Worked out to yearly prices from the weekly cost, they are:

7*52 = $362

0.5*52 = $26

Or $29

I don't trust the "$29 for the first year". Does this mean it's going to get more expensive later?

There are 52 weeks in a year, so the monthly would equate to $26 per year, not $24. Still, cheaper than the yearly.

Wife used to subscribe to WaPo and my local Houston Chronicle. Both make unsubscribing deliberately aggravating. Unsubscribing via the website didn't work. Phone calls resulted in long hold times and automated loops, where they repeatedly demanded authentication and then hung up on you to force a restart. When we did eventually get someone to say the subscription was cancelled at Houston Chronicle, they just... kept billing us even after the account was disabled.

We ultimately had to go through our credit card to stop payment.

For AI generated "news":

https://futurism.com/washington-post-ai-articles

Thing is, with a yearly subscription they cannot raise the price for a year. With a monthly subscription they can raise the price whenever. Since it's Bezos, I expect you'd be paying more in a year when going for the monthly subscription as it's probably going to be raised after every 3 months. That's why they made the prices so confusing with the "only 50 cents" as favorite option. They want you to go for the cheapest option be ssue they can profit from that the most. They lure you in with cheap prices, then suck you dry.

I loaded a bunch of articles until it prompted me to pay. I got the screenshot below. In my opinion, this is an intentionally misleading fake 50c/month offer.

Oh he didn't invent the thing and he's certainly not unique using it. This is like being mad at just one specific bird for pooping on your car.

I've cross posed this to !misleadingprices@piefed.social

I still don't understand why anyone would ever pay for access to news articles. There are plenty of free and legitimate articles on the Internet, and public access TV still broadcasts news. You never need to pay anyone.

Honestly, putting a price on access to news just makes me not trust that organization. It feels like a scam, like paying for bottled water when water is one of the most abundant resources in the world.

Paid subscriptions are only a thing because people bought into it and normalized it instead of boycotting it. That's why everything is a subscription nowadays and no one can just buy and own a product now. We have to spend our lives paying a regular fee for access to something we never own.

$0.50/week = $26... not $24/yr.

You're charged monthly, at 50¢ per week, I think. So, you're charged $2, once per month. But, there are 52 weeks in a year... I don't know. You're right, it's confusing, but I expect it's stated more clearly in the TOS, somewhere.

And the neat part is, based on the "Flash Sale" bit up top, and that it says "Get your first year...", they don't even tell you what the real price is if you fall into their subscription trap (I mean, that's par for the course, but that doesn't make it right)

Wow, that's really sneaky. You think you're paying $29/year for access to the news, but really you're getting the Washington Post.

Let’s see if I can math.

$7 a week x 52 weeks is $364 a year

50¢ a week x 52 weeks is $26 a year

$29 a year is $29 a year

What am I missing? It’s just some quick math:

• $7 x 52 =$364.00/year
• $0.50 x 52 =$26.00/year
• $29/ year

The 50¢ is designed to look the cheapest and it actually is the cheapest.

The $7 option is good if you only need the paper for 1 week. The other options probably lock you into a 1 year contract.

What in the flying fuck? If a service makes me calculate how much it costs for any given fixed amount of time then I'm not even considering it and move on.

its stupid and unncessary more than anything else

Well, sorry to say this doesn’t seem scummy other than it expects you to have basic literacy. But if you have basic literacy, why would you read that trash anyway.