Four weeks ago I started having my weekend New York Times delivered to Matt’s apartment building, and I have yet to receive a paper without first having to call the Times’s customer care hotline, 1-800-NYTIMES. If you’re a weekend subscriber, you’re supposed to receive the Saturday paper and half of Sunday’s paper on Saturday, and the rest of the Sunday paper on Sunday. Instead, what happens at Matt’s building is that the Saturday and Sunday papers are delivered together to all the building’s subscribers on Monday morning. It’s as if the carrier isn’t even around on the weekend, which totally defeats the purpose of getting a weekend paper.
A couple of times in the last few weeks, in addition to having my complaint moved up one link in the chain of command (making me wonder if Arthur Sulzberger himself will eventually be notified), I’ve been told that a replacement newspaper will be delivered to me. The replacement clearly does not come from the carrier, because instead of a sticker with my name and address, the front page contains my apartment number written in pen. And it’s just my paper — nobody else gets replacement copies. I don’t know why the other people haven’t complained. Matt’s building is a college student apartment building, so perhaps the students’ parents arranged the subscriptions and they’re not aware of a complaint number. But part of me is actually pissed at those students for not caring that their weekend papers come on a Monday.
What happens more commonly than my getting a replacement paper delivered is that I get my account credited for that missing paper, and then I go around the corner and buy one myself. But you can’t get the advance Sunday sections on Saturday morning at a corner store.
Jeez. One wouldn’t think it would be so hard to get the New York Times delivered in LOWER MANHATTAN.
Repeat after me – nytimes.com.
Yes you can’t read it on the subway/PATH train, but we’re talking weekend papers here — often you can read the articles even before the ‘early Sunday’ sections arrive at the newsstand or (if all goes well) at Matt’s place.
And yes I know you don’t get all the ads you might want to see (?) in the newsprint edition, and you’re not seeing the photos from sections like the Magazine in their best format, but for me these are small sacrifices.
-kbc
Nah – I use nytimes.com on weekdays, but the paper’s too big on weekends to read all of it on a computer screen. And for me there’s just no substitute for curling up on the couch with the Sunday paper.
It seems such an incredible waste, printing out individual papers for each reader. A website is incredibly more effecient, and tons less wasteful. Think about all the people employed, never mind all the resources used (gas, ink, electricity), to serve each reader their individual chunk of paper; It’s an awesome amount of waste in our economy, in this now less than new digital age.
If paper is your thing, maybe you should merely print out various articles you want to read (and then reprint the next day’s on the opposite side).
This is why i’m all for a waste-graduated-VAT, where consumers whose tastes are hyper-wasteful pay through their noses, while more thrifty citizens earn their justified savings. Me thinks you’re consumption habits would be a bit more socially friendly if that daily chunk of paper were, hmm, $8.00 ?
rob@egoz.org
I hardly feel guilty, given that I don’t have a car.
Tzadikim always feel their guilt, and then respond.
I second kbc’s comment. I start my Sunday reading the New York Times via Internet. Of course, since I’m in California, the paper version would cost more than I want to spend. But all the electrons are recycled, I don’t have papers to carry out to the dumpster, and– best of all– it’s FREE!
Out here in California I have still receive the paper and I came off of vacation 4 weeks ago and so I stopped my subscription for the time being. I restarted it the day I arrived home and I had to call EVERYday for 2 weeks to receive it and never did. EVERYDAY I would leave a complaint with the supervisor, and then I asked for the head supervisor. I THREATENED and got real mean about it… suddenly my papers started to arrive. I threatened legal action because I was paying and wasn’t receiving it AND they refused to credit my account. I’ve gotten my paper everyday since… they say they just didn’t know which address was right (I get my mail at the post office and my home address is different).