It is Saturday, I have just paid my second lot of $2.20 for The Age this week. The bumper concept, to this consumer, is a crock!There are sections in the paper today that were there yesterday, I had already read them so I didn’t pick up those sections. I couldn’t help but think of the waste of paper.
My newsagent, Sue, was apologetic – she felt embarrassed to have to charge Fairfax’s price.
This is a comment posted by a consumer at the Tower Blog in response to a post about handling Anzac Day bumper editions. Customers who bought The Age Friday and came in to buy Saturday’s newspaper were frustrated. Some enough so that they bought The Australian instead.
While the bumper edition approach may suit the publisher, it does not serve the needs of the newspaper consumer.
Mark, why couldn’t The Age do a normal issue for Friday & Saturday and/or if they really want to keep the ‘Bumper Issue’ idea, have the ‘Bumper Issue’ on Friday & on Saturday charge the normal weekday price for updated News, Business, Sport & Insight (or have a token on Friday where you take the token into your newsagent on Saturday to pick up the updated liftout’s for free or $1 – $1.20)?
Jeff they could. It makes sense. The current approach frustrates everyone except the folk at the publisher.
I cancelled my sub to the Age three-four years ago but my wife, wanting local Melbourne news took out a sub. Happily she has now decided that the Age is simply not worth anything and she will not be renewing in June.
There’s only one reason the Age puts out a bumper issue. It’s a way to inflate their sales figure for Saturday without selling a single extra paper.
Every time a bumper issue is put out on a Friday, we get the same response from customers, ie complaint about having to pay the same price on Sat again with the same Spectrum.
So yes, a lot of customers boycott and buy Weekend Australian instead.
Fairfax should start to listen to customers/newsagents and know that the reason for sales being down on Sat during long weekends is bcos of Fri bumper issue.
They should just keep to the normal as year after year we hear the same complaints .
meanwhile we could adjust our business
ie I don’t deliver spectrum twice
the customers actually thank me for reducing their bin size