Starting sometime this week The Border Mail will be running some adverts that invite new 6 day subscribers. This offer entails the offering of The Sunday Age free with this subscription.
This offer only pertains to new subscribers. If however one of your existing clients would like to take up the offer, they can. To do this they must pay up all existing monies with you and then pre pay 8 weeks.
So I guess that this is sort of a bonus for you. All monies paid up and pre pay. Anyway this is how we anticipate it will work.
This is the opening of a letter sent by the folks at The Border Mail to newsagents yesterday. Just as Christmas is kicking in and newsagencies have their busiest time of the year, this Fairfax owned newspaper publisher wants more time to manage a complex offer:
Customers who order The Border Mail home delivered for six days a week can include delivery of The Sunday Age at no extra cost
Existing customers who want this offer must settle any outstanding amounts on their current subscription and restart as a new customer on the new offer
The new offer requires payment in advance of eight weeks.
The letter goes on to detail the mechanics of the offer. The record keeping requirements are ridiculous. Even the paytment process is a mess. While the letter says that newsagents will be paid fifty cents for each Sunday Age delivered, it then describes a process which is messy and difficult to verify. If my understanding of the letter is right, newsagents are financial backers of this offer, they are taking a cut to support the campaign.
To give newsagents confidence that they really know what they are doing and to respect newsagent time, the letter has this under the heading of when:
First delivery to commence as soon as they start rolling in.
When I first read the letter I thought it was a practical joke. Checking shows it to be authentic. It makes me wonder if we are entering a twilight zone of offers.