Door to door newspaper sales

Someone came to my home yesterday trying to give me a free copy of the Detroit News and to also sell me a subscription.

I have never seen this before. Do other papers do this regularly?

I must admit we had a fun exchange.

Saleslady: Would you like a free copy of the Detroit News.
Me: No thanks
Saleslady: May I ask if you subscribe to the newspaper?
Me: No I don't, not any more.
Saleslady: Would you like to subscribe to the Detroit News?
Me: Are you going to deliver it every day?
Saleslady: No.
Me: I'm not interested then.
Saleslady: We will deliver it three days a week.
Me: What about the other four days a week.
Saleslady:You can read our Web site at no charge.
Me: Why wouldn't I just do that every day then?
Saleslady: ummm uhhhh ummmm
Me: Yeah, I don't want the paper, thanks.

It sort of sucks that it has come to this, but honestly, after they stopped every day home delivery, what's the point?

 

I did it for the Arizona Republic as a kid. They just hire some adult loser who can't hold a day job to supervise pre-teens. In hindsight, it looks like it was ripe job for creeps. But at least I didn't get molested.

 

Lots of papers do this, especially now that they can't phone solicit because of the Do-Not-Call rules.

 

Wow.
It is sad. But you pointed out the obvious question. Why would anybody take them up on a 3 day a week offer??

 

Our management told us that we are biting the bullet to keep publishing the ad-barren Monday and Tuesday editions just because they want people to retain the habit of reading it every day. If you miss a day, they probably won't mind missing other days.

 

Finally, management does something that makes sense.

 

The DMN in their recent crooked heyday was selling weekend subscriptions and throwing "bonus editions" on Mondays and Thursdays so they could count them as weekday circulation.