Edmonton Journal tempts fate

OK, Edmonton Journal. Last straw. After the paper was AGAIN thrown on the steps today, this is the last warning: next time it happens, we're cancelling the paper. You're about to lose a customer, folks.

Comments

Jim Whitelaw said…
Seems to me this is unwinnable from your side. The incremental revenue of one subscriber (probably near enough zero - or less) can't possibly be worth the extra time you're requesting be expended delivering it to you. It would appear that the correct business response would be to listen politely to your complaint(s) and then ignore you. It usually makes sense to simply fire a customer that's more trouble/expense than they are worth. Just a thought.
May 29, 2010 at 6:52 PM
Mike Jenkinson said…
I would like to think that the $300 a year I'm paying for home delivery is worth the extra 1.5 seconds it takes to put the paper in my mailbox, which has been nailed next to the door since the day we bought the house and has been the great receiver of newspapers ever since then ... until about a few months ago when our current carrier decided that putting it in the mailbox was too much trouble.

Also, I'd agree with you had the situation been 10 years ago and the newspaper business was rolling in customers. Now, they're not. Heck, as far as I know, I could be the last actual paid Journal subscriber in the city. Given the sad state of the newspaper business, they need me far more than I need them.
May 29, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Jim Whitelaw said…
Well, I'm guessing that they probably don't need you. You obviously would know the business better than me, but it seems doubtful they make any money off subscriptions. I think it's the case that their whole business model is broken and thus there is no longer any incentive to keep subscriber customers happy.

From the carrier's perspective, it's probably more like 15 or 20 seconds since one can throw the paper to the step from say 5 or 10 meters away, eliminating twice that distance walking plus time to place the paper in the box. Using 15 sec per day and 360 delivery days, that's 1.5 hrs of extra time spent every year for a marginal amount of extra compensation. Do carriers still get paid piecemeal? If not, and they are paid flat rate to cover a route, you're sunk...

Have you tried bribery?
May 31, 2010 at 9:37 AM
Mike Jenkinson said…
The funny thing is, in this case, I know the carrier isn't saving himself much time because he actually walks up my steps to the door to drop the paper at his feet. I know this because 90% of the time, I'm already up and hear his footprints on our wooden stairs. Never been able to make it to the door in time to chew him out, however.
May 31, 2010 at 9:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Car camping in our Toyota Rav4

Image
My wife and I booked a tenting trip to Yellowstone National Park last summer. We had never been there before and were really excited to go, but weren't thrilled that we were sleeping in a tent in bear country. We are fundamentally too cheap to buy a camper trailer, and our Toyota Rav4 doesn't have a big enough engine to pull anything larger than a ladybug anyway, so our options were pretty limited.

During a discussion of those limited options just weeks ahead of the Yellowstone trip, I Google'd "car camping Rav4" and discovered there's a whole sub-culture out there of people who have retrofitted their Rav4 vehicles to sleep in the back. We started devouring other people's blog posts and videos on the subject and quickly set about to lifehacking our car and our trip to suit our needs.

So we did a live beta test in Yellowstone and slept in our vehicle. We loved it. Sleeping in our Rav4 was quiet and dry. We didn't have to worry about wildlife, and with a…
Keep reading

Buff Pack Run Cap review (and bonus thoughts on Run Cap Pro)

Image
Every once in a while, I remember I have a blog... And I've edited this post at the bottom.

I've become a huge fan of the Buff Cap Pro, which is one of Buff's lesser known products (and one that I've never actually seen for retail sale anywhere). I took a flyer on ordering one from Buff's Canadian website last year and loved it so much I bought a second one on sale last month.

The Cap Pro is a terrific little hat. It's like wearing a small Buff on your head, but with a little sun visor attached to the front. They can be totally crunched up and packed tight in a pocket, are pretty breathable, and keep the sun from roasting my increasingly balding head.

While I wore a Tilley Hat for year and years, the Cap Pro has become my go-to vacation hat. It keeps the sun off my head and the sweat out of my eyes. And I can crumple it up and stick it in my pocket at restaurants and such. (Which is much, much harder to do with a Tilley Hat.)



And the Cap Pro is fully reversibl…
Keep reading

Make your own Coke Blak

Image
Remember Coke Blak, the short-lived high-end coffee-infused cola drink put out by Coca-Cola?

No?

Well, I do. I loved the stuff, even at $2.50 a bottle. It was a fantastic combination of Coke with the essence of coffee that had wonderful caramel undertones.

It's been gone from the market for, oh, four or five years now, I suppose.

But if you're absolutely dying for a taste of what it was like - or you just want to have some again - there's an easy way to make a pretty good facsimile of the beverage.

Basically, take a little bit of this:

And add it to this:


You don't need a lot of the Torani coffee syrup to make it work. "A splash". "Half a teaspoon." Basically, experiment. If you taste more coffee than Coke, you've used too much. Unfortunately, with no actual Coke Blak out there to compare with, it's not like this is a precise exercise in reproducing the taste. And the Torani/Coke Zero combo still misses some of the more caramel notes (what …
Keep reading