The Irish Times delivers its newspaper to your door on Saturday morning if you pay €1 extra per paper for the privilege. I decided to give Mr. Waffle a subscription to Saturday’s Irish Times for Christmas. Like all the best presents, there was something in it for me also.
The first Saturday of the year was January 1. Did the Irish Times come? No, it did not. During the week, I called. Although I had experienced no difficulty in requesting and paying for my subscription, no one was available to answer my call about actually receiving it. They said that they would call me back, if I left a message. I left a message. Did they call me back? No, they did not.
The second Saturday of the year was January 8. Did the Irish Times come? No, it did not. I had thought that New Year’s day might have been an aberration. Clearly not. I emailed on Saturday, January 8, politely but firmly asking where my paper might be. On Wednesday, which I think you will agree, is not immediately, I received the following reply:
Hi Anne,
Sorry for the delay getting back to you and for the missed delivery last
Saturday. Our driver had some difficulty locating your address.I have now found it on google maps and will pass directions to him. He
will make sure that your delivery is made next Saturday and each
Saturday after that. I have credited your account for these 2 days. This
will add 2 additional deliveries onto your subscription when it is
expires.Please give me a call if there are any further problems.
Thanks
Does it strike you that someone might have looked at Google maps at some point after 17 December when they took the money from my account and before January 12 by which point they had missed two deliveries? Never mind, we soldier on. My constant harping about this has come to the attention of the children and now every time we pass blameless Evening Herald vendors on the street, Michael asks, “Is that the man who took your money and didn’t give you your paper?”
The third Saturday of the year was January 16. Did the Irish Times come? No, it did not. I have sent an email to my contact. I await hearing.
In the interim, I might advise strongly against going for the Irish Times delivery service which at €1 a pop is expensive and, worse, doesn’t appear to actually deliver the promised service. And it’s not as though I didn’t already have many reasons to hate the Irish Times.
That’s utterly ridiculous. If they offer a delivery service they should be capable of delivering to pretty much anywhere, not to mind what I am assuming is a perfectly ordinary street address in the capital. Irish efficiency strikes again.
Are the kids still too young for a paper round? You could undercut the Irish Times delivery rate and still turn in a reasonable profit if the three of them could cover a big enough area.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder?
I’m sure my sister had a paper round in London aged 7 because I remember having to fill in for her when she couldn’t do it. Seems entirely implausible now though.
Those were the days!
Have decided that it would be cheaper and better to send the children but unfortunately too dangerous with the main road. Still no reply from the organ of record.
Tell you what. We’ll scare up a pot of tea and something sustaining in the cake category, and you can grouse about the Irish Times not delivering your paper at all, and I will grouse about my water delivery service that leaves two large, round, handle-less 40 lb bottles of same, on my porch and expects me, who has already had surgery on one shoulder for a torn rotator cuff, to lug both bottles indoors, lift them up nearly four feet off the ground and turn them upside down onto the dispenser without causing an inundation or GBH. I cannot seem to get the little feather brain that answers the phone to realize that the reason I signed up for their service was so that “High-Dollar Trainers” who runs the delivery truck (who is younger than the car I drive, BTW) and who tosses these bottles about like footballs would bring them indoors and put them on the dispenser for me.
Other salient fact is surely that ‘Hi Anne’ is not the ideal way to begin that communication …
Same thing happened to me with my Saturday subscription. They will get it right eventually. Just keep complaining so that they add the extra days on. It does arrive good and early when it does come.
WOL, water may be worse but at least it comes.
QoP, is that bad? We’re very informal here in the land of economic freefall.
Hmm. Isn’t really a spectacular service, is it then? I called today (no reply to my email) and said that if it doesn’t come on Saturday our relationship is over and I want my money back.
And???
FINALLY, came on Saturday. I know that the IT is just stringing me along.