Saying goodbye

After having a home delivery subscription to the local newspaper for several years, Jennifer and I decided today to cancel our subscription. It was a fairly easy decision to make, yet it is still a bit distasteful.

There's a bit of history to this. In the past year or so, the newspaper doubled its subscription price without warning. At that time, like many folks, I called to cancel my subscription. They must have had lots of calls, because after only a little bit of negotiating, I was able to renew my subscription at a much more reasonable rate. Today, we received a renewal notice in the mail, and decided to take a look at subscribing to the digital-only edition. We figured that this would be more cost effective. Jennifer did a bit of research online, and found out that the digital edition price was about 60% of the home delivery (which includes the digital edition). However, after the six-month "introductory" period, the price shoots up by about 50%, making it only slightly less (~15%) than home delivery. Then, we factor in our delivery person. We've never met this person, but every year around Christmas she puts a Christmas card in one of our December papers. The card does not have a note thanking us for being loyal subscribers, but rather is a note asking for a "gift". Maybe I'm missing something here, but a gift is generally given because of a special occasion, or because you want to help someone out, or as a reward for doing something special.

Our delivery person seems to reward those who give the "gift" and punish those who don't. I'm guessing our neighbors give the "gift", because their paper is almost always in the same place on their driveway, while ours will be anywhere within a 20ft radius (approx. 6 meters). After many years, after "expressing our concerns" about our paper delivery, this year she finally started to properly put a second plastic bag on the newspaper when it was rainy or snowy. Prior to that, we probably had to call the newspaper around three-six times every summer and winter to get a replacement paper because the miswrapped one was water-logged from rain or melting snow. And, if you don't call before a certain time, you can't get your paper replaced- although your account does get credited. In fact, it seems as if  you have to call them to do anything regarding your subscription.

And so, as of 14 October, 2013, we bid a fond and final adios to the Chicago Tribune. 20th century pricing, delivery and customer service no longer cut it with us.

Data-related news: my responsibilities at work have changed a bit, and now include programming. More on the situation as it develops.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.