Every week I hear another story of problems with newspaper delivery to retailers: late deliveries, missed deliveries and more.
The most recent issue relates to a regional Victorian town where the local newsagent no longer receives newspapers in time for when they open at 7am. The delivery contractor delivers papers to another retailer two minutes away from the newsagent, then does home deliveries and, finally, to the local newsagent.
Often, deliveries to the newsagent are short, sometimes less than half what they can sell.
Contact from the newsagent to News Corp and Nine Media have resulted in no resolution. It appears they have either no interest in resolution or no ability to direct the delivery contractor to deliver the papers when they deliver to the cafe two minutes away.
The situation is ridiculous, petty.
I wonder if the disinterest of the publishers has anything to do with the newsagent handing their run back a year or so ago. If that is the case, it’s petty. It that is not the case, the newspaper publishers have a broken system that they appear unwilling or unable to fix. Either way, they appear uninterested in the issue and its resolution.
In the meantime, local newspaper readers miss out. Maybe that is what the publishers want. Who knows?
This specific situation does seem to have an easy resolution, if the newspaper publishers want the resolution. The delivery contractor could be directed to deliver to the two sub agents – a cafe and the newsagent – at the same time, as they are two minutes from each other.
Years ago, newspaper publishers were demanding of newsagents in terms of delivery times and accuracy. Threats were made. newsagents complied rather than risk losing their business. Today, it’s different. The newspaper contractor in this story has demonstrated no interest in resolving the delivery time, quantity and contact issues – it’s not possible to contact them during the day to resolve issues.
Again, newspaper customers are those that miss out. Newsagency staff are impacted too as they are the front line dealing with customer complaints.
If only News Cop and Nine Media cared about the mental health of newsagency staff and cared about their newspaper reader customers.