‘At A Loss: Repeat and Rinse’
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’
Some time a few months ago the Washington Post switched my Sunday-only delivery to 7 days a week without asking my approval. Although I’d dropped daily delivery about a year ago for a variety of reasons, I didn’t make a stink about it – they did this under their offer to deliver the paper through the end of the year at the $1.85 a week Sunday-only price so it wasn’t costing me any money.
But constantly throwing it unread in my recycle bin was making me feel guilty, so today I called them up to ask them to go back to only delivering it on Sunday. Besides, they’d just included an insert in my bill offering to keep doing the seven days a week delivery for only $0.15 more a week. I figured the chance they’d just keep this up forever seemed too likely and I needed to take positive action.
Let this be a lesson to you – caring about the environment can be a money-saver.
So I called them on the phone – there’s no way to do this sort of thing online, you know, which is pretty telling – and had to convince them that yes, I know I’m already getting a deal but I’m just not reading it on weekdays. Apparently suffering from some sort of PTSD-based confusion from processing cancellations all day, the clerk then offered me a deal on the Sunday only delivery of $15.34 for 26 weeks.
Well I wasn’t trying to ditch Sunday delivery but I’m not stupid – $15.34 for 26 weeks is less than $18.50 for 10 weeks. So I agreed. Since I was willing to sign up for auto-payment via credit card they promised me a $10 American Express gift card too. They’d already sent me one when I signed up near the beginning of the year but when that card expired they went back to sending me bills.
So I’m on target to get the Sunday Post delivered to my door for the first half of 2010 at a cost of $5.34, or $0.21 a paper.
The next time you hear someone in the print media claiming that it’s people reading their stories for free on their website that’s killing their business, keep that in mind.
And if you’re in the habit of buying the paper out of the machine every Sunday, pick up the phone and call 202-334-6100 and ask them for this deal. It’s way cheaper.
It’s funny you say you went this route to avoid the daily papers. My parents got my wife and me the same deal (Sunday Post for 26 weeks) and we’ve been getting the daily paper, too, at least for the first two weeks thus far.
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I’m thinking about canx the Post but there’s one thing that keeps me holding on to yesterday. (What can I say, I really felt something emotional at the end of State of Play)
With the printed Post (and it is getting thinner each day), I can scan everything and then come back to it.
The digital Post is the future and of course, I am not seeing everything with the printed version, but I can’t scan everything on line in the same way.
Post writer Dave and author Dave Kindred (Morning Miracle) made this point recently at the Newseum.
Any suggestions?
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