A complaint about delivery of The Baltimore Examiner

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A Pikesville lawyer who says he was unable to stop home delivery of The Baltimore Examiner is seeking a restraining order in Baltimore County Court. Joel L. Levin said that several contacts with The Examiner were not successful in stopping delivery and therefore, as a last resort, he sought a restraining order against the six-month-old newspaper.

Levin said Friday, “Look, I don’t have a problem with The Examiner; it’s a nice paper. I read it. I like it. But I’m just frustrated I can’t get it stopped for a week.”

In an open letter from the publisher, Michael Phelps apologized to Levin and outlined the ongoing steps being taken to correct such delivery problems for the small percentage of area residents who have had similar experiences.

Letter from the publisher

As has been reported, a Pikesville lawyer has turned to the Baltimore County Circuit Court after his many attempts to interrupt home delivery of The Baltimore Examiner while he was out of town were unsuccessful.

As publisher of The Baltimore Examiner, I would like to apologize to Mr. Levin and any other residents who might have had similar experiences. We started The Baltimore Examiner six months ago with the express purpose of creating a news product that is responsive to the changing ways in which the public wants to get information. Being responsive also means effectively dealing with the small number of requests we have received to stop delivery.

Delivery of The Examiner to 236,000 Baltimore market households each day is a complex process that was painstakingly designed to avoid mistakes and provide excellent customer service. We are enormously proud that a recent independent audit of our first six months of operations found that The Baltimore Examiner had a 97 percent delivery accuracy. We achieved this significant level of success by having dedicated workers, a good training program, high-quality supervision and a recently added satellite global positioning system to track delivery.

It is also true however, that for Mr. Levin and a small handful of residents, our service has not been perfect. We not only apologize, but we have also made some changes in our field operations to see that these mistakes will not be repeated. The irony here is that while several households were trying to stop delivery, many times that number have been clamoring to receive The Baltimore Examiner.

The complaints of Mr. Levin notwithstanding, introduction of The Baltimore Examiner has been very successful. A Certified Audit of Circulations of the first six months of publication proved that in addition to a 97 percent delivery accuracy, The Baltimore Examiner had an average daily readership of 360,000 adults.

All of us at The Examiner are proud of the newspaper we publish and of the exceptional advertising value that we have provided to area businesses. We are not, however, satisfied when even a small number of our neighbors experience problems with our operations, and therefore, we will redouble efforts to avoid such issues in the future.

Sincerely,

Michael Phelps
Publisher

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