Press Display

Searching the net for my favorite Mexican newspaper (La Jornada) I ran across an outfit called pressdisplay-dot-com. They provide access to a bunch of newspapers, in the U.S. and worldwide. I signed up for the one-week free trial, but when they sent me an offer for a month for $4 (discounted from the regular $10/month) I decided to take them up on it.

Now I'm wondering if I did something foolish by giving my credit card information to an outfit I know nothing about. The service is real. I've been reading this morning's edition of La Jornada, and I glanced at several other papers yesterday. It seems pretty cool. But are they trustworthy?

You can check them out at their web site. You can read the front page of any of the papers they carry without registering. A free one-week trial does not require a credit card, and will let you read beyond the front page. And the price is right: during a month you can read any 31 issues, selecting from any of the papers they carry. But I repeat: Should I have trusted them with my credit card?

Does anybody know anything about them?

 

Both those sites look interesting. But neither addresses my issue. PressDisplay is a pay site, so it's not a question of bypassing a registration. That only works with a free site that requires registration. And the other one only shows front pages. PressDisplay lets you read the entire issue, for a fee. I have no problem paying the fee. But since that means giving them my credit card info (which I've done, and I'm enjoying reading the newspapers) I'm wondering if it was a bad idea, since I know nothing about them. They now have my credit card info (as does any company I've bought stuff from over the internet).

 

Tony: Thanks for that suggestion. I don't have Discover. I have a debit card from Visa that I use for on-line purchases, to limit my possible losses to the relatively low balance in that account. But still, recurring charges (legit) could be messed up if a fraudulent charge depleted the account.

I'm going to look into the possibility of that kind of one-use number. I wonder how long it will take to use up all possible number combinations if that sort of thing becomes widespread. Ha ha.

 

P.S. I just checked the Visa web site. They say that they now have a zero-liability policy in case of fraudulent card use. (Since mid-2000, I think they said.) Still a good idea to check on-line charges regularly.

But now there's another oddity with PressDisplay. Suddenly it's not recognizing my subscription. I have a receipt from them, but there's no charge on my card. So they gave me a receipt and acknowleged my discount sub ($4 instead of $10 for the first month) but never actually charged my card and now they want $10 for a regular sub.

I couldn't care less about the $6. I'd light my cigar with a $6 bill if I smoked. But I think maybe I'll give them some time to work out the bugs.

 

HA! Now it's working again. I think it was just their flakey navigation. It sent me to the subscription page when I logged on. Had I seen the tiny navigation bar on the left, I could have gotten out of that page. It's got a retarded idea of what page to display when you first log on. I suppose the $4 credit card charge will show up eventually, since the account page shows it.

 

Agreed. Only I was specifically looking for La Jornada (in Spanish) and none of the links seemed to work. I used to read it for free from their own web site. I don't mind paying $10 a month. Hey, if it's worth reading, it's worth paying for. I suspect the trend is going to be away from free newspaper sites, and towards pay sites. And there's some benefit in a site that gives you a wide variety of newspapers to choose from for one subscription fee.

 

Definitely. Though $10/month, small for me, may be a stretch for some folks.