The Economist: News & Analysis Kundenservice

Jetzt gibt es anscheinend zwei App für eine Zeitschrift. Bei der hier sind weniger bugs als in der anderen, die gerne mal abstürzt oder lange lädt. Dafür fehlt hier die Audio Edition. Irgendwie ist das alles nichts. Bei so einer tollen Zeitung müsste die App doch wirklich besser sein können.

Die Applikation ist insgesamt sehr gelungen. Bedauerlicherweise wurde aber die sehr nützliche Funktion, für die Audiobeiträge Playlisten anlegen zu können, bei der Modernisierung gespart. Daher bleibe ich dabei, die Legacy App zu nutzen

Der Economist bietet anspruchsvolle und fundierte Artikel ohne Umschweife, ich bin sehr zufrieden!

Ich bin seit fast 20 Jahren Abonnent. Keine Beschwerden. Hervorragende App, und erstklassiger Content Woche für Woche.

Journalismus sehr gut fundiert - recherchiert und unbiased. Nur die App hat einzelne Lags welches korrigiert werden muss

Die App ist eigentlich sehr gut, was mir aber noch fehlt sind Homebildschirm Widgets, dann wäre sie wirklich perfekt.

Inhaltlich, sprachlich, technisch Klasse!

Bin immer top informiert und auf dem neuesten Stand und lerne über die Geschehnisse weltweit

Es ist sehr gut.

Hi everyone, Needless to say that the economist provides profound insights and unmatched analysis of the current global situation. The Economist App, however, has some serious stability issues. I am an iPhone 12 User with iOS 17.6.1. I have troubles with: - selecting a section (e.g. Europe Business / Finance etc.); the selection is only possible if I scroll the item I’d like to click on the horizontal bar to a certain position (somewhere in the middle between the left end and the center of the bar. - scrolling through articles often causes the app to crash. - clicking on a link wtihin an article takes several attempts and causes the app to crash pretty fast, once I managed to get to the linked article. I know that a new app version is being currently tested, but it would be really helpful if you could provide at least some hot fixes for the issues listed above. Thank you in advance asa

I purchased a subscription via the App and received a receipt and invoice from Apple. However, I never received Login details. I contacted the Economist and they said this problem has to be solved by Apple („ because you got the App from their App Store“). The Economist could not even check whether my email is in their system. Of course, Apple could not help either because they did not programm the App. Apple reimbursed the money for the subsciption. The Economist is really a great magazine. The App and their customer service are not of the same quality.

The app is good, is stable, light and works smoothly most of the times. However, the app could benefit of some features that would easily turn it into a 5 star. For example, the ability to synchronize between devices the last status (where I left reading) and the bookmarks. Also, more contextual info could be available through links to other artifacts (articles, dictionary, etc) or even external content. The app should offer more control about the content (current and old) and the account (for example, the ability to change region).

I would enjoy if the audio function would save audio files in the order as I select them. It currently does so the other way around. The last article I want to hear appears first in the list and if I start with the end of the list to hear the article I first selected (and whom I most want to listen to) the audio streaming stops when the last title is finished. Afterwards I need to manually select the next title. This is a bit complicated especially when you are listening to the economist while running or in the go.

From all the news apps I use, The Economist gives me the most for the money. There are brief articles, more in depths articles and analytics. There is an audio feature that lets me listen to articles, while I walk my dog. The app is easy to use, it looks pleasant, and the content is rich.

Great you finally added enough features to the audio function to make it work — and make me drop the legacy app. One wish: When a new weekly edition is published, last week’s audio queue seems to be erased. Would be much better to persist it (those parts not yet listened to), and let me add audio articles from the new weekly edition to it. Last weeks selection is still valid, just did not get around to listen to it all :—).

Compared to the previous app the location of last reading is not remembered. That leads to a lot of searching and clicking when reopening the app… Additionally, it would be nice to indicate if an article has already been read. The reason is that some articles are now available earlier than the whole magazine issue. An indicator could avoid confusion and wasted time. Please improve the user friendliness of the app.

The content of the app is terrific, as you would expect from the Economist. Among other benefits, it's great to be able to hear the stories read by readers who evidently understand the content and know how to pronounce the foreign words and names. The app does a generally good job of making the content conveniently available. I deducted 1 star because the app sometimes shows hard-to-understand and/or unpredictable behaviour in connection with the playing of audio.

Dear Economist, I’ve been an avid reader for over 15 years and one of your biggest fans. The latest updates to the App in the last weeks are fantastic and the usability has increased. One big issue remains : when you start reading an article and continue later (without bookmarking it), the last article and position are not auto-saved anymore. For some reason with the lastest major update this feature was removed and is very annoying because you have to open the weekly edition, find the article and then find the last position. This wastes time and takes away the fun part of reading the digital magazine. Please fix this! Thank you Anthony

I use this app almost daily. It is fast and reliable. The content of the Economist is always interesting, relevant and beautifully written. The fifth star will be awarded as soon as the built-in audio player is able to show the remaining listening time as a countdown - instead of just displaying the total length of the article all the time.

State of the art complement to the magazine, just as you would expect. I especially like that they listen to feedback from their subscribers. I requested that it should be possible to select text, mainly so that I can use Apple’s “look up” function for words I don’t understand. In the next update they had included that function - thank YOU!

Overall, a quite impressive app as it mostly manages to combine the daily and weekly reporting of The Economist - and the audio versions - under one electronic roof. However, there are still a few bugs lurking here and there. For instance, displaying articles (and yes, I am a subscriber) on my iPad in landscape mode, the right ends of several lines get truncated (1-2 letters missing), resulting in poor readability. This should be fixed soon.

Fantastic magazine and marcelous app. Just recently began using the audio edition more and more. Using it I noticed that only the first heard article from each section is ticked of when finished with a red tick. Would be great if this would occur for every article fully played or is it a bug at my end?

I really enjoy the app, but there are two features that are missing for me: 1. Automatic download of audio when on WiFi 2. “Playlist” of articles visible in car infotainment when listening via Bluetooth or CarPlay (this is how I consume almost 90% of the articles in the issue)

You can read the weekly editions, you can read the latest articles. You can adjust the font size, you can mark articles you want to read later. The app does what it should: it lets you read The Economist; and it does it well.

I have a paid subscription and enjoy the app and journalism a lot. I find the moving ads very annoying however. I see that printed magazines that you buy have ads too but these are not changing every few seconds. It‘s hard to concentrate on the article when there‘s something blinking right next to it the whole time.

Longtime reader and in particular listener to the economist. It’s annoying that when switching between phone and tablet, I can’t pick up where I left, since the article progress is not synchronized… This is especially annoying when listing to your articles…

Der Economist bietet gute Analyen des Weltgeschehens in Poltik und Wirtschaft. Leider bietet die App nicht die Möglichkeit, ab und zu ein einzelnes Heft zu laden (früher gab es das ohne Abonnement) und ist gespickt mit aufdringlicher Google-Werbung.

Ich benutze die App sehr gerne. Abzug leider wegen gelegentlichen Abstürzen, die schon viele Monate auftreten ohne behoben zu werden

Ich bin seit Jahren begeisterter Leser des Economist aber leider stürzt die App andauernd ab, reagiert nicht mehr oder lädt extrem lange. Sehr frustrierend.

Vorsicht vor dem Economist. Nach dem wechsel von der Legacy app zur neuen App ist mein Jahres Abonnement nicht wieder herstellbar. Der support konnte es nicht lösen und eine Rückerstattung ist nicht möglich.

Unübersichtlich Für mich Grund auf ein Papierabo umzustellen

App ist oft langsam und stürzt während dem Lesen von Artikel regelmäßig ab

Toller Content. Die Handy-App ist leider unbrauchbar, da sie immer abstürzt

Die App ist unübersichtlich und wenig nutzerfreundlich. Vermisste eine klare inhaltliche Struktur.

The content is great and the app generally works very well. I do think the audio player is a bit wonky (it seems to take long to load and/or use a lot of power) but it all works fine. What I really really really want is the option to look at the latest issue in a pdf Style, ie the actual Magazin. It doesn’t need to be an exportable pdf (I get the problem) but with the actual magazine, I really like the way you can use your gaze to just read the headlines and a few paragraphs of sections, I am not going to fully read (and you simply can’t get the same effect with it all being “online articles). If that changes, I give the app 5 points (content is 5 points anyways).

The Economist iPad was once the epitome of magazine apps. When I was doing consultancy for media companies, I'd always use The Economist app as an example of how a good app should be. Alas, this app is doesn't even deserve one star: it is slow as molasses (on a recent iPad Pro 11"), UI/UX seems to be done by someone whose first job was a torturer, and not having the ability to actually fully download and focus on the issue (which was one of the first great features back then) makes this app totally useless. Just to give one or two examples of horrible UX: 1. why can't I rotate my iPad all four directions with this app? Why only three? You know, it is sometimes really helpful to have the charging-connection top-side while reading The Economist. 2. Why don't you use iPad features such as two-column display? Why just stick to iPhone-mode? Don't you have the budget to add the iPad-features? Questions... I've been an The Economist subscriber since 2001 or so, even keeping my print subscription even though I used the app for actual reading, I am now seriously considering canceling all the of it - print and online, because of how horrible this app is. Please fix it or lose customers!

The app is fine, but not stellar. The main issue I face is that’s it’s obviously some reskinned web browser. Swiping between articles or scrolling though the edition often ends up in a stuck screen where you have to wait a few seconds for the UI to catch up (hello 1990s). Scrolling an article is also laggy. What’s the point of having the latest speedy iPhone when you face these kinds of apps… Another minor irritation so that the downloaded editions don’t expire, meaning you have to manually go in an delete them when you realise a month’s worth of editions is suddenly swelling the app to 17GB. The content itself is wonderful, which is the only reason I put up with this subpar app. Please give make it better!

Love the content but I dislike the app so much, that I only continue my subscription at a sharply discounted rate and even now I get angry whenever I read something. The problem is with the weekly edition- literally every second page is shown as a full page add that is so slow to load that I just see it as a blank page. And if I come across an article I do not want to read and just go to the next page the loading problem aggregates so much that I just see blank pages (ad or article) .. skimming through the edition just doesn’t work. And no - I have broadband and an iPad Pro - so it’s not resources on my side that are lacking; a Netflix hd movie loads faster than an economist ad.

This „great new app, please use that one - sorry we don’t support the legacy app any more“ makes me more angry than anything else has this year. I listen to the economist weekly, every week, for many hours, as you’d expect with a subscription. No, I don’t want to spend another 10 hours a week also listening to podcasts and whatnot. Who needs that? Who is done with the weekly edition by Monday and then bored? Surely not people who work any job?! And the new apps best feature: every 2nd time you minimize the app by swiping up from the bottom center on your iPhone the app believes that you want to abandon what you were listening to and start over with „the world this week: politics“. It is truly the worst experience I can imagine. If you then navigate back to the article you were listening to, OF COURSE it has forgotten where in the article you were and you can either guess around or listen from the top. Is there anybody who subscribes to the economist and does not hate this new app with a passion!? The legacy app did everything i needed it to do. And well too! Why was I so foolish to ininstall it?!! 😢😢😢😢😢

The app has some obvious bugs that should be fixed. Its UI is quite counter-intuitive and should offer a few more options. 1. I usually read or listen to the weekly edition. When opening the app I should be able to return to the last article, instead of being pushed to the daily section. 2. I switch between reading and listening often. The last article should have an option to move in tandem. 3. There are bugs with audio playback all the time, even when downloaded. Stopping, not resuming, starting the next weeks issue when I want to resume listening to the current article etc. 4. The ads are intrusive. I doubled my payment to The Economist by moving from the Kindle to the App edition and in return I get audio, which is great, and ads, which are annoying. The ads should be removed and the price increased. Alternatively, at least change the UI so that scrolling on a small phone screen actually leads to scrolling and not to accidentally opening ads all the time. Hope this helps to improve!

Three years later, this comment is unfortunately still true: Over the years, I have lost marked articles many times in updates of this mediocre app. Ripping pages out of the magazine is more reliable and I have gone back to doing that for material I want to keep. The Economist has great content and I love to read it. But the app still has immense room for improvement. I have subscribed to the Economist for two or three decades and am disappointed at this obvious failure to go digital in a competent and engaging manner. Please read this comment and do something!

For some time I am asked to try this app whithin the legacy app, so I gave it another try. Sadly this is still a very poor successor. Very annoying is the fact that the app delivers a different regional edition from my print and legacy app and I did not find any ways ro set the preference. Another major problem (already many times critizised in comments here) is the limited use without internet access. Internet Access is not only a problem for the few readers on airplanes but permanently affects many users behind various firewalls (including the great firewall). This makes the App unusable. I hope the legacy app will stay online until there is a better alternative.

The journalism is amazing but the app is frustrating. I have the following issues. 1) My iPhone runs very hot when using the app. Displaying text should not be that demanding. I am running an iPhone XS. 2) When using the audio playback, the app regularly terminates, then I have to restart it, and finally I cannot listen to the specific piece of content because the app cannot start the audio replay again. 3) The audio download is slow, the phone is hot, the app terminated multiple times per edition that I try to download. This is frustrating. 4) The app terminates out of the blue. I would really hope that the decs fix this soon. It’s a pity because I adore the economist as a newspaper!

I’m a subscriber and app user since several years. The Economist delivers fantastic journalism. The app as it is today is the poorest I’ve experienced so far. It’s not responding to input, the animations are painfully slow. Overall it’s very hard to navigate and it’s not fun reading this way. Also, a home screen widget would be a great feature. Other news apps have it and I find myself pulled into their apps all the time. I’d love to see the app stepping up to match the journalism it delivers.

Dear Economist, I believe the only purpose of your app would be to make the listening or reading of your articles a joyful experience. At least. It should make it more pleasurable than to read a paper. Unfortunately your app is a mere desastre. It’s sad to say this but it is true: it is the worst app I’ve ever had since the smartphone was invented. The lists don’t work, it plays the article it wants (not the one you’re clicking) and it’s slower than trying to run windows 11 on a pentium computer from the 80s. You and your readers deserve something much better. Please improve it!!

It is made purposefully hard to cancel one’s subscription. No direct option on the website. Only possible via chat. They will keep you waiting while offering you discounts etc. just to keep you from cancelling. Absolutely terrible experience. Very disappointed that The Economist would resort to such measures. I have been a subscriber on and off since 2006, since I have a busy life I am not always finding the time to read the magazine. I will certainly think twice before getting another subscription.

The app suffers from issues that make it unreliable / unusable. When there is no mobile internet reception, it log off and forces me to re-log into my account - which is impossible without internet connection. It is also not possible to fully download audio version -even when the app shows audio is downloaded, it still tries to connect to the internet - making it impossible to listen in areas with limited access to internet like underground metro.

Good app with short stories. If you are looking for more background information it’s probably the wrong place. The service is frustrating. No easy way to end subscription. Some poor outsourced workers seem to handle multiple requests at the same time and try to convince you to buy something else. A button would have worked quite well…

It seems that using other apps while listening to the audio edition leads to sudden stops of the playback. Even in apps that have no audio function themselves or one which is run on startup. Switching into the Economist app, the App is refreshing (which is not working riding the Berlin U-Bahn or being on the plane) and one has to go the the tab of the current edition, wait for the loading to finish and then start playback once more. As this is one of many issues in a series, I suspect that the Economist app team has some serious QA issue.

Payed for yearly subscription via iPad, didn’t get login credentials for the website, restore purchases on iPhone doesn’t work. One customer service rep claimed website is not included, another claimed its apples fault, a third one suggested that I should buy a second subscription via the website. No ownership, no solutions offered so far. Really disappointed as the magazine and its content is amazing. Could imagine becoming a lifetime subscriber. But not this way. If the issue is not resolved soon I will ask apple for a refund.