Hearne: KCC Reader Shaves $600 Off Star Subscription

The “real” Stomper

You’re welcome…

Longtime Kansas City Star subscriber – you know him as the Stomper – was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. Not after choking out nearly $800 a year for a print subscription to the local newspaper of record

“What made me mad was you,” Stomper says. “You’re a guy who regularly goes online and trashes the Star and every time I go on I defend ’em. And I’m paying $800 a year and you’re paying $129. It just didn’t seem right.”

Which sent a rankled Stomper to the phone where he fought his way through a thicket of out-of-town types in a quest to lower his subscription cost to the newspaper.

“It wasn’t easy,” Stomper says. “It was like buying a car. The guy I spoke to in Minnesota kept saying, ‘I have to go back to my manager.’ He came down from $80 a month to $60, and told me, ‘That’s a good deal.’

“He was trying to come down in small increments. When he came down to $30 or $40 a month and I said, ‘If you can’t make it, we’re done. And he said, OK, let me go back one more time.’ And I told him $200 a year is the threshold here. Let me speak to your supervisor.'”

Next thing Stomper knew, said dude green-lighted his $600 a year savings but insisted he pay it all at once instead of monthly.

“I told him no, I just didn’t want to pay it once,” Stomper says. “It was actually a fun conversation, which sometimes buying a car is not. But I knew where I was going and I knew if you could do it, I could do it. I knew he was going to cave.”

Why the $200 number?

“Because I wanted to come close to0 what you pay,” Stomper says. “And I was also getting the TV guide section which I never read and I looked at yesterday and it said $1.95 on the cover. And I get like an 8 or 10 page comics and games section on Sunday that’s 75 cents a week. Although they don’t show any of that on the bill.”

The key to Stomper’s success was canceling and waiting for the Star’s relief pitchers to usher forth out of the bullpen.

The bottom line:

“I was paying $120 for 8 weeks, which for a full year was $785.19,” Stomper says. “And I went from 80 bucks a month to 16 bucks a month, so thank you!”

My buddy, former Star staffer Jim Fitzpatrick’s been fumbling around for a week trying to get a handle on Star subscription prices, and in his frustration called upon print subscribers to throw in the towel and cancel…kinda a do as I say, not as I do proposition.

“As a KC Star retiree, I get an incredible deal on the print product – $10.74 a month – and will continue to be a print subscriber…” Fitzpatrick wrote.

That’s $128.88 a year, for Fitz, versus my $129.86. But trust me on this, the subscription gatekeepers at the newspaper have no idea that I’m a refugee of the Star. I simply negotiated my rate down as some loser from Lawrence.

So here’s my advice: iI you want the print edition of the newspaper but are taking it up the you-know-what like Stomps was, no need to bail. Do like I did and name that tune.

(Full disclosure: Think I might weasel a free lunch out of the deal from the Stomper.)