First stop Walmart. Always a pleasant experience to visit the people who gave us the assurance that everything in their Stores would be produced in the USA or was it China? Anyway, customer service aside, I set out for a mere 7 Items and found that they were out of stock on 4 of them. Real hard to find things like Tea Bags / Dry Dog Food / Canned Dog Food and Sherry. Now, you should understand that this is not not suggesting there were no Tea Bags/Dog Food etc. merely that they did not have the Brands to which they themselves introduced us. And so a relatively fruitless 43 minutes later I set off for another local Supermarket
I will not dwell on the charity collection outside or the misspelling of their sign (maybe that guy with his Dibplombas got lucky?). Albertsons had what I needed and so back to She who...etc.
While I had been out Jo had been speaking to the nice people at our local paper who earlier in the week had sent us a Renewal Notice bearing the highlighted words "NOW DUE" . They were pursuing us for payment of the continuing subscription. NOW DUE seems to be something of a movable feast because the existing subscription does not expire until December 17th. However the young lady seemed very concerned that if they were to send out another revised Renewal Notice (rather than pay her over the phone now), It might not be possible to pay in time for the expiration date which is 2 days short of 1 whole month away! Why a revised Renewal Notice you ask? Well, a year ago come December 17th, my beloved paid the account for 2010 a total of $69.00 incl.tax and this year they want $218.40 for a similar period in 2011or an increase of 316% over the current year! Some renegotiation followed and eventually an offer was made of 8 weeks of Sunday Editions Only at $35.00 plus tax ($38.41) or $4.80 per issue.
So we will not be renewing our subscription to our local newspaper. If one of us wants the Sunday edition we will walk down the street and buy it for the same $1.50 per issue that every non subscriber pays. As for the reasons behind this outrageous and unjustified increase in prices at a time when the Economy is in the gutter, apparently they no longer offer a business discount and they want subscribers to pay for access to the Web Edition whether wanted or not. In fairness my wife was offered a subscription excluding the online edition - it was the same price!
For the record, The New York Times is available at $3.75 per week (Sundays only) The Wall Street Journal at $2.29 per week (Mon thru Sat) The LA Times is the equivalent of $2.99 per week (Sundays only)
The local paper has been delivered to this address almost since my Mom & Pop in Law moved here in the Fifties. A time when the paper had a different name. Sad to break that 50+ year record but reality needs to be visited on the local newapaper as it already has on the rest of us.
I leave you with this thought.
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
