Late Saturday Papers

Leader Disaster Again (ho hum)

We were warned on Friday that the Saturday Leader was going to be extremely large and to make plans to handle it. Why we are transporting thousands of papers from the press site out of town to our store is another story.

Unfortunately the management did not pass the message on to their staff or did not make their own plans to handle it. We had to employ an extra person and engage another vehicle to handle the situation (advance planning!)

The Saturday papers were not available for hours after the normal time and when we eventually got them, they were poorly bundled. Our delivery papers were not available either, and our driver had to wait for hours to get some to begin deliveries. We have to pay to have these rolled for us but still go out of town to collect them!

In our business any time lost at the start just makes downstream tasks late or at worst, impossible. When it was obvious that a better plan of action was required by the publisher, it is most annoying that we bear the brunt from customers plus huge additional costs, despite the fact we only get a small portion of the cover price. Is starting earlier too difficult to work out? There has to be someone in their management who can resolve the more obvious and avoidable problems that keep recurring.

Maxine and Peter

SMH Disaster (again)

Delivery Failure

Our delivery driver waited and waited for the Heralds to arrive on Friday. Eventually he gave up and went home. He had other commitments to meet. This was the second Friday in a row that the Herald truck was unreasonably late.

Unfortunately when we are waiting for the truck to arrive (at 4am) there is often no information available to help us with contingency planning. At that time in the morning there is no-one to phone and no update to messages. If the truck arrives after 4am, we have the likelyhood of late deliveries. When it is past 6.30am before the truck arrives, it is impossible to start wrapping for delivery and facing the increasing traffic so late in the morning.

Bad decisions like too many inserts, holding trucks back for a relative handful of minor papers, ongoing production problems, etc, etc, etc, are creating huge problems for us. The frustrating thing is we have absolutely no control over such factors.

Those who did not get a chance to call into the shop and collect their Herald were given a credit for the non delivery. This was about the only course left for us at the time.

Lets hope it doesn't occur again and the Herald gets its act into gear. This is quite unacceptable and provides a huge amount of stress that we definitely don't need.

Maxine and Peter