by Joe Bentley, special to AJCReach.org
I had an exchange with Amy from AJC Reach via the StopAJC Reach Facebook page. Amy from AJC Reach wrote:
“Mr. Bentley, we are working with our delivery vendor as well as the city of Atlanta and other municipalities to identify vacant homes. If you want to e-mail me (amy_reach@ajc.com) the addresses of the vacant homes in your neighborhood, I’d be happy to add them to our list and discontinue delivery.”
Unfortunately, Amy, that plan does nothing to address the biggest problems:
1. Your company is trashing our neighborhoods on a weekly basis, and we already have to volunteer our time to clean up your mess. I simply will not take more time out of my life to compile a list of vacant homes for you. Honestly, while I realize that you’re just doing your job, for you to even consider that a solution is enraging.
2. Vacant homes are the less critical issue. What is more important is that the AJC Reach is signaling, to each and every criminal in the area, which homes are easy targets. Many of those homes are not vacant…they are occupied by elderly people who can’t get out and clean up your mess in a timely matter. Your company is endangering the safety of our elderly residents, and no list of vacant homes is going to remedy that.
3. I, myself, have called 6 times over the past 3 months to have this nonsense stopped. With each call, I’ve been assured that it’s been “escalated” and a supervisor promises me that the AJC Reach will stop littering my property. And, each and every Sunday morning, another piece of your trash is in my driveway…and all over my street…and in my neighborhood storm drains…and in the creek that runs through the neighborhood. I cannot tell you how angry our whole community is.
The only solution is for your company to stop breaking the law and stay out of our neighborhood!! Why can’t you just mail them??
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well having some knowledge about the industry it could be because Postal costs are enormous which have fee and licenses added on top of them. The USPS has a history of not delivering mail even after it has been paid for, And wow advertisers want quick turn around the post office can take 3 business days to deliver after receiving the product. And it may be because hiring local people to deliver it helps people who are unemployed make a few dollars and keeps the money in the community. Not that everyone of your points isnt 100% valid but there are always 2 sides.
@Circmand Thanks for your comment and for stopping by the website.
Our position: AJC Reach made a decision to go from USPS delivery to street/sidewalk drop delivery, to reduce the company’s costs. However, that comes at the cost of littering of our neighborhoods. And that is unacceptable.
As an exaggerated example, but one that illustrates a point: if a business wanted to reduce its costs by disposing hazardous chemicals in in our neighborhoods instead of a more costly legal manner of disposal, that might help the bottom line profit of the company; and it might people who are unemployed to make a few dollars, but that comes with a cost to the community; and those so-called benefits don’t make it right, or acceptable. While street/sidewalk drops of AJC Reach are obviously different than disposal of hazardous chemicals, the current distribution method for AJC Reach *is* in violation of city of Atlanta litter ordinances – and it *is* littering our neighborhoods. And it *is* making many people in the community very unhappy.
But beyond that, is a switch to street/sidewalk drops really better for advertisers by offering a quick turn around? Or is faster turn around really “garbage at the speed of light”? One advertiser has told us that since AJC Reach switched from USPS delivery to street/sidewalk drops, response to his ads have plummeted. Not surprising when you stop to think about it, given that it is likely that fewer people look at the product; and that many people now associate the advertisers’ brands with unwanted trash (that’s brand suicide to have your business associated with something so undesirable).
Perhaps the question to ask is: why is the AJC being so disrespectful of the community in which it does business?
Fair points on the USPS arguments. The AJC has cut it’s distribution costs roughly in half by switching from the USPS to ACI (a guy based in Los Angeles). I was an employee briefly for this operation late in 09 over the holidays, and I can tell you factually this company has no interest in the qaulity of delivery. All they care about is loading up the carrier’s vehicles with papers and getting them out the door, in many cases with carriers who have no business handiling the product. They pay a few pennies per copy, so the only way a carrier can make anything close to a minimum wage, they have to deliver an ungodly number of papers per hour. It is impossible for the carriers to turn a profit and do a good job delivering. If they took the time to deliver correctly and honor the hot stops, they would make way less than minimum wage. Of course when I started speaking up on the issue, I was beaten down pretty good and fired for “financial reasons”.
A follow up message to Ben Jackson: Ben could you email me so I can connect with you about a follow up question? Please email us at stopajcreach {at} gmail dot com
Thank you.
This morning – 30 May 2010 – another AJC Reach appeared in my driveway, soggy and unwanted.
I’ve already taken the time to call AJC (404-526-9473) to stop delivery, but it looks like my request has been ignored. I travel to Europe every 3 weeks on and off, so this rubbish just sits in my driveway, letting would-be burglars know I am gone.
It’s way past time for the legal authorities to put a stop to this littering.
I get these in my Lakewood neighborhood too and hate them. I never look at them and pick them up and throw them in the trash.
Might I suggest that all the neighborhoods that don’t want these to appoint a collection run the day after they are collected and then each neighborhood take them all to a single drop off point and when you have several truck loads, deliver half to the driveway of the ajc ceo and the other half to the front door of the ajc. Perhaps that would get the message across… either that or file a class action suit against them or boycott the paper for as long as it takes for them to come to their senses.