The NYT Select thing is a total catastrophe. We have been subscribers to the print edition of the NYT for a hundred years. But that paper subscription has no correlation to a login and password that you could use to login to Times Select. (Anyone else have the problem of a couple household with about 12 email addresses between you over the years? Who knows what one we subscribed with. Besides, we subscribed over the phone, or however it was done back in the early 90s. This must be the case for a healthy percent of Times' subscribers!) Have been on the phone with the NYT for 20 minutes who are overloaded with calls of people similarly frustrated. All I can say is, for this amount of frustration, it is tempting to cancel one's subscription to the NYT altogether. Update: And after 25 minutes on hold, the line went dead. Do I have to call back to cancel the subscription or can I do it online? Update II: I have an idea for the Times. How 'bout making the print-subscriber login for Times Select based on your subscription phone number? Since that is how you notify them about an undelivered paper, etc.?

Update III: Readers write in with their complaints:

...OK- UNCLE! It acknowledges that I'm a Times Select member when I try to sign in, but when I try to actually read protected content it doesn't recognize that I already have the service and offers no option other than signing up for the service and no way back to the content. Today seems to be all about signing up, but not actually using?

And

I'm having the same problem. The account is not accepting the fact that I am a home delivery subscriber -- it doesn't recognize the credit card number I am providing.

Apart from the initial logistics, this is a dumb move by the NY Times. Readership and corresponding influence of columns by Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and others are going to plummet. How are blogs like yours going to be able to link to these articles? Even though the Wall Street Journal is an excellent newspaper, its articles are not so much in the daily "buzz" because you need to pay to read them.

Once again, the NY Times demonstrates how it just doesn't get it.

And

Short perspective on Times Select. I got the blandishment and spent about a half hour screwing around with the website before I gave up to battle another day. I didn't call, thank God or else I would have apparently had my brain eaten by these folks.

And Soccer Dad writes with a scheme for getting around it altogether.

Posted by Laura at September 19, 2005 09:52 AM