Bissett Magazines, useless website

We have a family of teenagers who like to subscribe to various partworks magazines, which are all distributed in Australia via Bissett Magazines. Titles like, Build the Millenium Falcon, 3D Create and Print, Marvel Universe Figurine Collection, and the Mrs gets various knitting and crochet magazines from them as well.

We subscribe via Bissett directly so we can get every issue along with the subscriber gifts and bonuses. Bissett likes to tell people waiting on the phone with them that they can get things done quicker by visiting their website and creating an account. What a complete and utter waste of time their online account services are though?

Apart from the site being hideously slow, it just doesn’t work. Going to the section that shows you all your subscriptions doesn’t actually show you all of your subscriptions. In fact it shows one of my subscriptions as listed twice.

Going to the section that shows you when your next shipment will be dispatched usually doesn’t have a date showing for any, and in the rare times that it does, the date for all issues dispatched is January 1 in the year 1867 or sometime similar.

Going to the section that shows your invoices and how much you owe and which dispatches you’ve paid for never actually give any information other than to say something’s either been paid or not paid, with at least four issues of each title being listed as paid long before they’ve been dispatched and long before we ever get charged for them.

Changing your details on the site to update postal addresses, etc, gives a confirmation message that the new address has gone through, but the details don’t actually change as far as the postal department is concerned. We end up having to phone up weeks later to find out what’s going on and then get told they still have the old address and don’t have the new address, even though the online account shows the new address only.

The lady who answers the phone always says the same thing, the website doesn’t work, yet they keep it running and tell people in recorded messages that they should consider using it instead of being left on hold.

Not a good way to run a business, but considering they hold the monopoly on partworks magazine distribution in Australia, there’s not a lot you can do if you want to get the magazines. Newsagents usually only stock the first few issues and then tell you to subscribe via Bissett for the rest of them.

Very frustrating, but what can you do? They don’t care that the website’s broken and never try to get it fixed. So what’s the point of having the online account service???

Rant over.

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@NubglummerySnr, what a shocker, thanks for sharing this experience here. Did you receive all the parts at least?

Got a redirected (via an Australia Post redirection service we have in place) delivery today. They tell me that all addresses have been updated, but some were still in the post that were packaged and addressed before I changed the address, which is actually after I’d changed it on my online account that got ignored completely.

Today’s delivery had a back-ordered issue included, but was missing an issue from the current order. This is becoming the norm from Bissett. So I’m currently missing issue 22 of Build the Millennium Falcon, even though I’m now up to issue 40 something, plus another issue is missing from somewhere in the 30s. The 3D printer build is missing a couple of issues from the 60s and we’re now into the 70s, plus I’m overdue for an extra binder to put the magazines in.

These are not address problems though. They just don’t know how to make sure they have enough of every single issue to cover their subscriber base. The main problem with this is that the weekly partworks magazines that involve building things usually involve taking something from the current issue and attaching it to something from a previous issue. So I can’t actually build any more until I get the missing parts, which I’m told will eventually arrive in the country and be sent on to me, although I’m told that issue 22 could take months before I finally see it. At least I got the parts for that one. They just ran out of the accompanying magazine for them, which also includes detailed instructions on how to incorporate the parts into the build. Apparently they can give me the instructions without the magazine for now, but I can easily find them online quicker than they could post the temp instructions out to me. It’s just a big gaping hole in the teeth with the issues missing from the binders at the moment.

First world problems, I know, but they get a fair whack of money from me for my little obsessive hobbies every month, so It would be nice to actually get every issue as they were released in the country, rather than having to put the builds on hold for a month or so while I wait for the missing bits to arrive. :slight_smile: .

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I had no idea there were so many issues to complete a build! Good luck with it, I would love to see some of the finished projects when it’s all done :+1:

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Both the 3D Printer and the Millennium Falcon movie replica are two year builds, with 1 issue per week. Not the cheapest way to go about it, but I’m happy to take my time with them and pay the price for each issue instead of paying a lump sum to get the kits all at once. Plus you get the magazines, which includes tutorials for how to build 3D objects in the computer for printing once the 3D printer build is finished. Keeps me off the streets. :+1:

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Excellent! Thanks for the pics, I’m more than a little jealous.

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You can still subscribe online if you can get their website to work. XD

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