The Boston Globe newspaper is confronting an issue with the distribution of the print version of the newspaper to all of its home subscribers. Since the Globe shifted to a new vendor on Dec. 28, several subscribers have not received their copies of the paper. The Globe has taken measures to resolve this issue, including involving other newspaper staff to improve distribution.
The Globe appointed a new vendor to deliver all of the printed copies of the newspaper. The new vendor, ACI Media Group, commenced its operations on Dec. 28. It had a new team of 600 people that were supposed to go on assigned routes to the homes of subscribers to deliver the newspapers. As this team had not gone on these routes before, the team experienced trouble in being able to make the correct deliveries, according to CNN Money.
The result was that hundreds of subscribers did not receive their copies of the newspaper since that time. A number of these subscribers then started calling the Globe office to lodge their complaints. The Globe customer care and phone system ended up having to deal with a volume of calls that the system was not designed to handle in the first place. The Globe has strengthened its customer care and support unit since that time, according to the Huffington Post.
This situation appears to have improved greatly in recent days. The Globe has said that it will refund money to home subscribers that did not receive their copies of the newspapers on those specific days.
The Globe has nearly 115,000 home delivery subscribers for the print version on weekdays. For the Sunday edition, that number goes up to 205,000, according to USA Today.
A professor of journalism, Bill Mitchell, was quoted as saying: "(Considering that the bulk of the revenue for papers like the Globe still comes from print) ... it's mystifying that the Globe would move ahead with such a shift with apparently so little oversight of the new vendor," according to CNN Money.
