How The Seattle Times Lost Me as a Subscriber

[Phone rings.]

Me: Hello?

Woman on the other end of the line: I’m calling from The Seattle Times to offer you a subscription to the newspaper…

Me: No, no, no. This is the third time you’ve called me about this. I have a subscription on my Kindle. I already subscribe! Did you get that?

Seattle Times salesperson: Oh, we don’t have access to that information here.

Me: What? How can you not have access to subscriber information? Isn’t it all on a computerized system?

Seattle Times salesperson: Yes, but that’s the Circulation Department. I’m with Sales. I got your name because you owe us money—

Me: WHAT? I don’t owe you any money! Look up my account—

Seattle Times salesperson: Ma’am, I don’t have access to those records, but I can give you our Customer Service number and you can call and find out how much you owe.

Me: I already called Customer Service last month—the last time you called me with this bullshit story. They said I was paid in full. [A light goes on in my head.] Oh, you’re not really with The Seattle Times, are you?

Seattle Times salesperson [or maybe not]: Yes, I am—

Me: No you’re not! You’re really some third party caller who’s trying to scam me, aren’t you? I mean, look at it from my perspective. You call me up to offer me a subscription when I already have one, then you tell me you can’t access those records, then you say I owe you money when I don’t. Sounds like a scam to me.

Seattle Times salesperson [starting to get upset]: Ma’am, I can get my supervisor to talk to you, if you’d like…

Me: Yes, I’d like that.

Seattle Times salesperson: Okay, I’m putting you on hold now.

[Two minutes pass in silence while I’m on hold.]

Seattle Times salesperson [the same one]: Ma’am, I’m not able to transfer you to her line right now, but I can give you her phone number—

Me: Oh, no, no, no. I’m not spending one more dime to call you people again. Just take me off your call list or put a note by my name that says I have a Kindle subscription. Please.

Seattle Times salesperson [sounding a little snotty]: You know, you only get 30% of the paper’s articles on your Kindle, don’t you?

Me: Really?! [Shocked pause.] Oh, my god! You mean I’ve been paying to get less than a third of your content? Damn! I’m going to cancel my Kindle subscription like right now. I can get more articles from your website for free. Are you sure I can’t talk to your supervisor? I think she ought to know she just lost a subscriber—

Seattle Times salesperson: Ma’am, I have to hang up now. I can’t talk to you anymore.

Me: Okay, have a nice day.

And I really did go directly to my computer, log in, and cancel my Kindle subscription to The Seattle Times. Then I went to their website and left them a message telling them exactly why I cancelled.

Of course, I had other reasons to cancel, too--like an article in Thursday's edition that basically summed up all the crap Sean Hannity and Glen Beck spewed on their right-wing extremist opinion shows this week (and it wasn't on the Opinion Page, where it belonged).

If the Seattle Times goes out of business, I'll throw a party. Having no newspaper at all is better than reading a truly execrable one.