Now Here's a Different Thing: Someone Is Upset With the Des Moines Register. But At Least the Paper Hopes You're 'Full of Life'

I can't imagine anyone being upset with the Des Moines Register about something, but evidently that's the case.

One of my readers who was scanning the Internet sent me this e-mail:

"Don't ask me how this showed up in a recent Google search, but it was pretty funny:"

A rant against the
circulation department of
the Des Moines Register

The Des Moines Register wasn't delivered to our house on Sunday.

When JEM Distributors, the outfit to which the Register outsources delivery for the greater Iowa City area, took over a while back, they sent a letter to subscribers informing us that we should report delivery failures to the Customer Service department at the Register (and not, of course, to JEM Distributors, which can't be bothered with such minutiae as customer service).

So I called Customer Service, selected the appropriate option from their voice-jail menu, and got a recorded announcement telling me that, because of an unusually large volume of calls, no customer-service representative was available to hear my complaint. However, the recording said that if I wanted to wait on hold, my call would be answered in the order received. I held on, listening to a constant stream of commercials for the Register superimposed on elevator music. After some minutes, I was indeed connected with a customer-service representative, who first delivered another commercial (“Des Moines Register Circulation Department. This is [name]. What can I do to make your day more ‘Full of Life (TM)’?”). She heard my report, said that the Register regretted the error, and explained that, since Grinnell does not have “redelivery service,” I probably would not receive a paper that day, but that she would arrange to have one delivered with Monday's paper.

Alas, Monday's issue arrived unaccompanied by Sunday's.

I called Customer Service, selected the appropriate option from their voice-jail menu, and got a recorded announcement telling me that, because of an unusually large volume of calls, no customer-service representative was available to hear my complaint. However, if I chose to wait on hold, my call would be answered in the order received. After an extended musical interlude, another voice-jail menu started up, offering another selection of alternative non-resolutions to my problem; I chose the zero option, which was to wait for a customer-service representative to become available. More commercials over elevator music, urging me to enjoy the crossword puzzles and other features of the Register. Then: “Des Moines Register Circulation Department. This is [name]. What can I do to make your day more ‘Full of Life (TM)’?”

I explained the situation, and the representative heard me out, said that the Register regretted the error, and explained that, since Grinnell does not have redelivery service, I probably would not receive Sunday's paper that day either, but that he would arrange to have one delivered with Tuesday's paper.

On Tuesday, no papers were delivered.

I called Customer Service, selected the appropriate option from their voice-jail menu, and got a recorded announcement telling me that, because of an unusually large volume of calls, no customer-service representative was available to hear my complaint. I was gratified to note the regularity with which I received this message, since it suggested that the grave problem of keeping irate customers on hold could be easily addressed simply by hiring more people to handle complaints during the hours between 6 and 9 a.m., when, it appeared, the current staff was consistently overwhelmed by the demands for service.

I elected to wait on hold, so that my call would be answered in the order received. The cheerful advertisements praising the many items of interest to be found the the Des Moines Register were beginning to cause me to grind my teeth. Eventually, a customer-service representative picked up. “Des Moines Register Circulation Department. This is [name]. What can I do to make your day more ‘Full of Life (TM)’?”

Biting back the first two or three suggestions that came to mind, I explained the circumstances of my call and demanded an explanation. The customer-service representative was unable to suggest one, and I recommended that she call the distributor to find out what was going on. I offered to hold while she did so. Alas, she was unable to reach the distribution manager in Iowa City. I suggested that she try his cell phone. No luck. She was, however, able to connect me to her supervisor. After a brief but equally unproductive chat, the supervisor passed me along to her superior -- an assistant manager of customer service. This person explained that an attempt to contact the distribution manager in Iowa City had failed, because his cell phone was turned off -- forwarding to his voice mail. She promised to investigate and call back with the explanation.

When I got to work, I found a message in my voice mail from the Iowa City distribution manager. I called him back, identified myself, and told him that I hadn't received a paper either on Sunday or Tuesday and was interested in finding out why. He acknowledged that this was probably true, since there was no carrier for Grinnell. The previous carrier had been in an automobile accident on Friday and was unable to do the work, and he, the Iowa City manager, had not yet found a replacement. I sympathized with his predicament and suggested that he might contact someone in Grinnell to deliver papers for a few days, on an interim basis. He said that he hoped to hire another carrier to begin tomorrow.

I asked him to make sure, then, to have the new carrier deliver our Sunday and Tuesday papers as well as the Wednesday one. He replied that, because Grinnell does not have redelivery service, the back issues would instead be mailed to me from Des Moines. By this time, it had registered on me that the term `redelivery service' is a misnomer, since it denotes the delivery of papers that specifically have not been previously delivered. This realization made me even more irritable, and I protested that having a paper that I should have received on Sunday and that had been promised to me already on Monday and then again on Tuesday mailed from Des Moines to reach me on Thursday was not really satisfactory customer service. He was sorry that I felt that way but could do no more.

I asked why, under the circumstances, he had turned off his cell phone, and he protested that he had not, and moreover that the Register had no business communicating the state of his cell phone to customers, even customers who had not been given the explanation for repeated delivery failures.

I called the Register's Customer Service line again. I was not surprised to hear that because of an unusually large volume of calls, no customer-service representative was available to hear my complaint. On hold. Commercials over elevator music. More commercials. More commercials. More commercials. Finally: “Des Moines Register Circulation Department. This is [name]. What can I do to make your day more ‘Full of Life (TM)’?” I got the representative to put through again to the assistant customer-service manager again telling her that I had new information about the situation.

I told the assistant customer-service manager what I had learned, reprimanded her for deceiving me about the distribution manager's cell phone, and proposed that she might find an alternative way to get my back issues delivered. She confirmed that, since Grinnell is located in the remote and inaccessible wilderness of rural Iowa, it is not cost-effective to provide so-called redelivery services, and that the back issues would have to be sent to us by U.S. Mail, whose carriers, unlike those of the Des Moines Register, can call upon the full resources of the federal government in case of an attack by wild bears or the collapse of one of the rope bridges on Interstate 80. She, too, was at a loss when I suggested that some more immediate solution, such as having a carrier from the Des Moines office drive out with copies of Sunday's and Tuesday's papers, might be possible.

Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day. I just hope that it won't be full of ... whatever today was full of.