Bloomberg News is among the dwindling number of publications I subscribe to that I still perceive as having journalistic integrity. To be clear, I’m talking about Bloomberg’s news reporting, not the publication’s predictable leftist opinion writers whose columns could just as easily be written by AI. Bloomberg’s news reporters, particularly its auto writers, are in a league of their own.
That’s because Bloomberg still values experience and employs veteran journalists who know their beats cold. Legend has it that Keith Naughton, who recently retired after covering Ford for decades, attended the launch of the Model T. Detroit reporters David Welch and Gabrielle Coppola and Mexico-based Amy Stillman do a stellar job covering the auto industry, as do at least a half dozen of their colleagues around the world. I trust their reporting and insights.
Alas, the integrity required of Bloomberg reporters doesn’t extend to those responsible for monetizing their journalism. Bloomberg just agreed to pay a $500,000 fine to settle New York Attorney General Letitia James’ allegations that the publication deliberately deceived customers about subscription costs, particularly automatic renewals. Bloomberg also agreed to refund qualifying subscribers nationwide, although the settlement doesn’t disclose how many customers are entitled to restitution or how much the company ultimately will pay. The lengths Bloomberg allegedly went to lock in customers were mind-boggling, akin to what I’d expect from internet scamsters.
A shoutout to New York Assistant Attorneys General Gena Feist and Laura Mumm, and former Assistant Attorney General Hanna Baek, who handled the investigation, according to James’ announcement. Feist signed the settlement agreement, along with Bloomberg Media CEO Karen Saltser.
Bloomberg subscriptions are understandably expensive; unrivaled beat reporting and analysis costs a lot of money to sustain. Although discounts can sometimes be had, the rack rate for a Bloomberg subscription is $39.99 a month. That’s a big nut to crack for most households, and Bloomberg tried to make its subscription checkout like checking into the Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
According to James’ investigators, Bloomberg lured unsuspecting readers in with seductive introductory rates—as little as $1.99 a month—only to quietly jack up the price to $34.99 a month after three months. Broke college students who signed up for a $99 annual academic deal could find themselves blindsided upon graduation with automatic renewals of $415.
This wasn’t a bureaucratic oversight; it was deliberate behavioral engineering.
In July 2022, Bloomberg introduced a subscription page that clearly disclosed the promotional rate and subsequent price increase. A month later, Bloomberg reverted to its less transparent presentation. Bloomberg also briefly required customers to check a box specifically acknowledging automatic renewals. On August 30, 2022, it replaced that requirement with a generalized terms-and-conditions checkbox that buried the renewal provision.
To top it off, Bloomberg brazenly touted that subscribers could “cancel anytime.” What it didn’t prominently disclose was that subscribers needed to cancel 24 or 48 hours before renewal or risk getting stuck with another billing cycle. Bloomberg’s own customer service training materials instructed employees, “we DO NOT refund annual subscriptions.”
Anyone attempting to escape the paywall trap was routed through an evasive online chatbot gauntlet featuring multiple menus, retention offers, and repeated cancellation confirmations. Although Bloomberg accepted cancellation requests by telephone and email, it failed to inform subscribers of those options for years.
Bloomberg is hardly the only publication that was nailed for sleazy subscription practices. The New York Times ultimately agreed to create a $2.375 million all-cash settlement fund to compensate California subscribers who were trapped in automatic renewals without proper legal disclosures.
The fund settled a class action lawsuit alleging the Times systematically violated California’s strict Automatic Renewal Law by quietly rolling readers over into recurring paid billing without providing clear upfront terms or obtaining explicit, affirmative consent. Beyond the cash payouts, the paper agreed to overhaul its checkout pages to clearly state renewal terms across desktop and mobile flows. The Times denied wrongdoing.
Perhaps I’m an outlier, but I’m so fed up with digital automatic renewals that seem to happen even when I routinely make every effort to prevent them that I don’t subscribe to publications I really want. USPS mailboxes are few and far between in my West Los Angeles neighborhood, and for months I haven’t gotten around to mailing my renewal notices to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Nutrition Action, and Worst Pills, Best Pills.
Just as you should never judge a book by its cover, don’t ever presume ethical subscription practices from publications you’d expect would have them.
In 2018, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine settled a lawsuit for $16.375 million alleging it violated Michigan privacy law by selling readers’ subscription and personal data to third parties without their consent. Consumers Union was accused of selling customers’ magazine subscription histories and reading habits to data mining companies and others in exchange for demographic and lifestyle data and then selling “enhanced” customer profiles containing this data to other companies for a profit. Consumers Union denied wrongdoing.
Data that was allegedly shared included age, race, religion, income levels, charitable donations, medical conditions, political affiliations and travel habits, court papers showed. Underscoring Consumer Reports’ shamelessness, the magazine routinely runs stories warning readers about data privacy, including this one from May of this year headlined, “You’re Not Just the Customer: You’re the Product, and Your Privacy Is the Price.”
The American public has become inured to corporate wrongdoing, but there’s one very successful billionaire who has warned about complacency, at least when it involves politics.
That would be Michael Bloomberg.
In a 2018 commencement address at Rice University, Bloomberg lamented an “epidemic of dishonesty” that he warned was a greater threat to the nation than terrorism:
The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t communism, jihadism, or any other external force or foreign power. It’s our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power.
It’s admirable that Mike Bloomberg rails against dishonesty in the public square. Too bad that righteous indignation didn’t extend to his own billing department, where straight talk was replaced by fine-print traps and automated bots programmed to pick his readers’ pockets.
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A note to Starkman Approved readers: Beginning today, I’ll also be publishing my columns on Substack. I migrated my subscriber list there some months ago, so some readers may receive duplicate notifications. My apologies for taking the liberty of migrating Starkman Approved subscribers to Substack. This site will remain the primary home for Starkman Approved.
You can also follow my automotive reporting and commentary at Starkman on Overdrive, my separate Substack publication devoted to the people, strategies, and spin driving the automotive industry.