I just noticed the other day that [The Record](http://www.therecord.com/) wasn’t forcing you to buy their full newspaper subscription when you didn’t actually want any paper. (You could generously donate your unwanted newsprint to local schools, if you wanted).
I was getting the Record in paper form for a while. The amount of paper they ship to your door over the course of a week is staggering. It nearly doubled the volume of trash I was leaving by the curb. I didn’t want that. Neither did I want to pay $14/month just to access a website.
When they put the paper behind a pay wall, I was pretty perturbed, so there was no way I was going for that deal anyway. They’ve since lowered the wall a bit, allowing you to view today’s news for free. No archive access, though. However, you can get access to archives and PDF versions of the paper for about $3/month.
Now $3/month is getting into the range I’m willing to spend on a web page. I donated $2/month to [b3ta](http://www.b3ta.com/) for years just because I liked the work they were doing. I’m currently donating to [TWiT](http://www.twit.tv/) for much the same reason. I can drop a similar amount on the local rag without feeling too bad about it, even if I don’t always agree with the editorial stance.
So I put in my online subscription request this morning. About four hours later, I got an email stating the following:
> Thank you for your email. To subscribe to the Record Insider please contact our
> Circulation department at 519-894-3000 to provide your credit card information.
God, I hate telephones. On second thought, I’m not going to subscribe to The Record today.
I know eCommerce is kinda hard (even if it’s been around for more than a decade), but haven’t these people heard of Paypal? Honestly.