Circulation rorting is not only alive and well but it is
practised in the most blatant way. They are so bold (newspaper
companies) that we get absolutely no explanations – we are just told to
send the product to whatever school they nominate.

This week I had a new one from the subs dept of the Advertiser telling me to deliver an extra 90 Australians per day (including weekends to be delivered to the school in question on Mondays).

Two days into this “promo” the school rang and demanded to know who had “ordered them.”

I told them I was just the agent and that they should ring the
principal and gave them the number to ring. This got a “reduction”
notice from 90 to 20.

Circulation rorting is alive and well as all newsagents can testify.

The school had NOT requested the items and didn’t even want them.

And this from another Crikey reader:

I work in a small public central school in Central NSW. We are
currently overcome by a deluge (not of rain as needed) but of News Ltd
papers. One staff member had replied a couple of months ago to a
historical promo (I think an ANZAC special issue), and since then has
been cursed and accosted in the staffroom as day after day the paper
pile grows larger.

As she denied blame, we rang our local agency (they shrugged), then
News to ask who had ordered the papers. No-one, we were told, they were
special promos.

Now – we are no big fish in terms of numbers (100 odd kids), but if you
multiplied the 30 papers a day we get by 2,000+ schools in NSW, that’s
getting to be a problem.