For the most part, the promotional price is irrelevant to my decision to subscribe. What matters to me is the full freight pricing that I will be charged for my lifetime as a customer.

If I would be willing to subscribe at the promotional price but not at the regular price, they have a sales process that is designed to capture and retain my subscription dollars by obfuscating the true price at the time of opt-in and making it hard to unsubscribe after I realize how much it actually costs. Neither of these seem great from the reader's perspective.