TKC EXCLUSIVE AND BREAKING NEWS!!! KANSAS CITY STAR READERS RAGE OVER SKYROCKETING SUBSCRIPTION COSTS!!!
One of the most effective ways for a company to go out of business is to charge higher fees for a product with declining demand.
With the exception of Adele . . . They're mostly giving CDs away now . . . Meanwhile, The Kansas City Star continues to bilk its customers according to some of their last remaining loyalists. Here's the word from an AWESOME TKC TIPSTERS and his well-trained doggie:
"Just got my latest monthly KC Star subscription bill. It went up from $28.03 to $35.38 per month, more than a 26% increase. And they still won't deliver any closer than 3/4 mile from my house. And even then, they'd fail to deliver about 10 times a month and never credit my account. I trained my dog to bring the newspaper each morning, but Winslow may soon be out of luck."
Is it worth it for yesterday's Internets headlines?
You decide . . .
The carriers in my area are unreliable and late. I don't know whether it's the carrier's fault or the Star's, but I've given up on the Star.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'd miss the paper, the Star would promise a redelivery, but it never happened. And neither did any credits for missed papers.
There's such a thing as a tipping point, and the Star went over the cliff of business viability quite some time ago.
ReplyDeleteFire almost all of your best and most experienced reporters.
Fill the paper with stories from wire services and other papers around the country.
Reduce the size of the paper and the number of local stories.
Charge more to the decreasing number of actual subscribers.
Be so desperate for staff that you appoint an advertising guy as publisher and have just two people on the editorial board.
Demonstrate an inability to have the paper delivered or to credit subscribers accounts.
Be so proud of your content that you offer it online for three months for 99 cents.
Would the last person to leave 1729 Grand please turn out the lights.
The Star is now just a part of city hall. The city will not allow them to go broke, they will throw more taxpayer funds at them.
ReplyDeleteThis report is a lie.
ReplyDeleteNo one is subscribed to the Star. They just keep delivering the papers, anyway.
"And they still won't deliver any closer than 3/4 mile from my house."
ReplyDeleteRiiiiiiight. That makes sense.
It's one thing to make things up without any proof, but you could make them believable as a courtesy.
Scan in your invoice Supet Dave and post it here then maybe I'll believe you.
You have to call to cancel. I did yesterday. I was asked by the offshore customer service representative why I was cancelling. Price? Delivery?
ReplyDeleteI said mostly delivery. I was asked if I was the person who had the authority to make the decision to drop the paper. WTH? Then I was asked if someone else in the house would be willing to pay.
Upon being advised that I owed $10.67 I told the call taker to send a bill after they deducted all of the undelivered papers.
7:56 some people live on long dead end roads and the carriers won't drive down them. Hell the fools have trouble hitting my driveway from 6 feet away. But due to this raise, I'm really contemplating letting them practice much longer.
ReplyDeleteI got the same kind of endless dumb questions and runaround when I phoned Time-Warner to drop them. It's standard corporate procedure. By the time I hung up, the lady on the phone had made three increasingly better offers in an attempt to keep me on board. The slow death of obsolete media is often excruciating and never pretty. I feel sorry for all the people who have lost or will lose their jobs.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why newspapers don't follow the lead of the Wall Street Journal. You can read it on a tablet, computer, e reader anywhere, no pop ups, no advertising, you just pay for content. I don't see how they can justify home delivery much longer when so few people take the paper. Our carrier drives down the street at 35 MPH and maybe 1 house in 5 gets the paper.
ReplyDeletePerhaps when the Star folds some other entity will try this business model.
if you call them up to complain about the price they will make you a much lower offer to keep your subscription. I didn't have to argue too much to get the proposed increase completely negated and the price to remain the same.
ReplyDelete8:06 - that's right - under the Star's Terms of Service, you can't cancel your subscription just by not paying. They will continue to deliver the paper (sporadically) and charge you for it. To cancel you have to give them actual notice.
ReplyDeletethe carrier just drives down the street and just drops the paper out the car window without even trieing to hit the driveway just leaves it laying in the gutter. as I take the Examiner I get the sunday paper free anyway. the carrier for the Examiner gets the paper to my front door and you can talk to a real person when you call the Examiner.
ReplyDeleteDrop the star. You won't regret it.
ReplyDeleteTOP PHOTO
ReplyDeleteNewspaper = Kitty litter
I'd like to watch that kitty give itself a tongue bath.
Why would anyone pay for the Star when 90% of it is Associated Press stories? Check the lead on every story and you'll see few local Star writers. Why pay for Associated Press stories in the Star when they're free all over the web?
ReplyDeleteYou can do a lot with $35/month if you apply that money to a Groupon instead of the Star!
I have to walk eight miles to get my paper and it's only one page and costs $70 a day and I cannot read
ReplyDeleteWhy walk when you can take the streetcar? Of course you can't read, you graduated from the KCSD.
ReplyDeleteThe same people who bitch about the Star are probably the same bunch complaining that they can not get parts for their Edsels. Listen up folks. The newspaper is legacy technology period.All the adds and coupons are available online and the half dozen stories that are not from the wire are pretty much chump crap anyway. Learn to chance, remove the Star from your media budget and move into this century. You wont miss a thing.
ReplyDelete^^^^Ford parts will fit Edsels.
ReplyDeleteI have taken the KC Star for 46 years. Back "in the day" we had the KC Times in the morning and the KC Star in the afternoon. They were both excellent papers. But time and economy and management has taken it's toll on the quality, it sucks.
ReplyDeleteMy carrier is dependable except when the KC Star tells them I am one day late paying my bill. You have to get rude with "Chuck" on the phone because he doesn't understand english.
The reason my payments are sometimes late is that I get a bill with a due date and call the day BEFORE to pay the bill (of course arguing that I will only pay what I paid last time and no increase). But they throw an advertizing supplement paid for by ads and take $2 for each out of your subscription and then try to charge you $5 to restart the subscription. I've thought about calling KS AG's office and putting in a consumer complaint on the practice.
Yeah, Brownback probably doesn't like the Star either so teh AG would go after that one.
ReplyDeleteMy subscription ran out in April after 25 years of taking the paper. I did not choose to renew. They kept delivering it for three months, even though I didn't choose to renew and didn't authorize them to deliver the paper. (Half the time it didn't show up anyway). When we called to ask about getting the grocery ads delivered in the mail, they told us we owed $60 for the three months they delivered the paper after our subscription ended. What? Of course, we aren't paying up. However they did say if we ever want to restart the paper in the future (Not likely), we will have to pay the $60 that we supposedly "owe". What a scam!
ReplyDeleteLiberal Editorial board rehashes same subjects. Lazy writers writing same things ove and over. Yea, we get it Yael - you hate Brownback. Louis is everything is white Guy's fault. Don't renew- you won't regret it for a minute
ReplyDelete