Hearst Magazines UK Reviews 

Just wanted to add similar bad experience. Ordered and paid for a beauty box advertised by Runners World/Hearst 2 April. After 1 month, didn’t arrive. Now informed the deal is no longer available despite it being re-advertised in May’s edition.

Never again. Customer service non existent with the pair of them.

I was interested in subscribing to one of their titles, until I read the reviews here.

I think I will wait until new legislation is enacted, Google "Government News: Measures Unveiled to Crack Down on Subscription Traps"

Refuse to refund subscription which was taken with no notification given. The website states you can cancel via your online account, except you can't!
Spoke to someone to cancel who refused to give their name! Fraudulent behaviour.

Signed up for a year.. magazine in shop April and I have to wait until June... I want out of this bullshit! And they have taken £3 today what for? They won't answer my messages appropriately...I am going to cancel DD

Be very careful subscribing to this company. They will auto renew the subscription without any warning 8 weeks before it is due (it is in the VERY small print at the end of their confirmation email and not written as a number but as text so not easy to spot.) The new subscription is expensive and there is no way they will give a refund. Total rip off, what a way to make money, shame on you!

Really fed up that there is no notification of renewal money being taken. Really difficult to access cancellation even when you manage to create an account .

I signed up for one year of magazines as part of a birthday present. Despite the renewal taking place in April, payment for the automatic renewal was taken in February.

This could well be in the small print but for a company that sends almost daily marketing emails the don’t warn you in advance of the automatic renewal date. They also don’t respond to emails or social messages and you have to call a premium rate to cancel.

Awful. I signed up for a discounted 1 year subscription which auto renewed in June 2025. They took money from my account in March 2025 but didn't email me ahead of taking the money, relying on the small print in an email they sent in April 2024. Don't think that's fair and now I'm stuck paying full price for a magazine I don't want. Had a lengthy conversion with their online sales person who confirmed that this was their policy and there was absolutely no way they would be able to provide a refund. I'll never order a magazine from them again.

To cancel your renewal, you will need to call their helpline (their email inboxes are unmanned) and you will need to repeatedly ask for the auto-renewal to be cancelled otherwise they'll try and get you to take on a new "offer". Its a pretty painful process that will take an hour, at least.

Update. They eventually emailed and refunded me, hopefully fixing their inbox issue in the process.

Magazines are okay, but customer service/response times are pretty awful! No notification that my subscription was due, they just took the money, and haven't responded to a request to cancel it. Have had to raise a case with PayPal to attempt to sort it. Really wouldn't recommend.

Took money from my account for subscription without advising or confirming I wished to continue with receiving magazine despite saying I would receive notification.
When refund requested it was like hitting a brick wall and kept quoting procedure and refused a refund. Had to cancel my PayPal immediately to prevent a reoccurrence and will not be using this company again!!

Automatically took out a payment for a magazine 3 months before it ran out. I phoned to cancel subscription and asked for a refund. They told me they had sent an email informing me about the subscription automatically renewing but I did not receive one.
Many times I asked for a refund but they would not refund my money.
Absolute disgrace!

Hearst Magazines got in touch with me after this review and have now refunded my money in full.
Shame I had to make it public.
Thank you Hearst Magazine for the refund.

Subscription was £1 for 3 issues followed by further 6 monthly payments. Received 2 magazines and not the three I paid for. now they are repeatedly requesting the 6 monthly payments! Luckily I used a bank account with hardly any money in it so the direct debit is not being paid. Not happy at all.
Would not recommend

Unable to cancel. They took the payment for a renewal and despite e-mailing, cancelling online twice and calling they just don't want to issue a refund. They just tried to upsell and give me the magazine for longer.
Thankfully I paid with paypal so will get them to persue a refund.
I'll never sign up with Hearst again.

Wish I hadn't signed up. The magazine subscription went through twice for one magazine and they have not refunded me. Email response is extremely slow. Have had to send multiple emails with the same evidence, and they appear very stupid. Difficult to cancel as website never loads. FFS, please don't buy cheap magazine subscriptions through this company. Can't even cancel through PayPal

Hearst's business model seems to be based on using well known titles to snare people into direct debit agreements that they then abuse. This might be slightly better if they were even capable of reliably delivering the magazines you pay for.

Horrible company

Please do not take up the offers of 3 months magazines for a special price. An auto renew payment was taken from my account two months after I signed up for this offer, without any warning & I had only received two of the three magazines so far. I rang customer service to cancel the subscription & was told I couldn't do that until 6 months time now or have a refund, even though I hadn't received any of the next batch of magazines. I was on the phone for over half an hour while the customer service agent recited the same thing over & over in parrot fashion to me. I was adamant that I didn't want any more magazines & wanted my money refunded. Finally, I asked to speak to her manager who authorised her to give me a refund. I will never deal with this company again !

Please be VERY careful when subscribing to one of Hearst Magazines' offers. I subscribed to Country Living for 3 months. I tried to cancel in early January - March was meant to be my last reduced price copy. Turns out they had charged my card in early December. When I challenged it and pointed out I hadn't been able to log on to their system. They just said tough luck you are paying till August. Such a rip off.

Just spent 45 minutes on the phone with them to try and give them another chance after their email refusal. I spoke to an agent who passed me to a supervisor who then passed me to his supervisor as he seemed sympathetic but after leaving me on hold for 10 minutes just came back and repeated the mantra that I had had an email saying I needed to cancel 8 weeks before end (on a 12 week sub).... I have been getting 15 emails a week from them with various offers and just don't have the time to plough through them to find the one key one....

This has to be one, if not, THE, most deliberate and misleading companies I have ever come across in the UK offering misleading 'trial subscriptions' to then take your money without your knowledge well before the trial ends, with the pathetic excuse when you ring up to complain (not that they have any complaints procedure on place), that "you should have called us to cancel the auto-payment" post the trial run starting but at least 8 weeks before the trial period ends...so in my case of a 3 month trial, that is within 4 weeks of the trail commencing (which unbelievably would have been before I even got the first copy of the magazine to read to see if I liked it enough to officially subscribe). All very underhand, and I cannot stress this enough to anhyone reading this AVOID THIS FIRM AND ALL OF THEIR MAGAZINES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF!!

IF I COULD SCORE THEM MINUS 5 STARS, THAT WOULD BE TOO GENEROUS.

If I could give this company a zero rating I would!
They helped themselves to my money without authorisation.. They fib about the renewal date and send NO notification before they attempt to steal money from your Credit card !!! BEWARE.. I am on hold now for 30 minutes trying to get through on the phone! I will not get another magazine from these thieves! Make sure you get an email stating ALL subs are cancelled !

After a hassle with having to speak to a Senior person they refunded my money! So don't take it when you are told that you cannot get a refund! Let's hope their reviews now pick up! Never had any of this trouble before they gave their business calls to overseas call centres.. Also they should be more transparent with their contact numbers instead of saying send an email!