The Mercury News
Reviews and Complaints

I subscribed to SJMN online for yearly subscription in October 2018. I got the confirmation email with the order details. In April 2019, suddenly the paper deliveries stopped. When I contacted the customer service, I was told that, though, they have taken the money for annual subscription in October 2018, they have applied it for some other balance which I am not aware and never asked for any deliveries. The customer service acknowledged that what they did was without my knowledge and maybe illegal but they did not help me correct the record. I am trying to dispute this through my credit card company and will see what happens. But try to stay clear of SJMN and don't get fooled by their online subscription sign up. They will take your money and not provide you the services.

For two weeks in a row the tv guide has not been in the sunday paper. Last weekend I went to several locations and checked over 50 papers, no tv guide.
Monday I called customer service. After I explained how I spent extra gas and time and paying for two papers, there was no offer to make it right for a regular customer.
As a retired person that still reads the paper, and depends on the sports section in the tv guide, this is a drag to deal with.

I've been getting the San Jose Mercury News for over 50 years and have accepted most print changes throughout the years. But recently you guys have eliminated the date on the top of every page. If you want to save an article and set it aside then look at it at a later date you don't know what date the article was written unless you take the time and effort to write the date on the article. All you guys care about is plastering THE BAY AREA NEWS GROUP all over the paper until your customers are so sick of it and they want to end their subscription all together. We are paying close to $500.00 a year only to have you guys smear your paper with your propaganda. In my opinion you could smear your name and still put the dam date on each page so people can relate the article to the date and time of the event. Please don't be so selfish and include the dates.

Sincerely, long time customer

I thought I had paid for one yr of mercury news, but in Oct I recieved usps mail that
i had to pay for month of october

calling customer service was a waste of time

when I wrote to complain I was told my subscription is valid until 11/1/2018

My papers stopped being delivered as of 10/15. I my subscription reinstated and credit for all undelivered papers

another concern...many times in the past my paper was delivered on the sidewalk in front of home instead of my driveway. I've had several reqular walkers in the morning trip on those, luckily I have not been sued for injury

I have been a subscriber to your paper for nearly 40 years.
In June of 2018 we received our bill for about $315.00 for six months of 7 days delivery service. We paid the $315.00 for 6 months. In early July we received notification in our area only the Sunday paper would be delivered. Unfortunately I did not keep notes on my conversations with dates as I understood my concerns had been taken care of. I was told by a representative in mid July we would receive a refund of about $290.00. At that time I advised the rep we would take the Sunday paper at a cost of $71.00 for one year.
I was not interested in having the total amount moved for the paper to be delivered for the next four years. I am a senior, may not live that long.
We never received the refund of about $ 290.00 or the Sunday paper. The rep was to send us a bill for the $71.00, have not received the bill yet either.
I may not have read the small print on the original bill about refunds, however we paid for 7 day delivery just before it was cancelled. We did not pay for the Sunday paper only, we request our $290.00 be returned.
Once that is returned we will consider purchasing the Sunday delivery.
I await a response from the San Jose Mercury News.

Regards, Janie Lausten
7171 F Street
Tres Pinos California 95075
[protected] [protected]@gmail.com

I've just returned to the mercury's newspaper delivery service. The print is so light i'm having trouble reading it! i'm a senior and i just spoke to a friend who stopped delivery because he couldn't read it either! i don't know who to complain to! are they trying to save ink? i havn't even gotten my first bill and i'm ready to cancel so this is serious stuff! hope you can reach the right upper management people for me. Thanks

At a SF Baseball game, last month I subscribed to a 7 day per week physical delivery of the SJ Mercury News newspaper. After about 2 weeks on June 14, I called and said that I had recieved only 1 Sunday paper. They informed me that I would only receive the Sunday paper because physical delivery may not be available Thursday, Fri, or Sat, but if it was I should start receiving it. They also said that I will recieve no electronic or physical papers on Monday, Tues, or Weds. I talked to a neighbor person and they said it was deliverable as they were recieving the paper. I don't know what days or which paper, but none has arrived on anything but Sunday. I have recieved two Sunday papers, one as late as 4-5pm.. Today, being my 4th contact phone with the SJ Mercury news paper, I canceled after sending multiple emails to cancel, and they automatically believed that since I was unwilling to be on hold for another 30 - 45 mins waiting for a person that I was now recieving the paper. I should call each time/each day and wait 30-45 mins on hold if didn't recieve the paper. Since I don't expect things to change, I spent 45 mins arguing with a person that I was canceling it and they informed me that I would be charged for 60 days of delivery service and some unspecified dollar amount that failed to delivered any papers except 2. I will be contacting the BBB and the California attorney general after this for charging for newspapers that are refused to be delivered. Brisbane, CA.

I signed up over phone on May 20th, 2017 for a 5 month subscription. I never received any paper. I called up after a month on June 20th, and was told that it will start from the very next day. Today is June 28th but no paper.
Finally, I called up customer service again. Talked with their agent. They have no clue what's going on. I asked them to refund my money but their response is, "we don't refund money". Are you kidding me...you take my money, don't provide the service, and don't give my money back? I talked with the supervisor too who didn't have any desire to resolve the issue!
This is so frustrating!
Rashmi Bagchi

Hello:

I am reaching out to you because we are in dire need of your assistance in dealing with an ongoing issue with the Property Management company [Duckett Wilson Property Mgmnt] who oversees my business's property. My name is Johanne Desjardins and I own a small business called Pure Bliss Float Center. We are located within a San Jose strip mall at 6055 Meridian Ave.

I spent 17 months in getting my new business open. [April 2016-Sept. 2017] During that time, we had many setbacks and delays which were caused by our property management company. Just a few of the delays were:
Leaky roof --and the prop. mgmt company's delay in fixing them --which damaged or delayed our contractor's work inside
Damage to a shared tenant wall [prop mgmt company's responsibility] and no direct involvement by Duckett Wilson to fix
No working heater or AC from a broken legacy AC unit on roof. Duckett Wilson has not hired a contractor to fix nor given any updates for months. This has gone on since Sept. 2017. My clients and staff are freezing!
Can't finalize our electrical final inspection due to the actions of a roofing subcontractor hired by Ducket Wilson who refinished our roof. More detail about this is expressed in this letter.
Can't pass our fire & safety inspection due to missing sprinkler system tags that are the responsibility of the property owner and property management company
My business has 3 treatment rooms which require the temperatures of those rooms to be kept at a different temperature for the comfort of our clients. As a result, Pure Bliss hired an electrical and HVAC contractor to professionally install a new heating/cooling unit on the roof just for these 3 rooms. The existing legacy AC unit heats/cools the other common areas of our business.

Duckett Wilson has been promising to fix our leaky roof for over a year. They finally started the refinishing of our roof in July of 2017. They hired a roofing contractor to do this. This roofing contractor ended up uninstalling our new AC unit in order to redo the roof. However, their uninstall was done unprofessionally; they pulled out several feet of AC conduit through the roof, compromising the integrity of the connection points to our indoor units and never consulted with us to help coordinate this. In addition, they uninstalled the electrical setup and left the quick-connect box dangling on the roof floor. When it came time to re-install, they threw away the AC's base platform, created a new makeshift platform, installed the unit in a completely different location, left the exposed AC conduit showing on the roof, and improperly re-installed the electrical system.

As a result, when it came time for our final inspection, we could not pass electrical inspection due to the shoddy install of the AC system up there. We communicated these issues to Duckett Wilson immediately via tel and email in the middle of September, right after failing our final inspection. We also communicated to Duckett Wilson in Sept. the issue we found with the existing, legacy AC unit. Upon inspection by a HVAC contractor Pure Bliss hired, it was discovered that the existing unit had never been properly serviced over the decades of its' serviced, and now suffered from bad heating elements and a dead circuit board electronics. We had no working AC or heating from this point on. The HVAC contractor recommended that the entire unit be replaced, and were very willing to work with our property mgmt company in order to facilitate this. Our HVAC contractor said that -- with Duckett Wilson's approval -- they could have a new unit installed and working for us within a matter of 2 weeks. We passed this information on to Ducktett Wilson, as well, and put them in contact with our HVAC contractor.

Needless to say, Duckett Wilson has done nothing to resolve any of the issues I've described above [shared wall damage; broken legacy AC unit; piss-poor reinstall of our new AC unit and electrical]. Every time we call or email, we get a verbal "We're on it!" yet nothing gets done.

I've had to already pay for one temporary certificate of occupancy [in Sept] with the city of San Jose, costing me $1, 020. This was necessary for me to start doing business. I will have to pay for another temporary certificate [$1, 020] at the end of this month due to the fact that Ducktett Wilson has done nothing to fix the issues yet. We have an email thread of numerous email attempts made to Duckett Wilson by myself and other contractors whom we've hired at different times during our project. From Sept - Oct, our clients sweated their butts off due to no AC in the common areas. Now our same clients are freezing due to no heat in our place of business. In addition, we also have the smell of sewage gas creeping into our workplace from the unused, open HVAC return duct in our hallway [All sewage smell escapes through traps for our business and adjacent tenants through the roof; with no working return duct system on our legacy HVAC unit, we have an open pathway for the smell to creep back into our business.]

In regards to our failing our fire inspection, the inspector informed us that the property --which all shares one sprinkler system; no individual fire alarm systems -- failed inspection due to missing tags on the fire riser system. The inspector said this was not our responsibility to provide but for the property management company/building owner to provide. We informed Ducket Wilson of this issue immediately [late Aug-early Sept], and they have failed to fix/provide proper documentation in over 3-1/2 months.

In regards to the damage to our shared tenant wall, the neighboring tenant [a restaurant] made some unauthorized modifications to the inside of his space which resulted in dirty grease water to spill over through our shared wall and into our space whenever the restaurant performed a cleaning of their cooking system. We had just paid tens of thousands of dollars to have our side of this shared wall turned into an acoustical sound wall in order to keep the restaurant noise to a minimum. We informed Duckett Wilson about the damage and although the shared wall being their responsibility, they have refused to get involved. In fact, they even denied our requests to have them pass along our neighboring tenant's liability insurance information so that we could initiate a damage claim with them. Duckett Wilson has been completely hands-off in everything.

We've made phone calls to Duckett Wilson weekly; we emailed on numerous occasions; we've sent them documentation, pictures, statements for contractors we've hired, etc. whenever Duckett Wilson requested it. We've made attempts to different personnel within their company. We've tried to engage some of their contractors directly in order to help facilitate a speedy repair. And we have gotten no where. We are at our wit's end and have been stretched financially by this project and delays from the project management company. Hiring an attorney would place further burden on me, and I'm still trying to have these issues handled in a way that would make hiring an attorney unnecessary. I'm hoping that your team could help us in trying to have these matters resolved.

I can be reached at the following:

Johanne Desjardins
[protected] tell
[protected]@yahoo.com

Property Management company info:
Duckett Wilson
Abigail Johnson [project manager] - [protected]
[protected]@duckettwilson.com
David Lam [project manager's boss]- [protected]
[protected]@duckettwilson.com

Looking forward to your reply.

I have been trying dor six months now to get the Mercury news to stop delivering paper. I no longer have a subscription but they keep delivering papers. This is getting to be a security issue when we are out of town. Their customer service is of no help at all. Each time we talk to a differs customer service rep and they ate unable yo do anything about it

I bought 6 newspaper today and it clearly said $290 total of savings. Went I went to look in them, none of them had any coupons. I'm just wanted my refund or the coupons that we're promised inside them. Please I buy them every Sunday and today was just a disappointment. I tried to return them to the original store I bought them at and they turned me away. I've called multiple (5) numbers and there was no help at all or answers. Please

signed up for sunday + digital for $20 in 4/2016. we never got the newspaper delivered. after repeated complaints of non-delivery, customer service agreed they will cancel our subscription. (during this time, which took over 3 months, we received ZERO papers). 1 year later, a charge pops up in our credit card account for a subscription and renewal that is not authorized. called Mercury News, customer rep is confused since our account is closed and should not have been charged. but has to go through supervisor to reverse unauthorized charge week later, they refund the unauthorized charge minus $0.60.
Unreliable service, and their billing isn't keeping up with subscription status that was changed 8 months earlier.
even with zero delivery, we still receive hand-delivered tips/donation solicitation in December in our mailbox by the so-called carrier who never delivered, so we know the carrier knows the correct address (we have security camera, and no newspaper delivery was even attempted, so it's not the case of stolen delivery)

Over the last five weeks I have made at least six calls to Customer Service, who agreed to stop delivering my paper, except for Sunday, in favor of a digital subscription. But that was over a month ago, and I am still getting daily papers - and the refund I am due for prepayment has still not been charged back to my card.

The news division is great, but the business office is dishonest, incompetent, or (to be charitable) understaffed. Whatever excuse they may have, it is very bad business.

Customer Service supervisors told me $304.25 of my automatic prepayment would be refunded, but that was over a month ago. It has not posted to my account, though Customer Service blamed the "Finance Department."

I live on Social Security, and I can no longer afford anything but a digital subscription. But if this goes on much longer, I'll cancel the paper altogether and file for my refund in Small Claims Court. I hate to do it, because it will cost SJMN attorneys a lot more than $300 to defend this case.

B. Hanson

Subscription was cancelled 11/16. Newspaper continues to be delivered to uninhabited residence in affluent Atherton. Owner must go to residence daily to pick up and throw away the paper. Repeated calls and emails from December 2016 to May 2017 to subscriber services has not stopped daily paper from being dropped on the property. This constitutes illegal dumping. The Mercury News circulation may be illegally inflating its delivery/fulfillment numbers to this affluent area in order to be able to charge higher advertising rates.

San Mateo County version
The weekly TV Guide is frequently not delivered. April 2nd when I called to report the missing section, went through the tree answering all he questions. Normally after that I would have been transferred to a person to take the complaint and have a copy delivered. Rather the program just said we are not open call during normal business hours. This occurred at 8 AM on Sunday. Tried again with same results.
Called in Monday and was reassured a copy would be delivered, Not true!
Carl Olson [protected]

Susan Senneck  James Reedy
[protected]@att.net
[protected]

I want to cancel my order

San Jose Mercury News

1147 Bucknam Ave.
Campbell, CA 95008

On a previous occasion the paper was wet although it was in a bag that
allowed water to enter the bag.

I used SJM's automated system to get a replacement that never arrived.
After that incident the paper delivery person would tie the bag closed.

Wed 1/18/17, the paper was wet from the rain and had no bag.
I called the SJMN and left a message at 9:40am.
I received a call back at 10:40am and was advised I needed to call before
10:30am to get a replacement paper.
I received credit and the Staff left a note for the carrier about double
bagging although I gave the Staff the above background.

Sun 1/22/17 9:15am.
Paper in a single plastic bag tied at the top, but still wet.
I called SJMN for a replacement. No replacement bag delivered.

2/16/17 - Two plastic bags for the first time since the SJMN Staff said that
they would have the delivery person do so on 1/18/17. Bags not tied and
front page wet. Called SJMN at 9:45 am. SJMN called back and stated they
would give a credit and deliver a paper tomorrow.
Next day paper was in s single bag that was tied off and not "wet". No extra
paper as promised.
2/18/17 paper in two bags and outside bag tied and paper dry.
2/20/17, paper in two bags with outer bag tied off, paper dry.
3/17/17, NO paper.  I advised SJMN's staff that if don't get a paper today I
will cancel my subscription.
No call from area manager or paper delivered.
3/27/17, Still NO call from area manager.

I was approached by a high school/foster kid. He said he got a scholarship to San Jose State for football. He was selling subscriptions for SJ Mercury News pay for my books for college. I'm willing to help foster kids. So I gave them a check for 25 but as he left I felt that something was off and put a stop pay on the check 5 mins later. After a week someone called saying that they are making sure my address was correct on the form for SJ news and SF chronical. First off the called ID was blocked so who's to say who it was. So I told her I put a stop pay on my check cause a scam has been going on in my area. She says "if this was a scam you would not be getting a phone call from us. We are hard working people and its scam that are making it hard for us. Just be mindful she said that we're hard working people." Yea hard working people calling from a blocked caller ID. After her speech she hung up

Carrier misses my delivery once in every 3 or 4 months. Today was one of them. I called at earliest time to complain (about 7:32am) and lodged my request for replacement in the automated system. No replacement by earlier afternoon, so I called again requesting a live person and was put on hold for 10 to 15 minutes before my call was cut off. I called again at ~4:30pm, talked to a real person after a short hold. The responder wanted requested seemingly endless information (way more than needed to bring as replacement) and the said Sorry you get today's paper tomorrow. I've been through this routine before and had to insist on a replacement when it didn't arrive the following day. On this previous occasion, when I finally did get the paper it was without the insertions and special sections. I am not optimistic about how much more effort will be required on my part, when I will get today's paper and what the content will be. In conclusion, the SJMN service stinks!

A supposed "college student" came to my door selling subscriptions for the newspaper. He was telling people he went to Ohlone College and needed to get subscriptions for a Marketing class he was attending. He asked for my subscription and gave me a receipt for a paper telling me he would have his "counselor" call me back within a week or so to confirm that I wanted the paper. I did get a call, and tried to make sure he had signed me up for Sunday delivery Only. She confirmed and a few days later I started receiving daily papers. I did not want the daily paper, so I called the Mercury News. They told me that they could change the subscription, however I told them just to cancel and I wanted my money back. They told me they would get my money back - and quoted a different amount than I paid that they received. The kid must have pocketed the rest of the money! Upon further research, there is no marketing class at Ohlone college this term. This is a scam!