There has been a dramatic increase lately of phone calls received by the Houston Herald from people who didn’t receive their papers in the mail.
And I mean dramatic; like several every day and sometimes way more than that. The surge has been so great that I know for sure that multiple people reading this have been a victim of the circumstance and others know someone else who has been.
Interestingly, most of the calls are usually from customers in the Cabool and Mountain Grove areas, although there have been some from other locations.
Not surprisingly, the people calling are often quite frustrated because their routines have been disrupted. And sometimes they’re even more frustrated because it has happened more than once.
We who produce the product share that frustration.
That’s not how it’s supposed to work, and we understand that completely.
But here’s the deal: It’s our business to produce the newspaper and hopefully do so in a way that is at least somewhat satisfactory to the folks who choose to spend some of their precious money on it, and we’re not at all interested in withholding it from anyone.
We want you to be a Houston Herald subscriber, and we want you to receive your copy in a timely manner. With that in mind, we meet our deadlines every week and we bundle and label all of the physical material with conscientious care and concern, and then take it to the Houston Post Office to be picked up by a transport truck. For the record, the folks at the Houston Post Office are great to work with; the problem isn’t originating there, but at other area United States Postal Service locations.
Basically, even if we do everything in our part of the process with the utmost attention to excellence and professionalism, there’s a point at which we’re forced to turn the rest of the job over to the USPS. And at that point, there’s nothing we can do but hope the people in that organization perform their portion of the task by delivering the goods when and where they’re supposed to be delivered. Of course, when that doesn’t happen, the frustration arises and we hear about it.
The bottom line is, we really, truly and whole-heartedly want everyone who subscribes to the Houston Herald to always get their copy on time, and we would never do anything to hinder that. But the reality is, once we’ve done our part, it’s out of our hands.
Yes, the Post Office handles a big load. Yes, the Post Office handle all shapes and sizes of mail. And yes, the Post Office works through pretty much any and all natural challenges, like major snowstorms.
But most people have heard about some of the organization’s problems, and many have first-hand experience with them.
Sure, this time of year has to be an utter nightmare for the Postal Service, primarily because the exponential increase in online ordering has caused the formerly demure Christmas-by-mail entity to grow into an unbridled monster. But it’s unlikely that our little situation has much (or anything) to do with that, because it began in earnest months ago before Christmas stuff began showing up in Walmart.
No, I think it’s safe to say it’s a “systemic” and personnel-related matter that goes much deeper than loads, numbers and hours in a day. That said, I don’t know what the answer to the Herald’s dilemma is, but I know what it isn’t.
Anyway, rest assured that we in the Houston Herald family will continue to do everything in our power to provide subscribers with what many of them would perceive as a quality product each and every week. With that in mind, beginning this week we’re making direct deliveries to local Post Offices where service seems to have been an issue.
Again, we’ll do everything within our power. But what we won’t do is what we can’t do, and that’s control things that we can’t control. Please keep that in mind the next time you don’t receive your paper on time.
All we can really say is thank you for your understanding, thank you for your patience, and thank you for reading.
Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.
