Update to my situation…
I sent an email to customer service yesterday afternoon, asking three questions.
When can I expect official notification of this?
Haven’t received my FSM Nov/Dec '25 paper copy issue yet. Has it been shipped?
Will my local (Canadian) hobby shop continue to receive print copies for retail sale?
Regarding question 1…I received official notice from Firecrown, via an email, this morning.
Regarding question 2…we, in Canada, have been enduring a recent full fledged postal strike, which, to this day, continues as a partial rotating postal strike. So, that likely explains the delay on my Nov/Dec copy.
Further, in the Firecrown email, received this morning, it states that “Due to ongoing delivery challenges, we can no longer guarantee reliable postal delivery of Canada or international print copies after November/December 2025 issues.”. The way that is worded, I expect to receive my Nov/Dec '25 issue. Be it 2 months, or 2 years, I should get it.
I mentioned refund in my email, along the lines that I’m inclined to request one. But I have not officially requested that yet. Part of that decision will be dependent on their answer to question 3. Still mulling over other options as well, which includes possibly just making an annual purchase from Trains.com of the six per year bi-monthly print issues.
The auto-reply to my email states that my email will be processed within 2-3 working days. Not sure exactly what "processed’ means, but regardless…standing by.
Got the same notice today. Let me know how your request goes. I don’t even have a shop or bookstore close by that carries the magazine, so I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing.
I received a reply to my email from customer service this morning. Five working days, not 2-3, but I digress.
The email did not answer any of my three specific questions.
Rather, I was provided with a song and dance explanation as to why Firecrown made the decision to suspend print copies to Int’l/Canada subscribers.
I hadn’t even asked for an explanation as to why, but I was provided with one anyway.
Meanwhile, did I mention none of my actual questions were answered? Oops, sorry. Yes, I mentioned that.
I replied to the reply asking, once again, my original questions (except for question 1, as I did receive the official notice).
Delaying my cancellation pending the answers I expect to my questions.
I think customer service is broke. With Tim’s help, I finally received an email from cus ser stating they would be mailing the Nov/Dec issue to me, good news! A day later I get another email from someone else in cus ser stating that their records show I only subscribe to digital only. I replied to that email and still no response. I did notice that the account number I have is the same for both FSM and MRR. Up to this point they always had different numbers. I wonder if Fire Crown somehow merged the accounts and in the process screwed up the FSM side of things. I’ll probably try a phone call on Monday if I haven’t heard anything by then.
