Idaho Statesman: Boise ID News

I have been reading the Statesman since University Days. First saved by my parents and delivered as a care package while I served overseas, then delivered to my front door when I came home. Later to my mailbox. Rates kept inching up, although the overall quality did not. I loyally followed along when we went digital, at least the costs were more aligned with what I was paying for other subscriptions. Somehow now digital stopped working. The song and Dance I got when queried was I needed to upgrade my iPad to series 17 (whatever that means). Now to access my “paper” I can use my phone (kind of like viewing the world through a tiny periscope). Or go through a multi step process to access the subscription on my iPad. A painful daily exercise that may not be worth the effort. Gotta say I am getting too old to enjoy the new fangled digital age. I hope I am still around when subscription renewal comes along next year. I am not sure I can suffer the foolishness of newspaper access gladly.

The Statesman seems to have a long track record of actually starting out pretty good with the app, but then they feel they need to introduce “updates” which are anything but and so far have always been a retrograde step. The latest beta version of the e-edition is a prime example. It started out pretty good I have to say. It was easy to use and provided a great full screen view of the pages as you could hide the headers and navigation bar. Now of course, true to their history, they have messed it up again. The latest “update” now includes a banner ad along the bottom of the screen. This takes up nearly 20% of the screen real estate. So despite the fact that the paper is already full of ads, and every expanded view of a story has multiple ads throughout they still feel the need to have a banner ad along the bottom of the screen. When will they learn that without subscribers there would be no job and no paper and best way to keep both is not to really annoy the people that make both possible. Way to go Statesman.

Our printed subscription does not arrive until late morning so we rely on the E edition to start our day and also when we travel. For many months before the end of last October it was very easy to retrieve the e edition, then an updated electronic subscription was launch along with an increase in price for the Publication. It was absolutely frustrating trying to read Blurry text and live advertisements would hijack the screen. We have sent dozen emails to customer service department and have not received not one response. Called technical support but they will not resolve the issue. It appears the Idaho Statesman just want the money and do not care about their customers.