Check out the email to distribution newsagents in Queensland from News Limited:
Dear Newsagent
We recently discovered holiday stops from the subscriber website were not being transferred into our system from November 17th to December 16th 2012.
As a result of this problem you did not receive any notification from News Queensland to suspend newspapers for some customers during this time.
The credit that was to be applied to your account for the papers that would have been delivered during this period was unfortunately debited to your account dated week ending 23/12/2012. To rectify this, your account for the week ending 30/12/2012 will have two credits applied, the first to reverse the incorrectly debited amount, the second to apply the appropriate credit.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any queries please contact your area sales manager or Circulation on 1800 648 591.
Circulation
News Queensland
I feel for the newsagents and the challenges the News Limited failure would have caused for them.
Not just one major stuff up, but two! Is that place being run by a bunch of amateurs or kiddies?
How do they really expect to administer T2020 if they can’t organize stops and starts, or know that a debit to an account is a charge???
Hopeless!
Did this also happen in NSW? While waiting at the counter in my local newsagent just before Christmas, I overheard a similar problem. Very nicely handled and delivery customer satisfied.
I am amazed at the behavior of this Agent.
I am sure that some Computer software companies actually place these one off stops and starts in the system themselves in an “overnight” processing update.
It concerns me that this image is in the market place….
Australian Family Tree Connections,
Yes there are some problems in NSW. I am still waiting for some prepaid Teachers subscriptions which i have chased News on the subscribers behalf. The offical line i was given is to not deliver any papers without a offical start from News. As one teacher said to me, she feels riped off as she has prepaid for delivery and News have failed, so she wants her money back.
Wait untill ACA find out about this newspaper saga , oh maybe next year they could run it
Are News having an IT crisis? In Victoria we are now enjoying iServices, what an an
absolute basket-case of a website! Never before in the history of human endeavour have so many clicked so often for so little.
May that’s so true! The only website that has reduced me to tears out of sheer frustration! Maybe Tower IT staff should take it on.
May I love your comment.
Seriously though Mark, have you experienced iServices? If it wasn’t so sad & damaging it would be hilarious.
It would be nice to think that News Ltd carried out all of the usual activities of system development before embarking on the iServices project from establishing user requirements through to the various stages of testing before deploying it to the masses.
The end result would suggest that this one moved from a good idea to let’s go very quickly with bugger the users as the intended and achieved result.
One of the most infuriating aspects (and there are many) is that if you have the misfortune to have to ring customer service in Adelaide with a query, they inevitably redirect you back to Melbourne because we can’t access the system.. At least the circulation people in Melbourne do their best to assist but with neither of these groups able to access iServices you have to wonder (or perhaps not) about the thought and mentality of whoever was responsible for this disaster.
On the one occasion I found someone in Adelaide willing to help she informed me that we should have had training on the system from the Area Manager – you know him, he/she is the mythical first contact agents have who never leaves the hallowed precincts of Southbank and the person who collects unsold promotional gear which has cluttered up my shed for the last four years awaiting a visit!
I-Services – What a dog of a system! On 1 occasion now we have been delivered NO PAPERS! Today we came very close to the same happening. The first time although our “draw changes” appeared as approved, somehow the draw had changed back to zero. A nightmare ensued. Yesterday we checked our “draw” for Sunday (You can only check the actual draw on the day prior) Our draw had reverted back to News Ltd projected amount of Suns which was around 700 too few! Holiday season here and its frantic! We made numerous calls to Area Manager, Circulation manager, Circulation department, anyone we could think of. Circulation dept was closed, Messages left on all the other phones – NO REPLY! Finally we were able to contact the freighter who at 9pm last night was able to contact someone at News Ltd factory & we were delivered 500 extra papers. This morning someone from the Circulation department called to answer the messages that we had left there yesterday. He was unaware that we had managed to get the extra papers. We have still not had any replies from the other 3 people that we left urgent messages for on their mobile phones. No surprises there.
Very scary that there is not 1 point of contact after 2pm on Saturday.What happens if, as in our case something goes terribly wrong? BTW we havent seen our area manager for years either Jim.
The guy that called this morning said that this had happened today in a number of other Vic tourist destinations. At 7.15am today he assured us that we would be receiving the correct uploaded amount tomorrow (Monday). As our draw still appeared way too low on i-services we called back only to be told by the same person that we were getting the low amount around 600 less than we ordered. It had again reverted to the projected amount. WHAT A DEBACLE!
Interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this sort of problem? We of very little faith will now be phoning News everyday to confirm our supply 😛
We are distribution only and therefore leave earlier in the day than those newsagents who also have a retail outlet.
As you are unable to see what supplies you are receiving the next day until sometime in the afternoon, it is not uncommon for me to allocate supplies to my subagents with no idea how many papers I am receiving.
Yesterday this resulted in us realising after half of our subagent bundles had been made up and delivered that we had 400 papers less than what we were expecting. We slashed the quantities for the remaining subagents who likely all sold out mid morning, while the first half who did not share the pain are likely to have had returns, in some cases possibly excessive returns.
Today we have about 350 papers more than what we were expecting. These papers will sit in our warehouse and not be delivered to anyone, they will simply be returned.
All HWT have to do is give us a guide to what we are to receive the next day. This means we can allocate supplies with confidence that we will not have major issues in the morning when we don’t have time to address them. If the final figure is increased or decreased 1-2% from the estimate I can live with that.
I am not hanging around all day when everything is done sometimes by 10 or 11am just for HWT final figures.
We ran out of Suns at 9am this morning, because News cut our holiday order by 30%. Anybody at News listening out there? Our orders were all placed last week to allow for tourists in town but hey, what would we know, we just work here. Every day. For 13 years. Yep, we know nothing, iServices is great and News is smart.