Playboy: a pre-internet relic

Holy. Crap. A month or so ago I received a renewal notice for my Playboy subscription. The usual- please send a 'check' (cheque) or credit card details to some snail-mail address. I tossed it in the recycling, because I always renew online.

Playboy's website is notoriously hard to navigate, for anyone (customers! Subscribers!) looking for information or a way to part with their dough, so when I couldn't find the appropriate subscription-renewal link I didn't worry too much- I emailed Playboy:

Hi,

I recently received a notification in the mail that it was time to renew
my subscription. I'd like to renew and pay online, but am unable to find
the facility to do so. Can you please tell me how I may renew my
subscription online?

Kind regards,

Sarah

================================

Thank you for contacting Playboy.

To enter your subscription for 12 issues for $45.00 in U.S. funds, it is
necessary to have payment in advance on orders addressed outside the
United States and its possessions.

Please provide a check, money order, or credit card information to the
address below; or call us. We do not accept credit card numbers through
email due to security reasons.

Playboy
PO Box 2007
Harlan, IA 51593

1-800-999-4438 or 1-515-243-1200

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. To ensure your
future concerns are handled in a timely fashion, please include all
previous e-mail correspondence.

Sincerely,
Mary Jane

Thinking that surely she must have misunderstood me, I emailed again:

Hi,

I understand the need for payment in advance, and I would like to complete the transaction online via your website as I have done for each of my previous renewals. Is this no longer possible?

Regards,

Sarah

======================================

Thank you for contacting Playboy.

No, you can not do it online. We need your payment in advance.

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. To ensure your future concerns are handled in a timely fashion, please include all previous e-mail correspondence.

Sincerely,
Mary Jane

How abso-fucking-lutely backward! How can a business be so regressive when it comes to provision of online customer service? It's no wonder the Playboy corporation is in a pile of poo, financially-speaking.

As for the idea that a payment sent from Australia via snail-mail is going to arrive earlier than when the transaction is carried out online- that alone just drew the biggest WTF? reaction I've had to anything in quite a while.

I very much enjoy reading and collecting issues of Playboy, but I am questioning whether I want to continue giving my money to a bunch of dinosaurs- with that kind of service regression they'll be asking for my subscription renewal to be wired in morse code next time it falls due- if the magazine is still being published at that point. God knows that if they're so internet-illiterate all of a sudden they're probably so functionally illiterate that they won't even be able to read whatever I wrote on the snail-mail renewal form anyway.