After I moved a couple years ago, I received a few magazine subscription offers in the mail. I decided to subscribe to a few magazines — The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair — to show my support for print media. I paid by check, and new issues started showing up soon after.

Much as it pains me to say it, the magazines mostly went untouched. Anything of interest in the print edition, I had already read online. Back issues piled up, and I would dump whole stacks in the recycle bin unopened. I decided to let the subscriptions lapse.

Last week, I got an aggressive letter in the mail advising me that my subscription for Vanity Fair has auto-renewed, and that I owe the magazine's publisher, Condé Nast, somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen bucks for another year of their magazine.

Here it might be valuable to explain to readers who have never subscribed to a magazine how the system has always worked: Readers paid for a predetermined block of issues — usually a year, sometimes two years, occasionally six months — and then the magazine would send renewal notices, urging the customer to buy another block of issues. Longtime subscribers often get better deals and perks in exchange for purchasing longer subscription blocks. If you didn't renew your subscription by the end of your old subscription, the magazine stopped coming.

This is still how it works with at least one magazine — Consumer Reports — that I still receive at my house every month. But in this case, I certainly never consented to automatic renewal of my Vanity Fair subscription, and I thought perhaps some con artist was trying to fleece me.

Turns out, a con artist was trying to fleece me, but that con artist was Condé Nast itself. Three days ago, I received an email from another Condé Nast magazine I subscribed to, The New Yorker, with a bill for 165 dollars that read, in part:

As part of the continuous service that you requested, your subscription has been renewed for one year. We are so glad that you’ll continue to receive the magazine that has so much to offer!

Of course, I didn't request continuous service. I simply didn't read the fine print on a two-year subscription that I requested.

Here's an auto-renewal notice I found for another Condé Nast magazine online with a much more blatant description of the new policy:

**Subscriber's Automatic Renewal Feature:** Your subscription will automatically be renewed after your initial term for a one year subscription unless you tell us to stop. Before the start of each renewal, you will be sent a reminder notice stating the rate then in effect. If you do nothing, your credit/debit card will be charged or you will receive an invoice for another subscription year. You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund for unmailed issues.

This is some bullshit. It's a way for Condé Nast to prey on their existing (mostly elderly) clientele by turning the consensual subscription contract into a passive money-collection scheme.

Lawyers in California are in fact suing Condé Nast for this pernicious practice:

The Condé Nast class action lawsuit says this practice violates California law. Allegedly, California law requires companies to disclose auto-renewal programs conspicuously to customers before they make their purchases.

It's disgraceful to watch the print magazine industry go out in this way. We're already learning about the excess and the turmoil behind the scenes of print magazines, and now the last remaining big magazine publisher in America is running a scam on older Americans to keep itself afloat. Any sympathy that I once felt for Condé Nast has long since withered and died. Let them fade away, and good riddance.