Newspapers Reviews 292

They have been off line for almost a month now. The updates keep pushing the time they will be back on line further down the road. Now they won't even give date!

They are scams. They say hey you have hints but you have to subscribe. you subscribe and there's nothing! Its a rip off tactic

Horrible customer service, won't give my money thay have taken without my knowledge. Had horrible emails back and now thay are ignoring my email. The company has no contact number. I have been try to get my money back for over a month.

I am a writer and college student who use Newspapers.com every day. It is becoming increasingly difficult and frustrating to find stories or articles on this site. Sometimes you clip articles and they disappear. I have spent hours trying to find a story I read a few weeks ago and I can’t find it. Newspapers only keep search keeps results for one day . I wish they would change this. Make search engines more efficient.

I completely understand why this site has such a low rating. As others have stated - it’s IMPOSSIBLE to cancel your free trial/auto renewal. Needing to email them 2 days beforehand is an absolute joke. I have emailed 2 days before, and received a reply that it’s been cancelled and I won’t be charged….. But I’m not filled with confidence that I won’t be getting charged when the trial ends, as according to my account details the free trial is still active and I’m unable to remove my payment details - suggesting a paid subscription is still active. I’m preparing to have to do a chargeback request from my bank on Monday. Newspapers com…. you need to buck up your ideas and make it possible for people to cancel and change subscriptions themselves from their account. But I’m sure this is all part of a little scammy way to get money out of people by making that whole process as difficult as possible.

It is impossible to cancel your subscription online. If you choose "Cancel and End Subscription" you are brought to a screen where the "Finish Cancellation" button is grayed out. This is in violation of the Federal Trade Commission's "Click to Cancel Law" and I will be reporting them to the FTC.

I feel cheated and tricked into subscribing. When I complain, I get the most patronising email ever from Seth, telling me how to use their search facility with no reference whatsoever to my complaint.

Dreadful company.

I cannot add screenshots to this review, but this is what occurred.

On the homepage, I entered three elements to the search fields:
Jacob Alexander Gyger - 1942 - Bern, Switzerland.

When I pressed search, I went to the next screen where it told me there were 26 matches.

I subscribed.

I then got the results. Without exception all 26 were in America. None, absolutely none, were in Switzerland, let alone Bern.

If that isn't a con I don't know what is.

I have had three responses from customer service. They completely ignore what I have sent them and give me some unintelligible, unrelated drivel about how to use their site. Incompetence knows no bounds at newspapers.com

Poorly managed clown show of a website that overcomplicates simple tasks. Search Bar at the top deselects text after you've selected it with the mouse. Website also struggles with flipping the pages of newspapers and picking another date of the newspaper. Whoever they are paying to manage this website is failing horribly..

Cancelled before free trial was over and they locked me out of the account, they still took $50 from my card in Dec 24, then $50 again in June 24 now $50 again today. Total taken in fraudulent transactions $150.

NEWSPAPER.COM BLATANTLY SCAMS CUSTOMERS GUARANTEEING NOT TO HAVE REPEAT CUSTOMERS.
I got a NEWSPAPER.COM gift membership that started the day the giver purchased the subscription. It started that day so I had missed out on 30 days of use. Stole a month of access by not allowing me to pick my start date. I got customer NO SERVICE to help but basically recieved a circle of robotic emails telling me to read the terms and agreement and won’t honor your request. No person to help. What a scam!
I do not recommend buying a gift of Newspaper.com for anyone EVER. They cheat the receivers. I will not renew my membership to Newspaper.com and will find an alternative way in the future, though I’ve been a loyal Ancestry member for 20+ years.

While newspapers.com is useful, it's indexing is horrible. You CANNOT assume that the date shown on the website is the actual date of the newspaper that you're looking at. You MUST scroll to the top of the image and find the date of the paper. In my experience over the years, I've found frequent errors like this.

They should really post a disclaimer on their website about this--I can't tell you how many errors I've noticed on findagrave.com where people cite the incorrect date from newspaper.com's indexing. So many people now have inaccurate dates in their family trees. It's pathetic that the accuracy and quality is so shoddy but unfortunately it's the only website that carries some newspapers or issues.

Why, exactly, should I subscribe to a Newspaper ??
What are the benefits of it ?
So that I can get one Newspaper’s biased Political and Social take on the country/ world ????????
It is, of course, good to keep up with what is going on in the World but, frankly, there is a Negative Overload of News and I particularly hate the way the BBC milk every major story dry - eg The recent Manchester Synagogue Attack whereby they spent 2+ days repeating every detail and interviewing anyone, no matter how remotely associated they were, with it - experts / relatives / and people who were 2 miles standing at a bus stop seeing a police car going by ?????
Subscription to a Newspaper is a complete nonsense - there are literally hundreds of outlets out there with free news and analysis that don’t have the same Superiority Complex that papers such as the Guardian/ Scotsman etc seem to have ! I mean is their reporting of the News really more in depth and meaningful and more to the point, do we need it ?

I understand the reviews now just another scam company. Legit company’s don’t have to hope you are unaware of upcoming charges and force renew their BS contract. I got better service with my car’s extended warranty.

I had to give 1 star as 0 was not an option. Wish I had read reviews before purchasing membership. Customer Service is horrendous - if they do answer an email it is rude and unhelpful. Will cancel my membership. If you need access to newspapers there are better options available.

my mom pass away on 1/6/2025 For the last 8 month i been trying to cansul her account i send 24 e mails and haven't been able to get this fix i beeing charge 78.25 every 6 month month and we going back and force with the CC Co i am going to talk to a lawer next those people better Not respond or they going to get what comeing to them

I did not find this worth the money. The search feature is not good, and if you do locate an article the quality when printing is awful. I decided not to renew, so I went to "cancel subscription help" and followed the steps at least 10 times with no success. Total SCAM! I sent a message and did get a response that my canceled subscription is being honored. I found more info by using google! Don't waste your money!

I've been a member of newspapers.com for many years and over those years I have seen the search function continue to be "dumbed down" to the point where when I'm looking for something, using a Boolean search, I get 1000s of worthless responses that have little or nothing to do with what I'm looking for. It's turned into a huge waste of my time.

They need a Customer Service Team that verbally response to Customer issues, problems and complaints. It is frustrating to continue to send emails reference their NEWSID # and get no specific answers. My subscription was going to expire May 23, 2023 and the first of May I looked at my Account and their was no place to cancel then I was told that gift subscriptions did not AUTO RENEW. So on May 10, 2025 I ordered their Mother's Day Promotion for $54.90. to start May 24, 2025. ON May 23 my account auto renewed for $59.90 and Newspapers.com did refund that, but I have been corresponding with Newspapers since May 25, 2025 after the refund for the auto renewal that I have never been able to redeem the Gift Subscription. They sent a copy of my account history and yes right there was my order# 11906958 for $54.90 but no Service Date show (blank) for the order meaning it was not redeemed. They sent email with Redeem here and a second link to redeem if the Redeem HERE did not work....Why would a company not make first Redeem link work. I have asked them to cancel the order and refund my $54.90 to my credit credit FIVE TIMES and no response...not one word from the representatives receiving my emails where I gave my account, email, their NEWSID# on how to resolve this problem. Oh yes now looking at my Account the order is gone and has been replace with You are a Registered Guest choose a different plan Publishers Extra $59.90, how astonishing this is the plan I ordered and paid for. This has been a learning experience....don't order anything that auto renews, it won't let you have the option to cancel. Poor business, poor service so after two months I will be surprised to get my money back and they will never get me back. Oh their answers to emails folks are probably computer generated so your sucked in and they suck

I was double billed for their service in Dec 2024. There happened to be 2 accounts, on with an older email and one with a newer email although both had the same street address and name. After recognizing what happened, I cancelled one of the subscriptions and contacted customer service for a refund and their response was "We don't refund cancelled subscriptions". This seems to border on fraud to me. Don't subscribe to this company. They have no interest in their customers.

Update: After notifying the better business bureau, Ancestry (their parent company) refunded the double billing, so I'm updated this review to 3 stars. They still need to train their customer service to be more accommodating.

I have used Newspaper.com for several years. It didn't always work great but it was usable. In the last week it has become almost unusable, it will not show the data of my searches. I have emailed their help several times in the last week and have heard nothing from them.