"Free" newspapers

With Chinese New Year approaching, I am once again reminded of, err... the newspapers I get at home. OK, here's the thing, the last time my vendor came to collect money from me was around CNY 2008.

Don't ask me why. I have reminded him time and again to come and collect the payments as it had accumulated to quite a bit over the months. My entire working life has revolved around newspapers. Before my present job, my newspaper bills came up to about RM120 per month. Now, it is less as my office's newspaper are delivered to my home over the weekends and public holidays.

Some simple number-crunching suggests that I owe the vendor close to RM1,000 - and growing. With each reminder, he promised to come and collect "in a few days' time". But he never showed up. One part of me hopes he will come so that I can forget about the debts I accumulated through no fault of mine. Another part says, heck no, as it already involves a rather hefty amount now.

I mean, it's not like I have been a bad paymaster. In fact, I was the one who kept bugging the man to come and get his dues.

Before anyone start asking for his name and contact number, I can only make a wild guess over why the newspaper man is so "generous" with me. Up to May 2007, I was working in another daily where I received free copies of the newspaper.

While I did officially inform my then employer to terminate my complimentary copies before I quit, the company probably did not do so. Some of my ex-colleagues who also left the paper were still receiving free copies years after they quit. That means to say, my vendor could have been charging me for newspapers he got for free between May 2007 to CNY 2008. And since I now don't get any newspapers from him on weekends, he could have even taken "my" copies and sold it!

Well, it's just a thought, a possibility to explain a behaviour that defies basic business conventions. Maybe he IS a generous man after all.

I guess the only way for me to find out is to change my newspaper subscription to that of another daily.