Magazines Direct Avis 809

I ordered a single copy of guitarist magazine on the 9th of August 2025. It never arrived. The help email system is completely non functional. I've asked for a refund but there is no return communication. I would avoid using this company for getting single copies of magazines. I've no experience of subscriptions so cannot comment on that part of the business!

Magazines direct is sketchy and unreliable. They do not give updates or reply fast but I did eventually get my Billie Eilish fan pack magazine after 5 weeks of waiting. If you want to risk it, buy from them but they don’t let you cancel your order and if you don’t receive it then you can’t get a refund.

Do not Order from this Company!
I placed an order on the 22nd August and was told to expect a second email within 48 hours with important information on your order. I never received a second email, not even in the junk folder. I waited a week, still nothing. I contacted the company who confirmed my order but that it was a newer edition to what I actually ordered and that apparently there was a glitch on their website, which I don't believe as that edition wasn't even available when I placed my order. I am now awaiting my full refund.

Updated review: I originally gave one start but my issue was sorted so I'm raising it to three stars.

Ordered a single history magazine from this site. Was told in the email that I would get another email from them within 48 hours about the order but nothing happened.

After a week, I called to check on the order and was told it was sent. I called again a week later and was told that it was delivered the day before which was not the case at all. I was then told that the magazine had been resent, but I hadn't received that either.

After posting an angry review I eventually did get customer service to look into the issue. I was told that it was an issue with the delivery service and that the magazine would be sent out immediately.
Indeed, it arrived the next day and I was happy that what I ordered did finally come through (albeit almost three weeks later than I expected)

Next time, please make sure your delivery service is sorted from the start, as I had started to believe that I was being scammed and would not get what I ordered.

I subscribed for a magazine & needed to cancel the subscription as we are relocating. Unfortunately I had not done so before a payment was taken & so I contacted them via email to request refund explaining why I no longer required the magazine. It took 10 days & several email to finally receive refund. However the following day they took a further payment despite confirming in an email that my subscription was cancelled. Some 12 days later & 6 emails later I have still not received a refund! I have contacted my bank to raise a dispute & they are now refunding my payment within a working day. Although I had cancelled the so called Direct Debit (it wasn’t set up as a DD just as a card payment subscription) Magazines Direct had reinstated it! My bank has advised me to be aware that the company can set up the Direct Debit again & that I need to periodically check my account but yo report it to my bank if it happens again. Awful service from Magazinee Direct & I am sincerely regretting ever subscribing to them in the first place. Avoid this company at all costs is my advice.

Utterly incompetent, I placed a simple order of 1 copy of horse and hound, 2 weeks go past & I received the entirely wrong issue so ask for it to be resolved. Days later and i am still back and forth with them as they have the wrong issue on their system so I have to prove it is their error, I'd have thought the fact my order has a picture of the correct issue would have been proof enough but no, alas it seems I will need to chargeback through my bank to get compensated for their error instead of a simple apology and either the correct issue or a refund. If any villages are missing their idiots they are probably employed at magazines direct! Honestly, don't order from them it's so much hassle.

Terrible company
Took out a 6month subscription. Recieved 3 magazines only. Thereafter, every month had to chase as didnt get the magazine. Got told they would extend subscription as had no more in stock to sedn and I would get the next month as planned. After 3 my the I have up. Only plus side they did refund the last 3 issues. Advice would be to avoid.

For some other reason beyond me, the postal service couldn’t deliver one issue of The Week to my house in May and registered it as “undeliverable” at Magazines Direct. I have received this magazine weekly for 2 years without any fail! This lead to a subsequent suspension of my subscription from Magazines Direct’s side WITHOUT any form of communication or email notification to myself, the customer. Only after I emailed them to enquire about the magazines that have not been delivered, was I informed of this ludicrous handling of a simple administration issue of a lazy postal deliverer. Are you serious? They are so bad!!

MagazinesDirect closed Linux Format magazine prematurely and promised to refund my remaining balance (€18.38) within 10 working days via my original payment method (PayPal). That refund never came. Then they said they could no longer use PayPal and demanded my bank details. I sent them, waited the 14 days they asked for – still nothing. Now they’re asking for a recent bank statement. In my view, they are simply stalling and are not an honest company.

This company has terrible business practices. It’s easy to subscribe to a magazine online, but cancelling is deliberately difficult. You have to call two separate numbers, wait on hold each time, and deal with agents who try to talk you out of it. They claim it’s about good customer service, but it’s clearly a tactic to stop you from cancelling. This shouldn’t be allowed.

Ich habe das erste Mal da bestellt. Leider gibt es keine Sendungsverfolgung das sollte bitte noch geändert werden. Das Magazin kam gut an. Die Lieferzeiten sind in Ordnung es steht zwar innerhalb EU bis zu 5 Tage Lieferung dran aber die Firma ist ja in England und ich lebe in Deutschland und das Magazin hat 10 Tage gebraucht. Aber in Großen und Ganzen bin ich froh dass es unbeschadet angekommen ist 👍.

Vielen Dank 😊

Just a quick note to say what a fantastic service I received over the phone from Lucy in Customer service. . She was so helpful and resolved my issue within minutes. So impressed. Thankyou . Simon M

Saw the advert to try a magazine for just £1. Nothing sent and like other people have said they don’t respond. Most likely they just presume people won’t care about losing £1 but given the heavy advertising I’d safely assume they are earning £100k plus for the amount of people that would sign up for the seemingly good deal.

The first magazine turned up today after waiting 3 weeks and complaining over the phone.

Ordered a single issue on 28th June, had order confirmation and nothing since. Trying to chase up my order and getting nowhere. Contact form states they will contact you back in 48 hours....4 weeks and still waiting. Anyone actually received an order from these guys???

I'll start by mentioning I have been a subscriber to at least 15 different magazines over a decade with magazinesdirect. My mails to their customer support are in the hundreds, sadly most of them were treated poorly and to no avail. The only reason I stayed a customer is because there are numerous magazines that you can only get a subscription for through their service.

One small complaint to begin with is the fact that subscriptions don't show up in the subscriber section, after numerous mails some of them get fixed, some don't. At the moment, out of the three active subscriptions I have, only one shows up. The only other one that shows up is a cancelled subscription.

The biggest complaint I have deals with the magazine Retro Gamer. For some reason my subscription for this magazine ends up in trouble after a while. After some time I get notified they couldn't proceed with the payment. Weird thing is that I have had the same card linked to their services and it seems to work fine for all magazines except Retro Gamer. They put the blame completely on me and force me to call a paying number that is outside of Europe. If I contact them through mail, sometimes spending my time writing a big explanation, it's clear the person on the other end didn't take the time to read the email and I get standard responses where the blame is put on me. A few months ago I once again received a mail saying they couldn't perform the payment. So I again performed the only solution that works, which is cancelling the subscription, and ordering a new one, often times at a higher rate (edit: I think I have done this 6 times already). Sadly this one lasted not even one trimester. I received a mail that the payment didn't go through and they weren't gonna be sending any more issues. Weird thing is that at the time of receiving the email, I had only received one issue for the payed trimester, meanwhile I did receive the second one. But they still at least owe me one issue that I already payed for.

In the mail again a foreign paying number, which I will not call seeing it will lead to nothing like previous times. I only see one solution, they send me the upcoming issue that I am still owed. And they try the payment again on their end till it works, I will not be giving them my payment info again, seeing it works fine for the 2 other subscriptions, furthermore a payment was taken for one of my other subscriptions recently without problem.

Otherwise I will be cancelling all of my subscriptions because I have had it with this utter garbage service. I will also start looking into legal action if this is not sorted out.

edit: Their site also doesn't seem to be working anymore at the moment

I have received Retro Gamer magazine for quite some time (have about 100 issues) and to be honest have not had many issues with Future publishing. The only thing that got annoying was the cancellation of the subscription as you have to send an email but otherwise they have cancelled when requested. My magazine arrives on time every month, although the Royal Mail sometimes bends it trying to get it through my door. I think the subscription page could also be a bit better organised

Operates like a scam!

Everything about the process of ordering a single copy operates like a scam.

i paid through PayPal and received an order number, payment confirmation, reference number and a payment reference. I waited 24 hours before calling the helpline. When I did, i was taken to an indian call centre where the operator was nice but utterly useless.

I was told that i needed to give a postcode as that is what they use as a reference for tracking orders???

They don't use their own order summary details to track the order, but an arbitrary postcode that they don't request when paying via PayPal, an utterly useless system in place!!!

I wouldn't suggest this service to my enemy!

Avoid whatever single purchases you want, its not worth the hassle of giving them money for nothing.

Avoid. Waste of time and money. Purchased a single copy of the Edge (July edition) magazine. Even though it was clarified with customer support several times which edition I had purchased and provided evidence of the order email. Magazines Direct still failed to send me the correct Magazine edition.

AVOID any dealings with this Fraudulent company!
I gullibly fell for an offer subscription of 6 issues for £6.
I received confirmation of the subscription & was therefore shocked to find that multiple payments were taken from my bank account on the payment due date totalling nearly £90.
I immediately contacted the company & have since chased them to be told that I will have to wait 2-3 weeks for the payments to be refunded, but bank charges incurred will not be refunded! I have also received an email advising that no magazines will be issued as payment has not been received & the subscription cancelled!
No explanation has been given at this time as to how this occurred.
Awaiting a full explanation in writing before I approach trading standards!

I have been a subscriber for years, stupidly I thought this might count for something when it came to customer service issues. WRONG.

Case Ref # 00195500

Summary:
1. I went into A&E in November 2024 with sepsis and spent a month in hospital, I nearly died. This, plus the ongoing medication has made my memory forgetful, luckily I have my wife.
2. Last month I asked my wife if she had seen ANY of those Linux Format magazines through the post since I went into hospital? No.
3. That is 7 missing issues.
4. I raised a query with customer services.
5. Company hides behind web email forms.
6. Company hides ALL phone numbers - bad sign.
7. Magazines direct admitted it was their fault and they should have done more.

The rest of the story is below.....

I moved house and put mail redirections in place. I am missing 7 issues. Take into account my full details are on the subscriber database. I wrote to chase up where my last SEVEN issues (issues 322 to 328) are and could I have them as you are still taking my subscription money.
I was told that "the the postal authorities returned one of your issues marked as undeliverable, which led to your subscription being suspended".

So did they get in touch with me to chase this up? No, of course not. So they just took the subs and didn't issue the magazines.

I have since been in touch with them via their online system and subsequently very, very slow response time emails. Like they can't be bothered with customers.

I've learned to always mistrust a company that hides ALL telephone numbers, especially customer service/complaints. It is an omen on how you will be treated and how a company views the people that keep them all in their jobs.

I was assured I would get a phone call from a manager in due course. A week has gone by, nothing. Not surprised really.

However, they have since - very sneakily - change almost everything I can see on the online account page. I can request ONE back issue only. No email or comms from them telling me that this had been added. Total silence. But not good enough as 7 issues are missing.

I was about to email them to query the status, I have since found an email sent this morning (Friday fire & forget) answering a completely different set of words than the ones I wrote to them. I feel like I'm in an alternate reality or they are using a weird Enigma machine that changes my email to something completely different!

All have simply asked for is this:
Please send all the missing issues since issue 321 that I have not received. I am happy to pay for them, but only at the subscription rate as I am a subscriber.

The email I got back from them was this:

I hope you're well.
Please be advised that we've refunded your Direct Debit for £8.99 on 1st July 2025. You should see it in your account in 7 to 10 days.

If you need any further assistance, please feel free to get back in touch by replying to my email and we will be happy to help you.

Kind regards,
Aliyah
Magazines Direct Customer Service

Now you can see why I feel I am in a world of Alice in Wonderland.

Don't expect any assistance or help that is of any use from this organisation.

I have read that other complaints put on Trustpilot have garnered a response. I won't hold my breath.
Shaun

Update 3 Aug 2025
So I eventually received a call from one of the actual customer service managers. After pointing out the systemic failures that seem to be endemic in the 'layer 1' of help 'experience' with Magazines Direct, I will say that we did come to an agreement. It wasn't what I wanted, but due to the incompetence of all those involved in the chain, the magazines I'd actually paid for were nowhere to be found. Nice one. As a good will gesture, I did get a refund and due to the time it took to arrive, they must have had to trawl their warehouse stock, but I got most of the missing magazines.

My faith in people still stands, but I can definitely state that there is some urgently needed staff training required.
I won't be subscribing to anymore of their magazines in a hurry.
Case closed.