are using to encourage NEW subscribers. You could exploit us by cancelling a renewing but we won;t like you for it.

Note to self – Make sure terms and conditions clearly state all NEW subscribers, excluding existing subscribers who have held a current live subscription within the last ooh. er 6 months? or something.

ALL current subscribers continue to get..

1) The mag at the cheapest price we can sustain (Direct Debit subscribers get the very best price)
2) Automatic discounts of everything we sell in our shop
3) Discounts from over 40 bike shops, b&bs and other businesses in the UK

We are currently working on a number of new subscriber only deals to add to our Subscribers’ Club list, including a company looking to offer our subscribers heavily discounted web hosting services. So yes, we are aware and grateful to our existing subscribers but we need to offer incentives exclusively for new subscribers to join the ranks. So unfortunately we can’t afford to buy many thousands of free gifts to give to ALL our existing subscribers.

as long as you lot don’t start sending out beani hats or crappy multitools you can have my continued subs sans DVD 🙂

Hi Mark,

Sorry – should have added a smiley. I wasn’t really serious about canceling then re-subscribing. Please don’t ban me for trying to subvert the system 😉

I already subscribe by DD, have done since issue No. 1, never managed to use the bike shop discounts as whenever I’ve checked a) there wasn’t a shop near me (Nottingham) b) ordering online was generally still easier and cheaper. Must admit I’ve also never ordered anything from your shop, I think it’s because the website and layout of the shop are a bit of a mess in my browser (safari 3.1.2) which I can’t be bothered to decipher and I’ve heard mixed reports about how fast things actually get sent out…. Suppose I should really give it a go for myself sometime.

We sent out about a 1000 parcels before Christmas and apart from the ones the post office lost our average time from order to delivery is less than 4 days. It’s not super quick but it’s pretty speedy for our operation.

The reason for the improved service is the fact we have Claire working in there solely on shop duties rather than the sharing the job between some of us that we used to have. That meant service slowed right down around deadlines as we had to prioritise mag work above shop duties. But that’s not the case anymore.

As I said on the other big subs deal thread this afternoon, discussing this topic has lead to us having a quick meeting about what else we can do for our existing subscribers. We’ve come up with a few ideas we’ll be working on over the next few weeks. So no need for apologies 🙂

Oh and the shop is a layout mess at the moment. The current schedule has us integrating the whole shop into the current site design sometime in February. It will then become a bit easier to navigate and use 🙂

Well I hope that, as a new paper subscriber tempted by the current offer (moving from the digital subs which I never really got on with), I won’t miss out on said existing subscribers offers – I’ve been a loyal………….. 😉