The Australian Financial Review did not arrive at the newsagency a couple of days ago.
We let the distributor know, and gave them the number of the shop for contact.
An hour later, someone from the distributor called a different number, a mobile for someone not at the shop and not listed as a contact, to advise they didn’t;lt know what happened, there were no spare copies and that we would have to lodge a credit request with the publisher and not them.
To put in the credit request we have to log in to the publisher portal and put in a claim.
What a broken process and waste of time. It should have all been dealt with in one call or, better still, notification via a distributor website rather than what happened.
So out of date.
So, yeah, this is another example of newspaper publishers using poor business practices to steal time from newsagents.
A modest investment in technology could improve this situation considerably. It would save time in newsagencies and help them improve customer service. I expect it would save time in newspaper distribution businesses too.