The Economist Avis

Aucune réponse deux semaines après avoir contacté le service client « complaints ». Je maintiens ma note :

Service client scandaleux après plus de vingt ans d’abonnement. Dommage, car le contenu est toujours là.

I enjoy listening The Economist every week using the old app. I would definitely grant ***** for the contents. Unfortunately, a major feature has been dropped in the new version: the subtitles (or secondary titles) that give you a hint about the content of each article. Example in this week’s edition: New App: “Buttonwood / FULL TILT”. In the Good Old App: “Buttonwood / FULL TILT / Why the bond market has become jumpier. “ In the good old app, I know what the subject is and I can decide whether I should select that article for my playlist or not. In the knew App, I have no clue and I need to go through the cumbersome process of opening each article to decide. As a matter of fact, the new app is useless for that very specific reason. What a shame! Please… fix it!

I have returned to the Legacy app because this audio version is so bad. I’m unable to scroll through the table of contents, only sections. If I’ve stopped an article part way through, it will sometimes restart playing it from the beginning. If I turn off my screen, the audio shuts off as well. And to top it off, on Saturday, it automatically starts the new issue even if I’m still on the previous one (yes, it occasionally happens).

The content is great as usual, be the listening experience is atrocious. It’s a daily fight. It’s almost as if you don’t want to have listeners.

I've been a subscriber to the economist for several years now (paper and/or digital) and I always enjoyed reading it.
I would like to emphasize that the following review is about the app and not the contents of the newspaper.
For me, the major annoyance with the app is the download and offline-reading of economist issues: I have tried to download past issues, as these seem get lost after every major upgrade of the app. Beyond a certain number of downloaded issues, additional downloads are virtually impossible since additional downloads do not complete, which is often accompanied by crashes of the app.
In addition, the opening of older issues (more than appr. 6 months) requires an active Internet connection, whether they have been downloaded or not. This does not make any sense to me. For all these reasons, I have switched back to the Legacy application which does allow for the download of back issues (at least back to some point in time in 2017). I like to be able to access purchased issues, paper or digital, without restrictions (and irrespective of whether I have an active subscription or not ) but it seems like the current app is gradually morphing to "online only", whatever that means for the future.

Dommage qu’on ne puissent pas rechercher des mots clés pour trouver des articles spécifiques

Content is first class albeit sometimes a bit long.
I often listen to the audio edition and it is really frustrating. If you pause, the app cannot just continue, it is like restarts, loads the whole thing, it is slow. Difficult to inderstand how the team cannot get it right... (ios, most recent version as of Dec 2019)

Arguably one of the most buggy and inconvenient major apps: text that is cut at the end of the lines (obvious, at the smallest text size); slider (for text size selection) that jitters in an ugly way; in previous versions: text that cannot be selected because it's under a picture, pictures that cannot be dragged up without being opened (instead of scrolling the page)…

The contents is excellent, but the app is not as smooth as it could be.

It would be better still if the app could tick off articles as I finish listening to them. That way it wouldn't re-play what I've heard previously when I'm walking and unable to select a different article.

Hi, I’m a ‘paper copy’ subscriber of the economist and I receive the weekly news since years...

I took the electronic Of ‘The Economist’ and I was pleased to see how complementary they are ...

- Expresso news are the ones which give you in less than 10 bullet points, the way world headlines...

- For what I call ‘continuous infused news’ you can through search display past articles dedicated to a specific subject !

- On top, some of the articles are avail both ‘in written AND ‘podcast’

So I do believe both paper and electronic versions WILL coexist as they are complementary and the app version is easy to ‘take in hands’ and navigation is intuitive!

Dear economist thank you for bringing all my news needs in one place free of soap like news.

Please bring the podcasts library in here too. This might also lead to the podcast editors to avoid repeating subjects amongst your platforms/economist voice channels.

And then maybe podcasts can be without ads in here as i assume this app is only available to subscribers.

Great how you improved the menu for the audio week edition.

Best newspaper has the best CX app with night mode and podcast audio. Can’t expect anything better! Maybe more online conferences from journalists about a topic?

I have always considered The Economist as a reference on many political and scientific matters. It is extremely convenient to have it an easily accessible app.

I enjoy reading the magasine a lot, it’s feeling near any place in the world and be able to understand not only social tendencies, but political and ecological issus. Now it comes to new big health issue. What else ? I feared Coronavirus would modify in some way the reception of the edition, but it’s been even better as I have started to read articles in the mobile application.
If there is one thing my French-Spanish family agrees on is that The Ec it’s a best choice , event my daughter, 20 years old, follows it weekly at her economic science school.

As I have recently changed my smartphone, I cannot activate my subscription in the App anymore. When I try to do so, I receive a notification saying there is an error.

I have been a reader of The Economist for 20 years. I can only congratulate the team in charge for delivering everyday the mission of its founder.

One question: i have been training my children on reading The Economist by sending them chosen articles tuned to their areas of interest from time to time. The full issue is too heavy and not worth for them. But the app blocks them the reading after a few. What can you think of to progressively raise interest of our students to The Economist ?

Thank you and best regards

Guillaume Meheut
Paris, France

All the news worldwide in one app ! I enjoy the paper version too, but with the app and the subscription to both, I enjoy the fresh news of the day when I take my breakfast every morning, and all day long too with the best point of view (to my mind), so this is just Wonderful !!!

As the previous review writer, I could not access my digital content because I was a "print only" subscription, which is untrue (this is my 25th year as subscriber and I went digital as soon as possible many years ago).

After a number of exchanges I finally got my digital back, but what a distastrous app. I can't seem to download for offline and audio downloads take m i n u t e s... t o l o a d s l o w l y.

I do not understand the positive ratings for this app. For me, this is the only audio app that doesn’t manage background downloads of new editions, fails at streaming on Lock Screen and constantly needs to redownload content. Yea, the economist is a fantastic magazine. But it’s digital content is poorly programmed and fails at the most basic of tasks. I have given up hope that they will ever produce an app that works

I usually don’t enjoy reading digital newspapers. But lately, as I haven’t been able to take the time to read the economist in its print version, I’ve found the app to be very handy, easy to navigate and to read. I don’t feel like I get no value from my paid subscription if I don’t get to read the print version anymore. I can do a bit of both and that’s great!

Articles are great, the app much more pleasant than the older one, but glaring omissions remain.

AirPlay support would be crucial for an app with this much audio content, so we can play it on our speakers and various devices. Since it’s easily supported with official iOS APIs why not just enable it?

Wishful thinking perhaps, but CarPlay support with Siri would be magnificent.

I’m being asked for a CRN number that is not provided when purchasing a subscription through the app to activate digital access. Frustrating and idiotic.

I pay for the app and then i cannot login and use it !
Asked for a CRN number that i don t have to login. I see other reviews like this.
Write to Economist contact and get standard email saying we will het back to you in 48 hours .
Stay away from this !!

you need to pay to read one articles. zero free content

The Economist has excellent journalism.

However, inexplicably, this app does not allow you to avoid automatic background downloads, so if you have an iPad you rarely use, it will still download data using your WiFi (or mobile data, if you don’t disable that) every week.

With more and more people using mobile WiFi, this can be annoying.

There is a workaround in the general iPad settings, where one can disable background activity for the app, but that setting is not available inside the app itself, and I’m not sure one can trust it.

Cannot share article via whatsapp when listening to an article: audio interface masks the send button...

Super appli
Lots of bugs if compared to the previous one

The Economist app is really very well done and makes the reading very enjoyable.

For a non native English like me, the Economist is a fantastic tool to work out on a daily basis my poor English. I strongly recommend it.