I have heard from ten newsagents, in several states, in the last week that magazines are either arriving very late or not at all.
In one case yesterday, a newsagent was without weekly magazines for half a day. In their particular business, based on sales history, the revenue loss will be significant.
In a case last week, the freight company has been changed and magazines are arriving twelve hours later than they used to. No announcement. No ability to easily adjust staff rosters.
This post is placed here for newsagents affected by magazine delivery challenges to comment. Publishers read this blog – let them know if you are being impacted and what it means to your business and their business.
Hi Mark, we have been frustrared with our magazine deliveries, we have often seen main titles and some bundles of magazines been not delivered or misplaced. in most cases we have missed sales and often left frustrated.have complained with followmont and G&G about this, but with no avail. hope they change with better delivery system or alternative. Every delivery day we have problems with bundles missing and drivers misplaceing them.
Ive had several instances of magazines arriving early over the last couple of months. Yesterdays Monday delivery included a parcel due next Thursday, XchangeIT hasnt even sent me the invoice for them yet but there sitting in my shop.
We had no magazines last Thursday. A few frantic phone calls revealed the freight company had been changed and the driver arrived to find the magazine load was too big to fit in his vehicle so he left them there. Problems with gotch lately have been too numerous to list. The cost to us is significant.
So far (thankfully) no problems with deliveries up here…..but the amount of mistakes in the bundles made by the packing staff at GG are getting beyond a joke.
Quantities incorrect
Random magazines thrown in
Poorly strapped bundles that fall apart when you pick them up
Magazines ripped or creased within the bundles
same as you have mentioned here subaru. its like both followmont and G&G dont even care.
When it was announced that WAN was taking over our deliveries early last month and our magazines would be delivered with newspapers I immediately contacted both WAN and GG to see how it would work. We are a remote tourist town and newspapers are flown in, newspapers could turn up in the AM, PM, next day or sometimes not at all. Its a big joke in tourist season!! They are often offloaded depending on passenger numbers etc. Neither GG, WAN, local newspaper delivery company or ALNA were much help apart from being quite adamant that they would be delivered with newspapers. The day before the changes came into effect finally a helpful person at WAN listened to my concerns – how can I roster, service my subagents etc when I don’t know when newspapers & mags will turn up. Turns out magazines would still arrive at same time with same trucking company as before however the local newspaper delivery agent would deliver the magazines. So now, instead of receiving magazines before we open, I’m receiving them between 10-12 at the busiest time of day causing all sorts of rostering issues, extra wages, subagent deliver issues AND we are in our off season. It will be nightmarish in our tourist season coming up. Add to that, we have had 4 deliveries under the new regime and I have been missing a bulk from each delivery. When I report with GG I get the automatic REJECTED email which I need to look out for amongst my hundreds of emails. I need to stop cause it all makes angry and its much harder than it needs to be and they really couldn’t care less…. I’ll just add that local delivery guy has been as helpful as he can in the new circumstances and my issue is not with him
Metro Brisbane and G&G deliveries, as stated above, are often short bundles (and G&G always seem to not believe you are shorted a bundle and initially reject the claim or come back with “the delivery driver said he definately delivered the bundle” ). They are also often missing a couple of magazines or have an extra random one thrown in or the count of a particular title is short or over.
Absolutely useless and if you need to call them to try and rectify the issue you can sit on the phone for up to an hour or more.
Hi paul s, i have tried to call both G&G and followmont(brisbane). both blames each other. they are in a industry in which they dont care about us.
Followmont delivery drivers are most useless with no counting skills, we have often seen in most of the deliverys missing bundles & no replacement on same day.
We weren’t even made aware of the change to WAN doing the deliveries. We were lucky that the old courier mentioned it to us the day before it happened. This means our magazines arrive hours before we open, to an unsecured location that can occasionally be weather affected. Certainly less than ideal.
As for Gotch, we have mags missing from every single delivery. They seem to accept the odd mag here and there without quibbling, but when a bulk goes missing we always get told that the courier delivered it. And this is before the courier changed, so mags were being delivered while we were open, and were secure at all times. God knows what they’ll be like now!
Another morning, another lot of missing titles from bundles….and another morning of random double ups to replace missing magazines.
I’m guessing that they weigh a bundle and if its weight is correct, they don’t care about the specific content of the bundle.
The shortages get reported and replacements requested. The double ups will go in the bin, as i’m not wasting time reporting them
As publisher of a niche regional magazine, the timely delivery of each edition is critical with social media promo scheduling creating embarrassing situations for our regional newsagents. According to our distributor (wrapaway), once they are sent to the freight depot they have no idea when the consignments will be forwarded… it’s just not good enough!