The WSJ Delivery Conundrum

In Silicon Valley our day often started with reading the Journal.  We were Journal subscribers for many years, and like clockwork, it appeared in our driveway each and every morning six days a week.  Over a year ago, we cancelled our subscription for a variety of reasons. 

The Journal, however, had other ideas.  The paper kept coming, day after day, week after week.  We tried calling to "really" cancel, but since our subscription was already canceled we didn't even have an account anymore.  So the paper piled up.  This was not so much of a problem except when we would go on a trip out of town.  We didn't want a pile of papers which collected in our driveway and provided an indicator to everyone that the house was unoccupied.  Nothing we did could keep the paper from coming.  

Sometimes I felt like Mickey in the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice scene, but instead of a never ending stream of water buckets, we had a never ending stream of Wall Street Journals.  My wife finally came up with a clever solution.  We should resubscribe to the Journal and then put the paper on vacation hold.  Sure enough, it worked like a charm.  The paper stopped coming.  We then tried to fool the Journal and cancelled our subscription at the end of the vacation hold.  But they were too clever for us, the day after the vacation hold the paper started arriving yet again.  We did this two or three times, and always at the end of our trip the paper started coming.

This was not such a great problem after all, we did love reading the paper and we had a very large recycling container.  However, when we started to plan our move to LaGrange, we realized that having the paper pile up in front of the house after we moved could be a problem.  I suggested to our realtor that we advertise that one of the features of our home was that it came with a lifetime subscription to the Wall Street Journal, but that idea was quickly vetoed.

Again it was my wife who came up with the solution.  She had saved the self addressed envelope our paper deliver person had left during the holiday season hoping for a tip.  Having tried everything else, my wife suggested that we send the deliver person a "tip" along with a note thanking them for their many years of deliver service and ask the to stop delivery since we were leaving the area.  Much like tipping the Mariachi band at a Mexican restaurant to stop playing, I tipped the delivery person to make the paper go away.  And like at the Mexican restaurant, the delivery magically stopped.

When we got to LaGrange we decided to restart home newspaper delivery.  I first called the New York Times and was told that unfortunately there was no home delivery of the Times in LaGrange.  The best they could do was a mail delivery of the Sunday paper (on Tuesday) along with a digital subscription.  I then called the Journal and they were happy to inform me that they indeed had home delivery in LaGrange and my home was on a delivery route.  I subscribed and looked forward to the paper the next morning.

I got up the next morning, went out to the driveway, and searched in vain for the paper.  Thinking that perhaps it was an initialization problem, I reasoned that of course it would appear the next day.  Unfortunately it never arrived the next day or the day after.  We were going on a trip the next week, so I called the Journal to both lodge a delivery complaint and put on a vacation hold.  They were very apologetic, promised to credit me for the missing papers and they assured me the paper would appear when we returned from our trip.

Of course, when we returned there was no paper.  I now started a daily call campaign to customer service.  Each call was the same.  I would tell them the paper was not delivered, they would apologize, tell me they would send a message to the delivery department, and promise "tomorrow" it would arrive.  I would ask them to check yet again to be sure they delivered the paper to my address and each time they assured me that they did.  

After a week of no paper, next time I called I asked to speak to a supervisor.  I asked them to just call the delivery people and find out what was going on.  They told me that the only thing they could do was send a message to home delivery.  They had no way of actually calling and speaking to someone.

The next morning I got a call back from the supervisor asking if my paper had been delivered.  It had not.  They said they would give me a call every morning to see if the problem had been resolved. Ten minutes later I got a call from the local delivery company who assured me that the carrier had my address and would deliver the paper.

The paper never came that day or any day since.  I never got another call from the supervisor.

Seems somewhat ironic:  In Silicon Valley I could not stop the Journal and here in LaGrange I can't get it to start.  I look forward to getting the Wall Street Journal someday soon.