Conde Nast doesn’t understand digital

Conde Nast doesnt understand digital. I upgrade my digital devices quite regularly. Last week, I purchased a new iPad. When trying to activate my digital subscription on the new iPad, it told me that my password was wrong. I then tried to reset the password but the new password didnt work either to unlock my digital content. I tried to activate it using my subscriber number, but got the message "already registered, please use your username and password".

Several emails to customer service were ignored - then they sent me a pre-canned script how to login (“click the icon in the upper left corner and input your username and password”). Gee, thanks, they didn’t even read my messages.

Finally I called. After being on hold for the better part of an hour and transferred multiple times, I got a lady in "digital content" who told me "oh, it simply means you have too many devices. Let me reset that”. After that, login worked immediately.

So apparently, every time I changed devices, they increased a counter. When that went over a threshold, they just suspended my account. No proper error message given. No attempt to tell me what is going on.

Now, the sane way of doing this would of course be to "drop" any device from the account that hasnt been used with the account for a few months. I havent been using these devices side by side - whenever I upgraded, I never used the old device again. But Conde Nast keeps an absolute counter of all devices you have ever used with one account. That is just stupid.

I will not be renewing any of my subscriptions for Conde Nast publications.

msof about WIRED Magazine, v4.5.2