Today is the day when The Times' paywall finally comes into being and anyone wanting to read the paper's content on its website has to pay in order to do so.
I registered last month to view the site as part of the free trial and this morning got the message that anyone will now get logging on to their website - ie that it is now "available exclusively by subscription".
They are expected to lose vast swathes of online readers as a result - and they've certainly lost one here this morning - as they won't even accept my money to allow me access to the site, as the error message I got below demonstrates:
(Needless to say my bank details were correct, and I have merely obscured them in the above image).
Then, I emailed the helpdesk to get the somewhat unhelpful autoreply:
"Thank you for your email. This has been passed onto the Customer Services team for their attention. Should your enquiry require a response you will be contacted within two working days."
Not an auspicious start...
9am update:Another email arrives in my inbox from the helpdesk:
"Dear Times Online User,
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control, the World Pay payment site is unavailable at the moment. This means you can still register but we are unable to process any payments for our pay for view sites. This should be rectified shortly and we thank you for your patience."
10.30am update:
It has finally managed to accept my payment - I'm in!
Jonathan Isaby
