Part II: Sports Illustrated

Our local rag isn’t the only publication to raise my ire recently. The folks at Sports Illustrated are also guilty.

My relationship with Sports Illustrated is my longest-standing literary affiliation – I’ve been a subscriber since the 1980s. I used to read every word of every page. The magazine has suffered in the last few years as it tries to avoid losing younger readers to the abomination that is the Evil Empire’s magazine. (As an aside, I was a charter subscriber to that publication, back before ESPN turned into the magnificent crapfest it is now. I had high hopes for the magazine but after four issues, I called customer service and told them to cancel my subscription immediately, as I didn’t want their shitty magazine sullying my mailbox again. True story.)

Anyway, as the quality of the Sports Illustrated has suffered, I read less and less of it. But one thing I do read without fail is a section called Golf Plus. I found out about it after I started my job, and have now been receiving an issue with the section for about five years. A few weeks ago, however, I realized Golf Plus had disappeared and been replaced by a Fantasy Sports section.

So I called SI customer service to investigate.

I told the rep my situation and she indicated that “if I wanted to receive the Golf Plus section, she could help with that.” I told her that I HAD been receiving the Golf Plus section for five years and was curious as to why it went away. She ignored that and said she’d be more than happy to get me signed up for the Golf Plus issue. So I asked again why my subscription was changed and she indicated that “perhaps when your subscription was renewed, it automatically made a change.” So I asked when my subscription was last renewed, and was told “May, 2005.” So I asked one final time how the switch was made, because at this point I felt we were playing a game. She completely ignored me and instead told me I was all set to receive the Golf Plus issue moving forward.

Credit must be given, because she stood firm and would not admit they just arbitrarily changed my subscription. I’m not the only one to whom this has happened – I’ve spoken with a few colleagues who also had their subscriptions changed. But she took care of it immediately and that's all I really wanted, so Sports Illustrated was immediately removed from my shit list.

Now, if only they could do something about the content...