STEELERS Digest delivery problem.

Do any of you who subscribe to Digest have trouble with late delivery? I have gotten 2 issues before games, week 1 and our bye week. All others have come either Monday or Tuesday after the Sunday game.

Spoke with Curtis publishing. They told me since I was in the state of Pa. I should receive the current issue the Friday before the game at the latest. I think my post master may be a Rats fan and just holding my issues to F with me. Just a guess.

Anyone else who lives in Pa and subscribes have trouble with late delivery?

 

Hello,

I am the Circulation Manager for Steelers Digest and I was just searching around online to see if any of our subscribers were posting about recent delivery delays, and sure enough, I came across this post.

We at Steelers Digest are certainly aware that PA subscribers (specifically) are having major issues receiving Steelers Digest on time this season. I am sure we have already explained this to you by telephone, but I would like to still explain here for anyone else that is having late delivery and wondering what is going on. Excuse the long post, I just want to be as thorough as I can and go over the issue as best as I can.

The US Postal Service has closed many distribution centers in PA this year, and the effect this is having is that the remaining distribution centers are left overwhelmed with all the traffic those previous centers were responsible for. Imagine if 10 police stations in your county closed down, leaving the remaining 5 (or however many, this is simply an example I'm drawing up) to handle all the crime in the county. This is very similar to what is going on with USPS, except to a much larger scale where it is thousands of pieces of mail we are talking about.

It's all quite ludicrous. For the past decade, we have always heard from subscribers in California, Washington, Utah, etc. far in the West that complain of slow delivery. Never have we had many complaints from subscribers within PA and nearby surrounding states. This season so far, it has been quite the opposite. We have heard from very few far-West subscribers (USPS has certainly a great job at improving periodicals delivery across the nation) but it just so happens that Pennsylvania, which has our largest subscriber base, is now being impacted tremendously by slow delivery. Unfortunately, other states will very likely be affected soon, as the USPS have more than 600 post office closures planned.

We, Steelers Digest, sadly have no control over how quickly the paper is delivered to our subscribers. We mail all editions out the morning after each game, with the exception of holidays. Our printer is in Indiana, PA and drop off the pallets of Steelers Digest at the central distribution center for Indiana, which is literally minutes away. The one thing we strongly urge our subscribers to do is to consistently contact your local postmaster and complain to them rather than to Steelers Digest. We have no problem with crediting you with additional issues towards your subscription until the problem is resolved, but please understand that complaining to us about slow delivery is not going to resolve the problem. No, this does not mean that we do not care. We certainly do. We would not have been around for more than 20 years without our readership. We do not want to lose our readership. I personally wish that the problem was on our end, as then we would have the ability to do something to rectify whatever the problem is.

I have personally spoken to several (5 or so) subscribers that have taken our advice and spoken to their postmasters, and immediately saw results the following week with improved delivery. The important thing that I must stress is that you speak to your area's postmaster, and not just whichever USPS rep you happen to speak to on the phone or at the front counter. I cannot comment on what exactly it is that the postmaster can do for you, as I obviously am not a postmaster that knows their process, but I can assure you that they can do something. I would gladly speak to any postmaster that needs more information about Steelers Digest; so do feel free to provide them with our contact number. We apologize, but we simply cannot reach out to every single postmaster in the nation, thus why we ask our subscribers to contact them as the problem can usually be resolved with a single conversation with them.

I don't like to generalize, but it seems that not many of our readers are actively online on Steelers forums like this, as this post seems to be the only one of its kind that I can find. It would be great if our readers can spread the word to any other readers they may know that are also having delivery problems. The best way to find out how to contact your postmaster is to call your nearest post office and ask them for the direct contact number for the local postmaster.

I hope that my post was of some clarification to what is going on, and if not, I apologize. Do feel free to contact me by PM for any further clarification, or simply continue a conversation in this thread so that others can follow along as well.

 

Albert,

I just want to say thank you for the detailed post and the level of customer service you provide. I am not a current subscriber to Steelers Digest mainly due to living in Iowa. But I appreciate it when someone is willing to go the extra mile and provide terrific customer service. I just wanted to say thank you!

James

 

Thank you for the kind words and approval of my post. The intent behind my post was to inform subscribers of why there are such bad mail delays going on, and the only currently "known" fix for the delay. I literally just spoke with our printers in Indiana, PA and have discovered something (with the help from a subscriber and their postmaster) that may be a major cause of the delays for a few dozen subscribers. I'll be following up on this if it adds up to anything.

I forgot to mention that another option that we (Curtis Publishing) are totally willing to offer is to switch you over to the online digital version of Steelers Digest with Zinio.com. If you have a full year print subscription left, we will give you more than that for your online subscription, as the digital subscription is naturally less costly. Especially seeing that you are active on this fine Steelers forum, it seems like a great option for the OP. It is readable from many mobile devices such as an iPhone/iPad/Kindle/any Android device, and it is very nicely implemented for such devices I must add. Whatever few subscribers out there that are reading through this thread can shoot me a PM if you want more details. I can get you all set up in time for the next week's issue.

 

Thank you Albert for your quick and detailed response. I have been a subscriber for many years and have spoken with Curtis Publishing reps many times over different issues.They have been nothing but polite and very helpful! You have a great crew there.I will be calling my postmaster in the a.m. to see if we can get this resolved.

Again thanks for your help!!

 

Typical Government program.

Business sends out the morning after each game (usually Monday) and subscriber being within the same state receives usually Monday or Tuesday after the next game is played.

And People trust these Bureaucrats to run the Health Care System?????????

 

You can't really put this all on the USPS. There have been attempts to modernize and streamline operations for decades. As they are a Quasi-Government organization, they don't get to just do what they want to improve or change services. Congress has over-all approval on the plans.

Back when email was getting off the ground, they tried to branch out into a delivery system with fees, but were held back. They also tried to leverage overnight delivery on par with FedEx and were shut down. Redundant centers were forced to stay open as well.

 

Got rid of the script years ago. True, I live on the west coast but when I feel my dollar ain't good enough for my inquiries, I walk away from any and all publications that I felt were gonna wet my whistle. While I had a hard time cutting my love for inked substance, I made friends with the fact that the Internet pretty much makes things irrelevant anyhow these days.

 

Thanks so much for your commendation. Curtis Publishing may be a much smaller company than many of our readers may think. We have a small staff that have been around long-term and are very experienced with the entire process; between graphic design, printing, mailing, database management (my primary duty), customer service, etc. The telephone customer service aspect is of course stressful (it would be for anyone) at busy times, but we get through it trying to never get disorderly with a customer.

USPS have definitely "done things" to improve periodicals, and it has proven to have success. The main recent change they've made is an "intelligent barcode" system that requires all large mailings to have special barcodes. These barcodes are read and sorted almost fully autonomously by their machines. At first, the system was a nightmare; their machines were shredding the mail pieces up. It has definitely made a difference however if Steelers Digest is a worthy indicator.

For the past 7 years (perhaps more, I've been here 7 years) we have had our mailers in PA send a freight shipment of Steelers Digest to states like CA, FL, etc. (the states that happen to have a much higher readership than others naturally due to much greater population density). This helped very much with the delivery to subscribers in those states because we completely skipped all the USPS sorting centers between PA and those states. As of earlier this year when the intelligent barcode kicked in, we have stopped those freight shipments and have not received any more complaints than usual from subscribers in those states.

So, while this new intelligent barcode system is definitely showing its colors, USPS has takenthe wrong direction in closing down so many facilities across the nation. It's essentially undoing all the work that the intelligent barcode system has accomplished! Why USPS took this approach is beyond me. I don't see how anyone can reason that reducing service tremendously to reduce costs is the way to improve the future of your organization.

Just a ludicrous fact to bring up: USPS has to reserve a certain million dollar figure monthly to ensure retirement benefits for future employees that are not even born yet, that will retire in more than 60 years! I believe this practice is being enforced by the government and I can certainly see it playing a big part of why USPS is doing so horribly; that is a whole lot of revenue being "expended" into reserves.

 

They are slowly catching up. They used to be extremely late but they are getting better or more timely. I just got the one about the Vikings game. Hopefully I'll get the Ravens game before we play the Raiders.

 

I don't even try for the print issue. I'm currently in Japan, so it goes through the Military Post Office system...

I did have the Zinio edition, but got sick and tired of it showing up as available and then not downloading (iPhone). Lots of issues with the Zinio app.

 

I'm not sure if the iPhone would be able to, but you can also access your issues via Zinio.com; you don't absolutely need to use the app. The app definitely makes navigation easier, however, and it's very possible and likely that your issues were back when the Zinio app first released. Zinio reveals platform statistics to us and we have quite a high percentage of readers that are on iOS!

Also just a heads up: I have finally gotten USPS to get us set up correctly to allow us to submit publication watch requests online. I have tried to do this for years which is pathetic, but I have just submitted a few dozen requests that will hopefully get something done.

Myronwemissyinz, it would be great if you shoot me a PM with your name and address. I'd love to submit a publication watch for your issues and follow-up on whether the USPS really does anything with these. Steelers5859 and anyone else that is having delivery problems, you should all PM me as well. You can also call our office and ask for me, because I can see why one would be skeptical to provide this information over a private message to some forum member.