Has anyone had trouble with stereophile magazine?

Pretty funny (bad!), but I'm going thru nearly the same thing as you. That is, except for the fact that I haven't tried to contact them. I renewed a few months ago and my last Stereophile came in February.

If it comes, okay, it's only $11.99 yearly. If it doesn't I'll have a couple lunches for $11.99 (Value Meal #2) and life will go on fine without them....

E-mail John Gourlay (Gourlayj@primediacmmg.com) and complain. I missed 2 out of 3 issues due (I think) to the lables falling off. Yeah, they'll cheerfully extend your subscription, but you want mags NOW not in the future. Anyway, Gourlay actually seemed like he could get something done. I have been getting mine regularly now.

With Stereophile going downhill so quickly I'm just glad we have Ljgj to give us speaker reviews. (Have you seen that list of speakers he/she burned through?)

Sincerely, I remain

I had similar problem with a missing issue and after being told that they had no more copies in stock I e-mailed Mr.Atkinson from the Sterephile website just last week. He responded on the next businss day and offered to send me a copy from their office stock. A lot of the Stereophile bashing is the result of the magazine being in ownership transition while the technology that it covers and the market that it serves is moving simultaneously in disparate directions. Clearly, the magazine has heavy issues to deal with but Mr. Atkinson has managed to steer a clear course in the past and will probably right the ship.

The only time I had a problem with missing issues was when I moved and did a change of address - the rest of that subscription never did find it's way to me. As others said, "Contact Us" on their website was worthless. I finally got an explanation that, due to the change of ownership and, therefore, some of the services dept., there was a lot of confusion (this was one of the previous change of ownerships.) As others have said, it's just a magazine and it's just $11.99 a year, so I just re-upped and forgot about it.

That said, with all the talk about Stereophile changing, going mass-market, etc., and especially being bought by bigger publishing organizations, it seems to me that, despite the negative aspects many of us see in these changes, one thing that SHOULD be better than ever is subscription fulfillment. For goodness sake, the notion that you don't get a response from using their website to contact them is horrendous. Not a big deal in the great scheme of life, but you can hire a $6/hr temp to do nothing but respond with a semi-personal, "we got your communication and ....." type of message. The efficiency benefit of being bought by a big publisher ought to make the customer service thing better, not worse. -Kirk