Crystal Lake McHenry County Blog Friend ratchets up pressure on Northwest Herald to pay tips to carriers in this communication to Jim Ringness, General Manager:

His introduction says,

I have not received the call from the representative at the third party distributor, promised by the representative of NWH who left a voice mail earlier today. 

This is his letter to CEO Ringness:

Regarding my questions about the missing carriers’ tips… 

I received a voice mail earlier today explaining the the tips I paid in my automated subscription to the Northwest Herald were taken by a district manager at your third party newspaper distributor. 

First, the person from your newspaper who called me, a woman, did not identify herself by name.

Second, she mentioned that you were working with the distributor to ensure that this was “resolved with carriers” — what exactly does “resolved” mean (are they going to be paid in full as your subscribers expected?)

And third, why isn’t your paper fessing up to its many hundreds, possibly thousands of subscribers who opted to pay these tips.

And fourth, what is the name of this third party company, and why didn’t your representative provide that name in the message to me? 

Your representive also said that a person by the name of John would be calling me from the third party distributor.

No such call has come so far. 

This is felonious behavior the way I calculate: hundreds of dollars of my payments alone, as well as who knows how many other subscribers! 

I plan to make a police report in Crystal Lake on Friday — yours and my location — as well as in the location of your distributor when I find that out.

Friday I will consult with a civil litigation attorney to investigate whether this merits a lawsuit on behalf of me and other subscribers whose tips were abscounded with, and possibly on behalf of the carriers.

That is, class action.

Your oversight of tips that you collected in the name of these carriers is suspect, to say the least. 

As I mentioned in prior correspondence, I have filed a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General Consumer Complaint division.

Since then I have contacted the consumer help services of NBC 5 Chicago, as well as McHenry County Blog, and I continue to reach out to other media and government bodies until I am 100 percent certain that every penny due to the carriers is paid in full.

I’ll advise you to the URL of the new website that I’m creating to publicize this issue. 

So far, I have not found any reason to have confidence in your handling of this matter.

You haven’t even been transparent enough to put this issue in your own paper and explain to your subscribers what happened and how you intend to handle it.

For background see

• Northwest Herald Carriers’ Tips Taken by District Manager
• UPDATE on Northwest Herald Delivery People Not Being Paid Tips