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Boston Globe to bring in second paper delivery company

BOSTON — The Boston Globe has announced plans to bring in a second company to help with deliveries.

This change comes after a tens of thousands of customers did not receive their newspapers.

The Boston Globe recently switched delivery companies, and the problems have largely been blamed on routing software and driver retention.

Boston Globe CEO Mike Sheehan told FOX25 the change was designed to fix an existing problem.

"The switch in the first place came as the result of a long term analysis of subscriber retention. Fifty percent of our cancelations were the result of dissatisfaction with home delivery and we were attempting to adapt to that and to improve that," Sheehan said.

The delivery problems with the new company got so bad that last weekend some Globe employees joined the effort to deliver the paper.

Now, Sheehan said, the old delivery company PCF is being brought back to deliver papers in half of the market where the new company had the most trouble.

“We knew there would be disruption, there’s no question about that because you can’t do it overnight. We knew that would happen but it was greater than expected,” he said.

But, Sheehan said, the problems tied to paper deliveries can't be solved overnight.

“On any given day there are delivery issues, 365 days a year there are customers that don’t get papers and that ultimately is what we want to fix,” he said.

Customers who have not been getting their paper will not be charged, and Sheehan said the company "will do something for our customers" after the new plan is in place.