Getting a newspaper subscription in San Francisco

We have been trying to get a newspaper subscription for nearly a year now. A few months ago, we signed up for The San Francisco Chronicle outside Costco where a little kiosk had been set up.

While R & I would prefer to get the San Jose Mercury News we thought it would be nice to get a paper with truly local news and events.

We waited the next few weeks for our newspaper to arrive. It never did.

Instead, we got a bill from The Chronicle folks for the paper we had never received. R called the circulation department and they reassured us that they would take care of the problem with the billing.

Then, a few weeks later, we got a notice from a collection agency for that bill.

R fought with the circulation department and the collection agency and now we have don't have any pending newspapers bills to pay but no subscription to a newspaper either.

I would still love to get The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times or The San Jose Mercury News. But I have questions on whether they can really deliver it to my doorstep, what time will it get delivered in the morning etc.

I can't find the answers to those questions on their website! How can a business be truly successful without answering questions their customers might have about their product?

And why is getting a newspaper subscription so hard? There's no local kiosk/distributor that I can walk up to and have a chat about my problems.

Our need is simple: we want a newspaper that comes to our doorstep--not to our gate so one of us has to wake up and trek out to fetch the paper--and is delivered early enough so we can read it before we head to work around 7.30 a.m.

Why is that so difficult? I subscribe to a bunch of magazines and they come right to my home without any problems every week/month.

Maybe this is one reason why newspapers in the U.S. are seeing their circulation fall. If they can't get it out to readers who really want it, and can't get their distribution right, how can they grow their subscriber base?