ZinioReviews of zinio.com

their apps for reading digital magazines on a computer are pooly designed. First, they tell you on their online-website, that you could read everything "OFFLINE", and that you should click that one button. You do this, and you now have an app installed in your browser. However this app gives headache, if your browser deletes temporary files, so you CANNOT read the promised "offline magazines". Then, even if you manage to discover that your browser should not empty its cache, you now see that you STILL are not able to read offline. Why? because if your computer is not online, that app won't load anything. But it DOES NOT explain this to you, you have to guess why it does not work (instead that you are instructed from the beginning, and you know that you are NOT reading OFFLINE how they claim, but that you simply have the files on your computer, but you still need to be ONLINE to see them!!!). Then, in the end, you discover by chance that there are TWO different readers (they did not told you at the beginning, they just offered you one of them!). The second reader is a separate software, NOT an app inside a browser. You install that, in the hope that it will behave less restrictive or erratic, but no chance! Except that you do not loose your downloaded magazine files, you still need to be ONLINE in orde to read, as they claim "OFFLINE" your magazine. This is all a stupid joke - at least from a denomination and linguistic point of view, as a company that sells... texts, does not know what "offline" means! :D This is not serious AT ALL, to not mention into the app or reader software, that it needs to be online. Or that you should take care of the browser cache, to NOT be deleted. Or that the app is so complicated, that even if not deleting the browser cache, it still does not work, if your browser is set on "higer" level of security. It is incredible that they do not write all these things, not even in the FAQ, so one has to loose a lot of time to understand what's happening. LE: dear people from Zino, it seems that you did not understand my topic. Your reply says exactly what I explain here in detail that it is NOT true. The computer HAS to be online for me to be able to open the downloaded files from Zinio. That's the problem. :) Read again.

Very slow to load. Good customer service.

I purchased a magazine for a pattern in it by a favorite hand knitwear designer of mine. When I realized there was no way for me to download it and that I had to be connected to Zinio to be able to read the magazine I wanted to return it. Basically I needed to be able to convert the pattern to a PDF to work with an app I use rather than printing patterns off. This had never been a problem for me before getting digital magazines so I didn't think Zinio would be different. Anyway, when I reached out to try and return the title I was refused. I think Zinio can work for people as long as they are clear they have to be on zinio's website to be able to see their purchases. For me it is next to useless and highly annoying.

Hi I have a problem. I recently wanted to buy a few times by you and had enough money in the bank but i jeep getting a message of declined i have exceeded by bank limited. but also i noticed that money was taken from my account thereafter. what's wrong?

Zinio offers a pretty poor way of reading publications on the web. On a laptop, at least, it has some glaring usability problems. The default magazine view emulates the two-page spread of a magazine, and instead of scrolling vertically like a normal web page, to reach the next two-page spread you must click in a special place, a bit like turning a page. There are two major problems with this: (1) the spreads are not the same (letterbox) shape as a modern laptop screen, so you can't see everything at once unless you zoom right out, in which case the body text is too small to read; (2) you can zoom in and fiddle around constantly with the scroll bars to read everything, but when you move to the next spread, Zinio DISCARDS your chosen zoom setting and reverts to zoomed-right-out, every time! It's infuriating, why can't it just remember what zoom setting you chose? Zinio does also offer a text-only reader, which has readable fonts and scrolls vertically like a normal HTML page, but this omits the insets, pull quotes and illustrations which make publications pleasant to read, and makes you wonder what value Zinio is adding over simply publishing a standard web page. What I'd prefer would be to see the nicely laid out pages, but arranged vertically so that I could zoom in, and then just scroll down from one page to the next vertically through the whole publication, with nothing pretending to be a "page turn". Oh wait, that's exactly how the standard PDF viewer works! Why have Zinio invented something that works LESS well than a program that's been around for 20 years?

Signed up and tried to buy a magazine using Paypal but get the message that the address is wrong- address does not match billing address. Really? Have no problems using Paypal anywhere else - so thanks for nothing Zinio! Saved me £10 to spend on an actual magazine :)

The app used to work well. Now it will not download magazines without downloading one at a time. A total waste of time when you subscribe to 20 magazines. Customer service are prompt to respond but have also been a waste of time as they refuse to refer the case to anyone with technical knowledge and ask irrelevant questions and do not give relevant answers.

Used to be a good app. Now non-intuative and difficult to use (“If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT”). Won’t be renewing my magazine subscriptions.