I used subscribe to several and would really look forward to receiving them. I would typically go the 2 year route on my subscriptions and what would really irk me is I'd get a renewal notice before even receiving the third or fourth issue. Each notice would have stronger and stronger wording and I'd have to go pull out my records to see if I was really due to renew. Definitely a PIA.

Then a couple of years ago, I too received the auto pay notice from House Beautiful and was so annoyed that they actually kept my credit card information on file (so some hacker could get it) that I did not renew it or any of the others I used to get. Now if I want a magazine, I buy it at the store but seldom do because most of them are nothing more than a book of advertisements.

It annoys me to no end! In fact, the whole magazine industry has gone bonkers.

The only mag that did an automatic renewal was Consumer Reports. I subscribed to it for one year, then I noticed it kept coming and coming and coming.

Then I realized that somehow it was an automatic renewal, so I must have messed up somehow. It's a good mag, so I didn't bother cancelling it, but thankfully, the credit card I used to subscribe to it had the number changed a couple of months ago because someone tried to buy airline tickets to Sri Lanka. lol.

Today I received a notice from the mag saying my cc wouldn't go through. YAY!

Now get this. I am receiving both Time and Entertainent Weekly that I did NOT subscribe to.

No clue why, but I haven't been charged for them either.

I would never pay for a magazine subscription with a credit card. Sometimes checks make more sense.

Natal, I've been subscribing to magazines with cc's since I was in my 20s, and this is the first time I had the automatic renewal.

I pay with a check for renewals though, but for a first time subscription I go to their website. I obviously didn't see the "box" where I missed the choice of automatic renewals.