Chronicle subscription frustration

I’m new to the city and I like to support news, so I decided to sign up for the Houston Chronicle last week.

Honestly, what a cluster.

I downloaded the Chronicle iPhone app. I see there are prices a little different than signing up via the actual website. So why not, let’s do that. It is attached to my Apple account, but it doesn’t give me a prompt to put in a username and password. I click around trying to find an alternate login option. This is important because I like to read text based, typically from a newspaper, news on my work computer. And being able to login based on Twitter links is important.

I don’t find any way to get a un/pw, so I email the help desk like the protoboomer I am. The initial response says they can’t find my email in their subscriber database. Well that makes sense because my Apple ID is associated with an old email account that I don’t use as much anymore, so I give them that one. Well they still can’t find it. After a few rounds of back and forth, they say it’s two completely different subscriptions, that the iPhone app is more for breaking news, and I should subscribe via the website if I want full access.

Asinine.

Like seriously? Who would get two separate accounts for the same newspaper? The NY Times is able to handle an app and a website under one account.

And another thing I recently discovered that is equally confusing is why are there two websites for the paper, houstonchronicle.com and chron.com? Are they different news or what?

Just all around having a poor experience with local news. If there’s a better source for local or TX news, please honk off in the comments and let me know.