Readers Digest (RD) is a monthly magazine that i’ve been read since god knows when. My dad subscribes to it since the mid-70s and recently cancelled it this month, for reasons which I would make known in this post. I started from primary 2 or 3, reading the jokes section Laughter’s the Best Medicine, All in a Day’s Work, Life’s Like this. This eventually expanded to the filler jokes at the end of the articles, before venturing into the shorter articles. It was only after P4 when i started to read the magazine in its entity and even started digging out the old copies from the 80s.

Effectively, I’ve been reading it for 16 yrs and it has grown to the point where I’m the only one in the family who reads it. Hence my dad sees it as a right time to end his subscription so that I can take over, and also end to all his troubles with RD Asia.

The thing about RD Asia is that it is VERY aggressive in its marketing of products, not just the core magazine but also other reference books from its stable. The launch of a new reference book is always tied in with a subscribers’ sweepstake where the prize offered is some car or loads of money. The usual tactic is to send u an envelope telling you that you’re a valued subscriber for blah blah blah years and hence you have the chance to take part in the next sweepstake. There would some scratch-and-win type of card, where u can try your luck to see if you qualify for the car or the money (who doesn’t?). BUT in order to qualify for the draw, you have to send in the YES envelope which means you have to buy their latest book on offer. They have a NO envelope that is this small n brown one with loser remarks like “No, I do not want so-n-so book”, “No I do not want the opportunity to take part in the Sweepstake”.

This was still acceptable, until a few years ago when they adopted a new tactic. Send the book w/o request to the subscriber 1st. If the subscriber doesn’t want it, he has to send back @ his own cost. Failure to send back the book by a certain date means that the subscriber wants the book. Silence means consent. There was once when this book came in the post and i opened it up. My dad din noe about it cos by then i was opening all the RD letters. Imagine his shock when the bill of 50 over dollars came for that book, which was a crappy shrunken-down version of 4 novels. I can’t remember what happened to that book eventually, think we kept it.

The final straw came recently, when again RD Asia sent a copy of Wildlife, its latest book to us. My dad din even open it, and waited for RD to send the bill. When it came, he refused to pay and things basically got ugly between the sales rep and him. He got fed up and said that he would terminate his subscription. And guess what, RD Asia din even bother to keep him, just allowed him to cancel, as long as he sends the book back at his own cost.

Somehow i think all these is linked to the fact that my dad willingly bought a few reference books for me from RD Asia when i was in upper primary. Those books were good, no doubt about it. But RD Asia assumed that it means my dad is still interested in those books and kept on sending us stuff that we didn’t want anymore, along with offers of winning a car or sweepstakes. The naive me back in P4 actually believed that we won a Mitsubishi Lancer and resulted in me walking about the car park, looking for our new car from RD Asia. The same problems with the subscription caused my mum to cancel her chinese RD subscription 10 yrs ago. The bad experience with RD Asia may result in me not continuing to subscribe to it.

Think about it, the price of RD has increased by 50% in the last 10yrs, costing S$9.50 now. A subscription for a year costs $95. Effectively u get 12 copies for the price of 10, along with all the sweepstake offers and books that they attempt to forcefeed you with. Mabbe I should just stick to National Geographic


See wat i mean?

PS: i find this comic so ironic n suitable for this post, i just saw it when surfing