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The Economist: World News App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2024
The Economist: World News app received 89 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using The Economist: World News? Can you share your negative thoughts about the economist: world news?
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The Economist: World News for Negative User Reviews
✓ Best magazine Worst appAbsolutely the worst app of all those installed on my iPhone. And it’s even worse on my iPad. The list of problems is long and old. There are no noticeable improvements with recent updates. Using it is a constant and continuous source of frustration. Downloading the issue does not help. I suspect most of the problems are due to the resources dedicated to serving a new ad with every swipe forward or back. For the price of the Economist we should be treated as customers not “users” and “saleable ad recipients”..Version: 3.43.1
✓ Horrible app and customer service (great content)I love the Economist content; it’s a shame the app and customer experience is so bad. The app UI is clunky and doesn’t sync across devices, so articles marked “read” on your iPhone don’t reflect on your iPad, for instance. But what prompted me to write this review was the irritating cancellation experience. I’m cancelling temporarily as I need to save some funds for a few months and I am asking for a new subscription as a gift from my family. To cancel, you have to call or contact via chat, and then they fight you on cancelling with aggressive upsell. Funny enough, it only takes a click to sign up! Price transparency and ease of managing subscription should be prioritized for paying customers, especially in the current economy. Surely if anyone understands the fiscal doom and gloom for consumers these days it should be the Economist!.Version: 3.21.0
✓ Audio to listen to The Economist only works 2/3 of the time.Audio to listen to The Economist only works 2/3 of the time..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Need app for audio edition.Really disappointed I have to use this app to listen to the audio edition. I’m glad they added 1.25x playback speed, but it doesn’t sound right compared to my usual player. It stutters and sounds distorted compared to importing the mp3 edition as an audiobook. Cannot block ads in the app even though I subscribe? I just want to use my web browser and mp3 download. Not a lot of liberty for a liberal magazine. - audio player crashes iOS 14 - audio player often does not remember playback position - cannot easily bring up audio player - audio cannot easily resume without opening the app PLEASE bring back the mp3 download for the audio edition. I will have to cancel my subscription if I cannot listen..Version: 2.30.2
✓ Persistent text issuesThe app does seem to be going downhill, as others have mentioned. For me, the text issues are unbearable. They started with text size being inconsistent across articles (super small in some, quite big in others), and sometimes changing when reloading the same article, but now they’ve somehow settled on this ultra-blown-up text that cannot be made smaller. It can only be made larger, to the point that a line comprises only three to four words. I understand some people need larger text size, but please, please bring back regular text size too! This has been going on for close to two months now. I am seriously considering cancelling my membership, the app has made the text unreadable for me. I actually haven’t read the magazine for a few weeks now, I only verify with every update if they’ve repaired it, which, alas, they haven’t. I miss the good ole Economist classic app..Version: 3.36.0
✓ Please fix audio playlist customisation.I used to love listening to The Economist audio edition until a particular feature was removed. I used to be able to organise my audio playlist in a specific order; the world this week, then the business section, then finance, and afterwards a few select articles chosen among the remaining sections. I was able to go through the edition and organise everything once, then start and stop listening with the confidence that the playlist remained in the order I prioritised. Now whenever I add to the audio playlist it's always ordered in the way The Economist is (The World This Week, Leaders, Letters, etc) and I can arrange the playlist to my priority, which I used to do for the past few years....now I don't even want to bother with The Economist at all since I now have to either keep track of what I listened to manually and/or keep adding/removing to the playlist in order to listen while I'm doing other tasks. Very unfortunate. It would be VERY much appreciated if the feature to customise the order of the audio playlist is made available once again. Thank you..Version: 2.10
✓ Worst app everI was told by the customer service agent to update app. I couldn’t see my saved stories and was told will refresh within an hour. I called back and spoke to technical team and they said update means you loose saved as app data cleared. If I knew this I would not have bothered updating. What’s the point of releasing updates and inconveniencing subscribers as they loose data and not even told this will happen. Also 5 device subscription is useless as saved does not sync owing to this poor app design. I would expect economist to save the saved stories in their database so they not lost on update and can be synced across all devices. Also is this their MVP , it’s a very poor attempt given that they releasing features on a version that keeps saved stories on local device cache and updated version deletes it. So you end up loosing all saved. They are better off enriching their app to save links in their database so customers can sync across all devices and not loose on update..Version: 3.51.0
✓ Buggy and battery consumingI’ve had this app for years and it’s incredible how little it’s improved. Most fundamentally it is so (!) buggy—I’m on the latest version and have to force quit the app about half of the time I open it, or when I go to the weekly section it freezes, or loads articles in an unreadably narrow column (two or three letters wide). When you download a weekly issue it still uses data if you stream it; this is also extremely battery intensive. A sleepless night of downloaded podcasts leaves my phone on 60%; playing the economist kills the phone long before morning. Really needs to improve — this is a very expensive service in terms of the modern media landscape, and while the content is good you simply will not find a worse gateway to it..Version: 3.0.12
✓ Still BadThe app is very slow to respond to taps. Different articles have very different margins (may have different font sizes too). It feels like you’ve switched to a different magazine when you go from certain articles to others. You can’t tap specific words or sentences to look them up..Version: 3.35.0
✓ Subscription mandatoryYou must pay to see anything..Version: 3.35.0
✓ Fine if you can use itThe decision to force you to download the audio to get the issue must be one the strangest design decisions ever made. Downloads of an issue often take longer than episodes of tv shows I download. I travel internationally a lot and am often in places with poor WiFi - the number of times I’ve been in an airport lounge watching the issue download over half an hour… Worse still if the download is interrupted I must start from the beginning. This has led to me utilising the Economist a lot less which is sad given I enjoy the content. Incredible this is still yet to be fixed..Version: 3.44.1
✓ Incredibly poor app experience for such a great magazine/‘newspapers’The Economist is one of the best magazines/‘newspapers’ out there. But the app is an incredibly poor experience. - Editions cannot be downloaded - It takes multiple steps to get back to the last viewed article (to continue reading the magazine after having left off…which presumably is an extremely common task for your readers!) - Photographs take ages to download - Bugs where you are reading an article and suddenly it takes you to 4 articles previous - Etc. etc. And the previous app reviews are full of Developer Responses from two years ago or more saying that the problems are being fixed. How can two years later the app experience still be so poor, if not worse. I could understand if (a) this was a new app (b) this wasn’t a premium magazine with a premium subscription (c) the app wasn’t fundamental to the use of this product …but none of these things are true! This really needs sorting out. Using the app is not a pleasant experience at the moment..Version: 3.0.6
✓ A lot of room for improvementI’ve had a subscription for years now and whereas the new app is a slight improvement over the previous app, it still has a poor UI design, limited functionality, slow and buggy. I love the content, but the app is a big frustration point for me. 1. You cannot easily toggle between listen and read mode- some people like to do these alternatively or in conjunction. 2. Very often I find that the screen randomly freezes. 3. When I run a routine app update, it logs me out. 4. The „read in app“ functionality doesn’t work properly either. If I find myself on IG, where I follow the economist, and I want to read a spotlighted article, it doesn’t do a proper handover to reading in the app so there is just the portion of the article that you can read for free..Version: 3.21.0
✓ Great magazine. Terrible 2020 updateGreat magazine but the recent update makes it awful to use.Version: 2.23.1
✓ Beware - Not easy to cancel subscription!!!First the good part - excellent quality of articles, truly outstanding!! One of the things I abhor the most is when companies try to make it DIFFICULT to unsubscribe to their products in the hope that adding that will friction will force customers to stay on for longer!!! This is not only a cheap practise which diluted the brand but also leave bitter taste in customers mouth!! I had been a subscriber for almost 12 months but when it came time to cancel my subscription, I was forced to talk to someone who wanted to offer me promotional pricing and other perks to keep me as a customer which consumed 15 mins of my time. Given this experience, I am highly unlikely to ever subscribe to them again..Version: 3.2.0
✓ Poor customer support (updated)The content is good and the app is fine except - it has a bug and when I tried to point it out, I received poor responses from customer support. The Espresso section is missing from the app (accessing from iPhone SE in Canada). I pointed it out with all the details about the app three times but the customer support team kept assuming I am wrong (I have the wrong app or that I don’t have the latest version, etc.). Despite me trying to explain they kept assuming I have the wrong info. I was only trying to help but it doesn’t look it I could. Update: clearing cache process (as described by customer support with a reply to my rating) didn’t work..Version: 1.5
✓ ContinuityEvery time I open the app to read the Economist I struggle to figure out where I was up to. When I first got the app it would always open where I had left off. Why doesn’t it do that anymore?.Version: 3.0.12
✓ 5/5, but what happened to the audio?What happened to audio playback for latest issues?.Version: 3.36.0
✓ Good newspaper, terrible appThe Economist is one of the best newspapers in the world. It’s app is one of the worst. Slow to load, clunky and crashes frequently if you try to read the weekly paper, rather than the selection of stories served up each day. And it has been like this for years. Given its readership, I would have thought an efficient app, which most high schoolers can now manage, would have been a priority, but obviously not..Version: 3.41.1
✓ Very buggy to readQuite frustrating. The app will randomly bounce from the article you are reading to another you have read..Version: 3.42.0
✓ From best app to worst app (zero stars not available)Content remains excellent, 5-star. Original app was excellent. This app is now the worst app on my iPad. Open the app, I'm positioned on the correct article in edition I was reading, but wait 5-15 seconds (until app connects to server?) without doing anything, app jumps backward to a random previous article, or exits edition to home page. I've learned to not start reading right away but it is ridiculous that I must manually find my place where I left off last time. I guess nobody cares because I have reported this many times. Other issues: font size varies between articles, slow response to taps, too many ads that are slow to load, weird font choice for initialisms makes them difficult to read. Almost ready to ask for paper edition again. If the content ever starts to slip, I will be gone after 25+ years..Version: 3.44.1
✓ Not FreeIts misleading to be free to download and require a substantial prescription to read the news. Make either the title “premium monthly sub” or charge for the app..Version: 3.17.0
✓ Audio playback terribleThe audio player has been frustratingly erratic for many years through many app versions. Earlier this year it started to work reliably. But in recent weeks it has become unusable again. Each week playback reaches an article that it cannot load. The message is "Something went wrong, wait a moment and try again". Waiting does not work. Nor do rebuilding the queue, deleting and redownloading the edition, or rebooting the phone. Well, sometimes one of them does for a while. For the last few weeks, after getting stuck on one edition, downloading the next edition and adding its audio to the queuen has restarted playback of the previous edition. But then it sticks again. I am building up a backlog of inaccessible material. I am not sure whether the problem is with the app or the downloaded files. If the latter, then clearly it is not associated with a particular place in the file..Version: 3.43.1
✓ Audio edition unusableExcellent content, terrible app. I use the app (and subscribe to The Economist) solely to listen to the audio edition. Usually I listen while doing something else: driving, riding a motorcycle, in the gym, on an airplane, etc. Usually I am also using other apps such as for navigation , and often with no or intermittent internet access. In older versions of the app, this was not a problem. There is an option to download the audio file and play it back through the app. However, updates over the past year have made this feature virtually unusable. Often it will randomly stop playing, and I need to pull over, restart the app (which restarts from the beginning of the edition) and then advance it to the right article. Sometimes it just doesn’t play at all. Why it would have such difficulty playing an already downloaded file is unclear, but I suspect there is some sort of over-aggressive anti-piracy feature interfering with smooth playback. If this is not resolved and the app remains unusable I will have no reason to maintain a subscription..Version: 3.0.7
✓ Audio playback with unstable volumePlaying back “Nuclear family” this week, the audio playback dropped in volume and then a few moments later returned to normal. This volume adjustment occurred several times on this article and has occurred on others. It’s quite annoying as I need to then adjust the volume control up and then down manually. I’m posting here because I have never had a reply to a support email. So hopefully this receives more traction..Version: 3.12.0
✓ Works, but crashes when in backgroundThe app sometimes crashes if you pause the audiobook for too long. You need to open the app again to resume playback. Also would love this if it runs on MacOS. I’d love to listen to The Economist from my Mac!.Version: 3.38.0
✓ Terrible User ExperienceFor someone that only wants to read the weekly magazine the new app is just terrible. In your face options to listen. More clicks and a far less attractive page setup. Hopefully I am just reacting to it being very very different. But I don’t think so. I truly hate the new app. The magazine remains exceptional so this is an app only review..Version: 2.23.4
✓ Needs a "open in app" linkEverytime I click in an article on various socials, the link opens in the browser, and browser logs out after a few days. it's pretty annoying to go through the login process everytime, given that the login page doesn't always work.Version: 3.40.1
✓ The worst app on iOS (due to audio)The title says it all. This is the single worst app experience I have ever had and I’m paying for the honour! The rating needs to split more clearly; I give it 5/5 for journalism & content, 5/5 for narration, 3/5 for UI but what ruins it almost entirely is the audio. Put simply, it’s totally useless. If you change from wifi to 4g/5g, it disconnects and then takes minutes to reload. It CONSTANTLY stops working making the UE the worst I have ever had the displeasure to use. I have the latest iPhone which is updated regularly along with the app updates so when the response is made to this review of, ‘we are working on updating these issues and we have just released a new version of the economist app please download it and ensure you’re using the latest version of iOS’ is made, it is simply not good enough. It’s been 2 1/2 years of this response. Please, do not waste your money on the audio element of the subscription, instead just get the physical subscription and save yourself the trouble. P.s. please don’t respond to this that I should download the latest versions etc. as that’s equivalent of saying plug it out then back in. Give me actual fixes and concrete solutions..Version: 3.0.11
✓ We should be able to give article to friends etc.I don’t see any way of giving them unless hiden somewhere. This would even probably help your readership.Version: 3.44.1
✓ Personal opinion of journalists infiltrating the meant to be fact based reportsI’ve enjoyed many of the articles inside the economist, mainly to do with stock prices, large corporations and various country relations reports. But apart from that many of the articles are a opinion piece and try to drive a certain narrative, rather then the actual story. I guess this is hard to do nowadays, but whenever an article tries to summarise or villainise a clearly complex piece ( as the world is- many shades of grey and not black and white) then clearly information is missing. Unfortunately there are very little pieces of news or journalism that will tell you the truth nowadays..Version: 3.2.0
✓ Audio playing on iPhone is still poorDespite the update 2 days ago, the App is behaving poorly on my iPhone. The issues are: 1) no longer able to advance to the next piece when the screen is locked (the advance button is no longer there); 2) now it takes almost 1 minute for the audio to advance to the next piece when one is finished. I remain very frustrated with the poor quality of this app. How can an excellent (perhaps the best) publication have such a poor and buggy app?.Version: 3.43.0
✓ Terrible for audio/ need to fix auto-rotationI like to listen to the weekly edition while exercising. This app takes far too long to download each edition and, when trying to play audio, it goes into a nearly endless “loading” loop that takes up to 15 minutes to figure out where it left off the preceding day before it starts playing again. I had to revert to the legacy app, which doesn’t have these problems and works smoothly. And this new app doesn’t allow us to rotate the cartoon or other images so we can see them in larger landscape mode, as the old app does. That means I can’t read the tiny text in the cartoon (which is unaffected by font size selection) or some other graphics and still need to look at the old app to get everything I overpaid for..Version: 3.3.0
✓ Great contents, not so great appThe Economist is definitely my go to source of news and favourite publication. It’s well-researched, well-written, and paints a detailed picture of the world. Sometimes the app closes itself at random, I like to download audio so I can listen to it on the move and find myself unable to load stories sometimes unless I have mobile data. It’s very apparent that despite the app telling me I’ve downloaded the audio it isn’t always the case. Although this is a minor issue, stories’ audio files can cut off unexpectedly, play twice, or reappear later in the edition spliced onto the end of another audio file..Version: 3.0.7
✓ Great magazine, lousy 2020 app.How can you go so wrong with an update. The new app is really unintuitive and difficult to navigate..Version: 2.21.1
✓ Bring back the Legacy AppI love The Economist. It is a great newspaper and stays true to its founding mission. I loved the paper edition for all those years before we knew digital. I made the grudging transition to the digital edition. And in reality, it really was just the paper edition on a screen. It looked and navigated like the paper copy you had tucked in a pocket as you boarded your flight, only to pull it out once in your seat. And then someone in marketing, a new product manager I presume trying to make a name, decided it was time for a complete reboot of the app. “Let’s make it a contiguous stream of text”; “Let’s change the way it downloads”….so now I have an app that takes demonstrably longer to download, is unstable and inexplicably decides to remove the download you completed just yesterday. The layout resembles nothing like the newspaper, which I believe was part of the brand. To wrap this up….Bring back the legacy app. Please..Version: 3.26.0
✓ Good app, good journalism, could be betterI find that the journalism is generally good, but I also find a lot of opinion, suggestions and, dare I say, condescension mixed in which clearly show the bias of the paper but ultimately erodes the respect it generates. When one pays almost $200 for a year’s worth of content, ideally the drivel and sensation would be kept at a bare minimum. The app could also be better. It’s 2023 and somehow their special reports arent fully available on the app or I couldn’t find them. Either way, it means the app could use some improvement. Besides those issues, its a generally useful source of information in a generally useful app..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Gets worse ever updateOn my iPad this app is very bad, opens where I finished reading then jumps back to where I started my previous reading session. As soon as the new issue is available it opens on the issues section. Often the download issue stops at 90 something percent and nothing makes it move on. I liked the earlier legacy app that behaved like the real world version - open exactly where in was when I put it down. Reading without a live internet connection leaves charts and images missing. I’m going back to the paper version. Note I’ve checked available memory and that’s not an issue, iOS is up to date and I’m on the current version of the App, but this has being going on for months..Version: 3.38.0
✓ Podcasts aren’t downloadable for offline listening.Unlike other podcast apps, the podcast function that I keep being directed to while listening to The Intelligence, does not allow for offline listening. As a subscriber I have been looking forward to the new podcast content being touted. But as I live in a rural area with poor cellular access, this is a dealbreaker for me..Version: 3.39.0
✓ Great Newspaper, Bad appLike many, I was very disappointed with the Economist dropping e-ink versions of the paper. I hate having to have another reason to spend way too much time staring at a screen. And for a person that is always traveling, the paper deliveries just pile up at home, not to mention they arrive the Tuesday after the new edition is out. But, that's not the annoying part. This app will not save your location in an article you're reading if you get interrupted and leave the app, no matter what settings you chose within the app. It will also annoying start in the Home screen that attempts to feed you articles that are new. I like the layout of the paper, I want to read the sections together... so I want to have the choice to start the app right where I left off, every time. Sure, I can also sit at my desk for many more hours in a week reading the "paper", but i can't stand having a flashing add distract me while I'm reading a paragraph. It would be lovely if the Economist provided a PDF style view of the paper in their app for tablets that has the exact layout as the physical paper, this would give it a much improved aesthetic..Version: 3.47.0
✓ Content is outstanding, delivery just meh.Firstly, I’m an iOS user and get my content from the Economist primarily via audio. This content is fantastic - no complaints and gets five stars. But this is an app review and the app is frustrating for several reasons but I’ll just complain about the most frustrating here. You would think that after downloading the weekly edition that the response to article selection would be immediate but, no. It usually takes between 15 and 30 seconds to begin playing the supposedly “downloaded” content. This doesn’t make sense and is hugely frustrating when I’m driving and want to keep my attention on the road while being able to listen. It really seems to me that the architecture of the app needs reworking with perhaps a well-designed audio player being integrated into the rest of the “content delivery system”..Version: 3.2.0
✓ Terrible Customer ServiceGreat journalism; great publication/s. Absolutely dismal customer service and way behind the times for online customer tools. I have had a terrible experience shifting from Digital + Print to Digital only. I have been charged twice for a 3-year subscription and nobody replies to my complaints or to my screenshots of the charges. Go online, and there are no options to get any better service. Customer service experience is equivalent to gutter journalism in my experience. :).Version: 3.0.10
✓ Let down by bugs & poor customer supportVery disappointing. Excellent content as always—assuming the app manages not to irreversibly lose many of one’s saved articles. I sought technical support for the issue but was clearly being given stock responses with no real care or attention to the specific issue at hand. Indeed the blame was dubiously redirected at Apple because I subbed through the App Store; I was instructed to seek help from them instead. I will unfortunately be cancelling rather than pay a premium for poor service and a malfunctioning app. (Incidentally, for those expecting one’s saved articles will of course sync across the web and one’s devices, as you might quite reasonably expect nowadays, you will be disappointed. See the web FAQ if interested.).Version: 3.21.0
✓ Glitches go unfixedThe Economist is an excellent magazine, persistently let down by a poor app. The audio version in particular is fraught with issues. Often, it doesn’t play. If it does, there is such a long pause, it seems that it won’t. Occasionally, the app shuts down mid article. I am often getting the Something went wrong, try again later message. The index is also temperamental, sometimes it works, mostly it doesn’t. And, don’t by any means rotate your device with the app open; it will often flip to another article or cannot present the article that is open. An excellent magazine, but not a cheap one given the £145 pa subscription. With this is in mind, the app is poor. Surprising when you consider the excellent FT app, with the same owner, and to which I also subscribe. Please fix these problems or risk losing customers. These are not new issues..Version: 2.22.2
✓ Please Fix!When you send someone an article to read, even if they are logged into the app of their device, when they click on the article you’ve sent them, it opens an internet tab and asks them to log in. If they want to read what you’ve sent them in the app they have to remember the name of the article then search it in the app search bar. Please fix this so when you send someone an article they can click it and it will open in their economist app..Version: 3.39.0
✓ Another App Store scamContent is wonderful, but this app is a scam: If is unusable without constant nag screens in the middle of content demanding a review like the cheapest, scammiest low quality spam. Hundreds of dollars a year and it is a scam. How much do I have to pay to not be nagged?.Version: 3.34.0
✓ Audio refuses to work properly.Whilst the audio itself is good, it is never ready to play, even when supposedly “downloaded”. In most cases I have to sit my phone on top of the router, for the audio to start playing, and even then it takes at least 5 minutes to load, if at all. A shame because it really is the only issue I have with the app, and really shouldn’t be an issue, especially given the cost of a subscription. I rarely have time to read the print edition, so I regularly use audio instead. However I often don’t have time to wait for it to load, as I listen on the go. Has been an issue for several months now..Version: 3.0.10
✓ USELESS, and DYSFUNCTIONALExtremely slow response (sluggish like molasses at -40 C). Clunky interface. INFURIATING random resets to the HOME page (which is UTTERLY useless in itself). Constant bombardment with ads when you swipe right or left to flip pages (REGARDLESS of the fact that you paid $100's for a full subscription). Despite THOUSANDS of complaints, they are completely OBLIVIOUS to the problems pointed out to them. I can't wait for my subscription to end in order to rid myself of the BUNGLING IDIOTS at the economist..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Beware SubscribingI could not cancel my subscription online, and was directed through multiple screens before asking me to call. Don’t reward dark design patterns: avoid this app..Version: 3.38.0
✓ Stick with the Legacy AppStick with the legacy app. The interface of the new app makes it tough to navigate. For example the Economist’s 1843 magazine is a wonderful read but try and find it on the new app, good luck. It’s there because from time to time you’ll stumble on an article from it but good luck finding the magazine itself. Too bad. I love the Economist and would be all over the app on my iPad but I’ve given up..Version: 3.36.1
✓ Getting better but still not thereClose now to having everything. Good to have UK order after the recent update. Nice to be able to download past issues, but there seems to be no way to download the current edition for offline reading. Everything is centred around audio, but I want to download the pictures/charts only not audio. This is allegedly part of the current update, but if so I can’t figure it out. I can do it for past issues by the very unintuitive and wasteful method of downloading everything then removing audio but this doesn’t work for current week and I can see no other way. Come on - sort this out. Especially given your recent massive price hike you really need to do better or I’ll reconsider my subscription..Version: 2.8.1
✓ Terrific paper but the app gets worse and worse and worseThe previous app usually opened to where you were reading and, when it did not, the table of contents was a concise outline that let you find articles easily. This app loses your place and the contents section is an interminable list swollen by superfluous pictures. Within a story, elephantine pictures fill the screen when you try to scroll past them and your finger doesn't land just right. The latest "improvement" is animated pictures that do nothing but distract from the text and annoy..Version: 3.44.1
✓ Weekly edition has been broken for monthsI challenge anyone on the dev team for this app to try reading the weekly edition. Start at the beginning and reas a few articles. Put it away. Come back in a few hours and pick up in the same place. Wait two days, find your place again, and read some more articles. If they were to do this, they would uncover multiple crippling, infuriating bugs that have gone unfixed for months. Articles will switch while you’re in the middle of reading them, all of a sudden you will go backwards by several articles. The app frequently doesn’t save your place, so every time you open it you need to go back through the table of contents to figure out where you were. This is a significant regression in functionality from how the app used to work, and it’s honestly embarrassing for a professionally produced app to have this many bugs of this severity sitting unfixed for this long. Stop building new features and fix your bugs!.Version: 3.43.1
✓ DisappointingThe biggest problem right now that it is draining the battery. The app is on the top of the apps list, using 20% of my battery power. A general problem is that even if it has the function to download edititions, it is good for nothing. When I open it at the time I have no internet connection, it takes long minutes until it opens, because it tries to update. So what is the reason of downloading? Very annoyingly, if you try to read the downloaded edition while you are losing signal repeatedly, the app makes it impossible to read the articles. For example on the London tube: every time the phone connects to the station wifi, the app updates the article and jumps to the top of the text, so you need to scroll down again. But better not, because as soon as the wifi signal is lost, it jumps to the top again 😤. If you are not lucky, the pictures are not shown in the “downloaded” edition, because when it tries to update and the connection is lost, it seems the “downloaded” images don’t exist anymore. So again, what is the reason to download editions?! Why it can’t do it in the background? And how is it it can’t notice there is no connection? Why do I need to wait until it opens? Other news apps are way better, like the New York Times, which doesn’t even offer offline reading, yet it works. I’d expect more from a company like this..Version: 3.47.0
✓ Excellent Analysis; Ads in an Expensive Paid SubscriptionI’ve continuously enjoyed the global (although most often through the lens of individual nation-states) perspective provided by The Economist, through both their excellent podcasts and the occasional hard-copy issue picked up from an airport magazine stand. I’d often tossed up paying the subscription fee despite the considerable expense, and in general, I’m glad to have done so - the analysis is erudite and broad in coverage. Regardless, I was stunned to still see large ads breaking up the text and impacting focus on the story at hand. To be asked to pay over A$300 (nearly A$500 if not a student) per year and still continuously see ads is pretty ridiculous; how much would it really cost each paying user to remove these? In all, despite a clear ‘hard centre’ ideological position on both economic and social issues, The Economist is an indispensable publication. However, I’d avoid paying a subscription fee if you dislike feeling short-changed..Version: 2.22.2
✓ Terrible - and I paid for itIn order to keep listening to Economist podcast I was forced to use this app and pay $30 a year This app does not even have rudimentary podcast functionality, such as notes telling you what is the content in the podcast. I can no longer listen to The Economist podcasts on Pocket Casts, which is my podcasting app for the last five or 10 years. This is honestly one of the worst apps I have ever used. Typically any app that was bad I quickly deleted, but I am stuck having paid $30 for my podcasts..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Still advertisements!So as a subscriber you pay for your subscription, of which the economist is at the higher end of subscription pricing, and still there are advertisements! Yeah the content is good but that’s really poor that you still host advertisements within the articles..Version: 3.40.1
✓ The app is DREADFUL; the journalism’s greatThis app is so appalling bad. It forces me to download the audio version along with the text, when all I want is the latter. It takes around 3-5 mins to download each edition (ok maybe it’s a large file with the audio included, but all my podcasts download in seconds). The help files are woefully out-of-date and tell me I can delete the audio download portion when I can’t. It only lets me download one issue at a time so I can’t set several off to download and do other things while I wait for ever for them to finish. It randomly deletes older issues from time to time. I had the last 9 issues downloaded and now I see that 6 of them have been deleted. I’m forced to re-download them and then other issues disappear in the meantime. I have plenty of space on my phone so I have no idea why the app is struggling to store more than a few issues. It’s all so infuriating and so unnecessary. There is no other app I use that is close to as bad as this. I wish the journalism was rubbish so I could have the pleasure of cancelling my subscription. No such luck. I shall continue to read while hating the app experience..Version: 3.19.0
✓ Improvements in UIThis review is purely about the app experience not the journalism which is excellent. Search: This could be significantly improved with filters and ability to search specific contributors or sections. There is a wealth of knowledge from previous years that is not easily accessible. Bookmarking/Tagging: I was thinking it could be helpful to let readers highlight sections of articles they find helpful similar to Amazon’s Kindle functionality. This could then be given tags that make future references easier. Audio: Helpful to have an update on the audio available articles to better customise playlists. I currently need to hunt around for what I need to add to playlist. Links to the main website: I have trouble clicking on links that take me to The Economist website requiring another login..Version: 3.29.0
✓ Great content but ads after buying??This is the best news source on the planet. Do they really need to put ads in the articles after your paying for the subscription?.Version: 3.41.0
✓ Subscription failureDo not buy - mine worked for 3 weeks then randomly said I don’t have a subscription. Spent hours on the phone to the economist who blamed iTunes and then called Apple who blamed the economist. My subscription was clear in my iTunes account and payment had gone out, but the app clearly has a glitch. iTunes ended up refunding it as they couldn’t fix. After all it worked to begin with so no idea why the economist said it was iTunes’ fault... Real shame and very disappointed - would also add customer services terrible at economist but excellent at apple....Version: 2.30.2
✓ FeedbackThe Economist article on Economics topics are generally of high quality and well documented and researched BUT those on the middle conflict and in particular those presenting facts about the actual events are biased and distorted. They cover up Israel crimes. Fir example when reporting about Gaza, the article don't miss to mention that Gaza is ruled by Hamas. Israel is also ruled by criminals. The article miss to mention that the people in Gaza are under siege and are in an open prison imposed by the racist and criminals ruling Israel. There is no human face of the Economist when reporting about Israel crimes. How do the Economist consider the Oppressed and the eco pied at the same footing as the oppressor and the occupier. "Conflict" is a dishonest way to report in an occupation where a whole generation of a whole nation was destroyed, killed, put in prison, dépréciés of basic human needs and even water just to be racially eliminated and deported from own home to live, if managed to survive, as refugees in foreign lands..Version: 3.0.4
✓ UX and adsI like the economist app, it’s easy to use and there’s definitely been solid improvement on the user experience over the years but there’s one major issue that really bothers me and that’s when I am scrolling down an article and tap on the ad by accident. I feel like the position of the ad is set in a way that the user is highly likely to tap on it and be led away to a 3rd party browser. It completely ruins the flow of reading and has in fact become so frustrating that I am taking the time to write a review about it. Can u please fix this :(.Version: 2.30.2
✓ Audio not workingExcellent content but the audio has not been working for days now. Rebooted multiple times, updated the app and still no audio. Get “something went wrong” with a “retry” but it never works..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Recent update disabled context menu??Long time subscriber and user of the app. Recently noticed that I could no longer long press on a word and look it up. Is this a bug or had the Economist decided to revoke this important function??.Version: 3.35.0
✓ Incredibly bad appThe app is incredibly poorly designed, I was looking forward to flicking through the weekly Economist edition on my iPad as you would flick through the physical copy (but avoiding the waste of buying the printed edition) and the layout is confusing and it isn’t obvious what part of the magazine you are in. Some of the articles tell you how many minutes it takes to read and it is always double - I am not a fast or slow reader but the information is obviously incorrect as the articles sometimes are accompanied by the economist reading it and they are always double what it says. Just change the design to a magazine style that you can flick through on your iPad, it will be 100% times better. Shame as the content is excellent but design of the app has really let this experience down for me, particularly when the subscription is quite expensive.Version: 2.30.2
✓ App has become almost unresponsiveThe app takes an incredible amount of time to launch and then to switch from one article to the next. All I can do is sit and wait for something (anything) to happen. I begin to wonder whether I missed touching the right spot. Often I just give up in disgust. At renewal I will be going back to a paper copy. The content is usually quite good but too frustrating trying to get to it..Version: 3.45.0
✓ Too many adsWay too many ads..Version: 3.0.9
✓ Great journalism; garbage appArticles are impossible to find. I sign in to read something I saw promoted elsewhere...and I never do get to read it. Not sure I’ll renew my subscription..Version: 2.22.1
✓ Can’t restore purchaseI love the articles in the Economist, but now I can’t read them because the app won’t restore my subscription purchase. I use it on two iPads (work and home) and an iPhone - not in excess of device limit according to terms and conditions. I can’t register for digital access for multiple devices because iTunes account doesn’t provide CRN. I’ve looked through troubleshooting guides and FAQs. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling, switching off and on again. Nothing works. Please fix..Version: 2.22.2
✓ The weekly format is a feature, not an anachronismThe Economist still stands alone as far as I know when it comes to content and writing talent but I do wish the app would go back to enabling a read through the weekly editions. I have no doubt that driving users to the more frequently updated home page pushes up app opens and whatever other metrics some meddling product manager was trying to move but, it’s silly to make those of us that enjoy long form pieces and prefer to stay out of the 24 hour news cycle go through multiple clicks and a bunch of scrolling and head scratching to find where we left off in the article we were last reading. A “just show me the newspaper but on my phone” mode would be great..Version: 3.2.0
✓ Looks nice but doesn’t really workThe new app looks much nicer than the old one. There are however a lot of bugs that make this app really frustrating to use and still haven’t been solved - even after deleting local caches and uninstalling the app: Background download never works - on my iPhone or iPad Cannot open the Weekly screen without an internet connection - hangs with a spinning wheel despite having many editions downloaded already, very frustrating on the Tube. Constantly skips back to the start of an article when I connect/disconnect to the internet - incredibly irritating on the tube, happens as you arrive and then leave each station (connecting and disconnecting to the station wifi) No localised edition - used to be able to have a UK localised version Takes years to download and edition, presumably because of the audio version which I don’t need. Please make some progress on the above and reach feature parity with your “old” app.Version: 3.2.0
✓ Generally really good but…Generally really good but it used to be possible to tap and select a word or phrase to easily look up the meaning. They seem to have replaced that with the ability to _only_ copy the paragraph that you tapped on - which is something I almost never want to do. Will use the website more until they fix this..Version: 3.34.0
✓ Repeatedly asked for login credentialsLove economist articles. Their system doesn’t hold my login info therefore it asks me for user name and password every day when I login using iPhone 11 with mobile app. Should have Keep me logged in option..Version: 2.21.1
✓ Consistently buggyI’ve been using the economist app for a little bit over 5 years now and have yet to have a consistent, bug free experience over a month long period. One of the following will generally stop working until the developers patch the app which can take 1-2 weeks: the audio will simply not play (even if downloaded), the app will crash (even if it is the only app open), the editions will not download or downloaded editions will not open, or some combination of all the above. This is not a review for the Economist as a publication, I’ve been an avid reader of the print edition since uni and I will continue to do so. However the lack of consistency with the app is disappointing. All the more troubling is the economist’s decision to move some of their podcasts onto the app for subscribers only which would be sound business decision if the infrastructure (the app they are migrating to) consistently worked..Version: 3.38.0
✓ New app is great butLove the new rendering features to show more interactive article presentation by seeming current and relevant history. BUT since i can NEVER get the audio to download for this app, i keep the old app where it works. So every week i download my issue, usually via wifi. The download circle goes for hours and hours, but never finishes a download. Yes every week i cancel last week’s download (still going after a week). Yes i my app is up to date, and yes my os is up to date. Still not working..Version: 3.6.1
✓ Why do you keep interrupting my readingI use the legacy app, i like the legacy app and i dont want all the other stuff that comes with the new app. I deliberately just want the weekly magazine. But for some really annoying reason every time i go back to the legacy app to continue where i left off you put up a notice telling me to get the new app which means i lose my place in the magazine and have to go back to the contents and try and find it. i wouldn’t mind if this was just once BUT IT IS EVERY-TIME I GO BACK TO THE LEGACY APP. How is this customer centric, how is this meeting my user needs. Leave me alone, stop messing with the experience, i’m happy with just the legacy app i don’t want all the other stuff - you’re not going to convert me, you’re just annoying me.Version: 3.14.0
✓ Terrible Customer ServiceI am willing to pay such a high price for your articles because they are of high quality. But I don't understand why your customer service and subscription department is so sub par. How hard is it to change a student subscription from digital and print to digital only? It has taken me two email requests and three live chat enquires and over two months.. and still it is not settled. What makes it worse is that every single time your quote changes. It has ranged from 599 to 299 when your website clearly states 237. not to mention my subscription details changes without any notice just for me to find out after logging in. At this rate i'll just have to cancel my subscription..Version: 3.1.0
✓ Cancellation process is horrendousThis a good news source. It’s very well done hence the two stars, however 1. It’s really expensive ($220 a year unless you complain and threaten to cancel) 2. I’m not sure what’s harder, a divorce or cancelling this news subscription. First you can’t do this easily on the app you have to go to, “contact us” on the app, look in the FAQ’s where you can then log in. At that point you find, “change my subscription”. There’s a button that says, “cancel my subscription”, you’re asked why, then you’re given a sales pitch in writing based on your reason. In order to move forward with the cancellation you’re required to chat with them! A sales representative joins the chat, then I was asked AGAIN to provide my name and address and why I wanted to cancel, they tried to keep me again by offering a discount. Finally the rep cancelled my subscription. This entire process took me over 20 minutes. Making it that hard to cancel on purpose so people give up and keep giving money is bad business..Version: 2.30.2
✓ Audio functions sub parIf you're busy, you might rely on the audio edition of the app. It disappoints. Even when the weekly edition has fully downloaded, attempting to play audio without an Internet connection often doesn't work - the app continues to indicate there's no Internet connection and therefore can't play. Sometimes this can be bypassed by force quitting the app and reopening it, but that doesn't always work. If it's downloaded, doesn't make sense why the app requires Internet to play audio. Often, the audio tracks in the audio is edition don't autoplay one after another and just pause; requiring you to unlock the phone, open the app, scroll down to select the next track. This is the only audio app on my iPhone which doesn't resume if the audio has been paused. For example if listening on headphones, and hitting pause, once you're ready to resume, the app seems to forget that it was the last audio app. This is super annoying. You have to open the app, wait for the splash screen, open the audio tracks, scroll down to find the track to resume. Unrelated to audio but even when recently having used the app, it shows the splash logo screen. This indicates that it is constantly forgetting that it was active. No other app does this :/.Version: 3.43.0
✓ HELP PLEASEHOW CAN I GET A RESPONSE FROM THE ECONOMIST? I paid the subscription for one year and the magazine has not arrived yet after two months. Nobody provides an explanation. It is the worst customer service on earth..Version: 3.46.0
✓ Used to work OKNow hangs frequently for 5-10s on my iPhone SE 3. Crashes occasionally. Has inherited the same annoying interface that sees me ignoring the same articles as they appear in Home (for long periods) and Weekly. Would it be so hard to let me see each article just once, no matter its source? To perhaps time out old articles and prioritise those from the weekly edition?.Version: 3.48.0
✓ Great Read, Shame About The AppI’ve been a satisfied Economist reader and app user for some years. However, lately I’ve experienced continual frustrations with the iOS app. You click on a story to read it only to wait as long as 5 seconds for it to load. The app also occasionally crashes. The web user experience is now superior to the app. I hope this can be addressed. My phone is a few years old: a 13 with up-to-date iOS. Great writing, shame about the coding..Version: 3.44.1
✓ App is terrible. Newspaper is excellentThe old app was simple and just worked. The new app is slow, complicated, buggy and almost always needs data or wifi to play downloaded material..Version: 3.41.0
✓ Changed for the worseJust bought a new iPad after not having used one for a few years. The previously Economist app for iPad loaded like a printed edition and I could flip through the pages easily by sliding across the screen. Now it’s set up like a web page with individual links for each article. Not a fan..Version: 3.40.2
✓ Too much advertisingI already ready paid the subscription cost, but when I’m using this app, there are still advertisements in between of texts, which is surprisingly annoying. I understand that advertising is the main way of making profit, and I shouldn’t have judge advertising itself, but at least put it at the bottom. Economist is a great magazine, and a great reading experience should be prioritized..Version: 2.30.2
✓ Excellent Writing: Miserable AppThe Economist continues to be informative, timely and well written. The app is horrid. Slow to load and burdened with too many options that make it pause, reload and annoy. The app’s poor functioning takes away from the enjoyment of the content provided. The content alone deserves 5 stars. The app alone deserves zero (or if allowed -1)..Version: 3.41.1
✓ Good magazine, mediocre appI love The Economist, but their app suffers from a number of issues: 1. Even after logging in with a paid subscription, the app demands that you subscribe via a pop-up at the bottom and a permanent link at the top. 2. It logs you out frequently and doesn’t readily accept your information when you log back in. 3. There are minor glitches. 4. There is no search function for articles and so it is an ordeal to go back beyond the current issue to find things of interest, which is extremely annoying and contrary to other media app common practices. 5. When clicking on The Economist articles in social media, it has to jump through Safari and then the app, which takes a few seconds, and sometimes you get stuck in Safari where it pretends you are not a subscriber and... demands that you subscribe before showing you the article that you have paid good money for. 6. The overall layout of the app is not extremely well designed, which requires a lot of clicking to get around and allows one to easily miss even current articles (much less historical articles, which are extremely difficult to find). Too much graphics and repetitive links and links that aren’t relevant and not enough smooth/ seamless connections to other current or historical articles..Version: 2.14
✓ Terrible app, but content is goodThe app is terrible. They just didn’t take the time to think through the basics of a reading app. Every time you close your phone and reopen, you need to manually start from the beginning, navigate to the issue you are reading, navigate back to the article you were reading, and then find the place in the article you left off. It absolutely drove me nuts when on a 10 hour flight where I was constantly back and forth between reading and kids. It’s a problem the rest of the time too. Nobody would use the Kindle app if it did this. Makes me wonder how this app got high ratings. Of course, the Economist is excellent content, but since this rating is for the app, I’m focusing on the app itself..Version: 3.42.0
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