New Scientist Reviews 

As a non-scientist, I find the content OK, but only OK.
I wouldn't object to more challenging content and fully understand why others complain.
The reason I am writing this review is that I am very disappointed that my quarterly subscription for web based magazine has gone from £24.75 in 2018 to £35 in 2019 and is now £49.
That is ridiculous and feels like a scam!

It is also pathetic that while I can subscribe or upgrade my subscription online, I cannot cancel …

Still waiting for a refund since 2nd Dec, 20 days ago. Have emailed customer services several times and phoned 3 times. Just keep being told it has been actioned and takes ten working days, even though it has been many more days than that. No one there really cares or can explain what the problem is. A shambles of a company. Ref 50114491

We haven't received our gift box. We ordered it on 24/11/20 and the fee was taken from our account that day. I called your customer services team on 18/12 and spoke to "Stella" - call no. 18959403. Stella gave me a subscriptions email address to contact - I've also sent an email to them.
Unfortunately Stella didn't seem to know about the gift box subscription guaranteed delivery dates you've published on your website.
["Gift-box offer available for new gift subscriptions on Print or Print + App package in the UK only, while stocks lasts. Offer ends 31/12/20. Order by 12th December to guarantee pre-Christmas delivery and by 10th December to guarantee delivery by 18th December. This will enable you to meet the last Christmas post deadline if you wish to post the gift box on to the recipient within the UK. You can continue to order after 10th December, but we cannot guarantee pre-Christmas delivery. 15% discount will automatically be applied at checkout."]
We will be really disappointed if we don't receive this in time to give as a Christmas present.
I still haven't received a reply from either of email addresses I sent emails to. Customer service? Where???

Took advantage of their Black Friday deal, it is a gift for my dad. It was easy to order and you get a gift box which is a nice touch!

Superb coverage of coronavirus and easily digestible scientific news for the layman, I really do enjoy receiving my magazine every week.

I signed up for the 10 magazines over 10 weeks for £10 which I thought was great! I called in to cancel my subscription weeks before the end to ensure my account didnt roll over into the the standard price Direct debit of £65 a month. The advisor made notes on my account and assured me multiple times on the call that I would not pay the extra and my account would close... after a few weeks I get woken up by a messege alerting me that I have entered into my overdraft, £65 had been taken by new scientist...After calling in again the customer service team took full responsibility and apologised but said they couldn't repay me the overdraft charges and I'd have to wait days for the money to be re payed into my account, the best they could do would be the 23rd October.... I wait still no money, I called in today the 28th of October to be told I would have to wait 14 days!!!! For money to be placed into my account!!! I was then forwarded to a incompetent advisor who made out that this is what I had signed up for when I entered in my details!!! I am appalled by the Customer service, I have never experienced anything like it, I was laughing on the phone at the absolute lack of care the so called senior advisor had for me and my situation! I worked for British Telecom for 2 years and dealt with customers in billing on a daily basis we had extensive training on how to deal with situations like this and it seems that not one of the staff I had spoken to had recieved the correct training to deal with customers appropriately the service is absolutely shocking. I hope for your sake if you are reading this you never have to deal with New scientist customer service it is disgraceful.

iSubscribe has informed me that New Scientist has been suspending a number of subscription deliveries because of an inability to process payments during this difficult period. This has not stopped them from sending numerous emails informing paid-up customers that they have failed to pay. This suggests serious dysfunctionality within the company. I am still owed paid-for copies and will advise all my friends not to subscribe.

New Scientist is not a scientific magazine. It cannot be relied upon to write unbiased fact based articles on scientific topics. The journalists don’t appear to have the enquiring, analytical style that I expect from a science article. They are very forthcoming with their own opinions but not with scientific evidence, analysis and references.

I get my scientific news from a variety of main stream online newspapers following the Health and Science writers and they’re much better at writing a balanced, fact based piece than a supposedly scientific magazine!

I have asked for a refund of my subscription for this reason. Let’s see what happens.

FAR TOO MANY EMAILS!

SENT TO JUNK AND WILL TRY AND UNSUBSCRIBE

I love new scientist but for some reason or another I missed subscription payment and forgot to renew. Obviously valuing customers they sent out a new discount offer. Very supportive.

Overall it worked although as I had a free account established it was confusing. Not certain about special offers or price lot of different offers as far as I could see, will see what happens.

I used to really love New Scientist. But in the last couple of years, even though I have a non-scientific background, I feel quite patronised by how much the content has dumbed down. I can tell that they're trying, but I get the vague sense that many of the writers are just out of their depth. Doesn't feel very impartial either. And I say this as someone who shares the New Scientist's political views. Thing is, I come to publications like this to get away from tribalism, not to indulge it. Solid facts and articles written by experts about cutting edge science seem to be diminishing. I suspect it's a money issue, but there's a definite swing towards opinion pieces. Even the TV show reviews, which I don't particularly have an interest in, but understand the need for, are bland and uninteresting. They also seem to have an increasing number of writers who obviously select a few relevant studies and regurgitate them with a half-informed narrative. The result is simply that it's not very engaging anymore. I used to come away feeling hopeful, but now it more often feels more like reading the Guardian (where you come away feeling depressed and ill-informed). This is a real pity. Now more than ever, we need to challenge people intellectually, promote the benefits of critical thinking, and highlight the value of scientific literacy. New Scientist used to do all this in a quiet, unobtrusive way. But it increasingly feels like it has shifted agenda, though where is unclear. Whatever their intentions, I'm sure they're good, but I think ultimately it's just swerving towards the Internet of clickbait. A real case of, if it ain't broke..!

I used to love New Scientist but with a new editor it has gone downhill fast. Hard science is no more, now it's a fact-free political activist magazine full of paid-for adverts masquerading as journalism.

It has non-binary contributors who insist on being called "them", it has a cooking blog and the back of the issue always features a lame interview pulled straight from the back of a teenage pop mag. It's like a soccer mom's fever dream of what a science magazine should look like!

The never ending references to "micro aggressions", "privilege" and "victimhood" are clear indicators that it's being written by people with only rudimentary grasp of world history and human psychology. My guess is old journalists have been fired and replaced with cheaper activist hacks who graduated from b***s*** degrees like "gender studies". It's the only explanation for a dramatic drop in quality.

I won't be renewing my subscription until they re-hire proper scientists.

Seems to have forgotten what science is, and just publishes PC/Woke slanted articles, never missing an opportunity the make a dig at Brexit supporters, Trump supports or Trump himself. The articles make wild assertions and have the tone that these are facts rather than a single researchers opinion.

When I first started reading the New Scientist it used to take me several hours to read it, now around 15 mins as I ignore the wokery. It's gone downhill very much faster since the new editor took over, with silly projects best suited for a pre-teen magazine.

I'm glad I read it via the library RB-Digital service and don't have to pay...

Fantastic offer for new customers. It would be rude not to subscribe!

I started reading New Scientist in 1979 when it was 35p. It is now £5.95. To reflect the reduction of the value of money since 1979 it should be priced around £1.75. Notwithstanding subscription discounts, I am not sure that the quality has increased enough to justify the current price.

Nice to have a source of the latest theory’s about all the things that nobody understands.

Very enjoyable magazine... I've read it for years, so £10 for 10 weeks seems extraordinary, though I'm guessing this is a one off which will change after 10 weeks so I will need to see if the cost after that is affordable. I hope so.

Great to have this online now often bought paper version. Good to have lqtest science news that you can rely on without any political slant

I recently resubscribed after a few years’ gap and was looking forward to reconnecting with my regular trustworthy and entertaining science fix. What a disappointment - what has happened to this magazine? The science news is thin, the features often unauthoritative, the comment often specious, and the humour neither sharp nor funny. On top of that, every issue features a reprinted feature from an old edition (which i could presumably read a back number on the app if i wished) and another feature excerpted from a New Scientist book. It’s sad to see such a wonderful publication reduced to this.