Newspaper Pricing Gone Wild

I subscribe to the local paper for daily and weekend delivery. Sometimes I read every issue. I know my brother reads the Sports page. I also use old newspaper to wrap items up. If I ever need to start a fire, the old newspaper is also a good fire started.

The paper has started an annoying tactic. They will label certain days as special editions. Then they charge me extra money for that day's paper. Once in a while this is warranted, like when they do some massive election coverage and research. Most of the times it is a money grab. Okay.

Just now they also increased the price of the subscription. That on top of the special editions is just too much. I would cancel. But my brother loves the Sports page. I decided to maybe cut out weekends and save 25%. I called them up today.

The guy on the line said that while the daily only costs less, they have no specials for daily subscription. Okay. He did not want me to drop weekends. He said if I kept daily plus weekend, he could offer me a 30% discount. Sounded great. Then he tried to get me to do automatic credit card billing for a 50% discount. No thank you. I will take that 30% discount. Price hike averted.