Knocks on doors and early morning wake-up calls may be no longer, as many Abbots Langley residents have been stunned to learn that McColls Morrisons Daily, located on Abbots Langley Highstreet, is currently in the process of dismissing their paper boys and girls.
The news came swiftly after many villages across the country learned that Morrisons had allegedly decided to reduce its costs by replacing its delivery services in regard to newspapers and leaflets.
Abbots Langley resident Ken expressed his upset in a Facebook post after learning that his paper delivery girl would no longer deliver his newspapers. She had left a card at his home announcing her redundancy.
Speaking to ABBOTSnews, Ken said: “I was most upset about the way they were all treated. I paid in advance for vouchers, so I contacted my provider and cancelled my subscription as a gesture of protest.
“My last delivery now by van will be at the end of the month. I will just have to be content with reading my newspaper online, which I am by no means a fan of.
“This is yet another ‘chip’ away from our village life; it is very sad that this has been taken away from youngsters with such wonderful work ethic.”
Currently, according to Morrisons, the Abbots Langley branch is in stage three of the changes, which means that paper boys and girls across the village may have been told by managers about the dismissal.
According to the Abbots High Street branch, there are five stages of the process, and final decisions are still ongoing.
Morrisons has responded to the allegations, saying: “Sadly, the long-term decline in demand for newspaper home delivery has accelerated rapidly over the last few years, and unfortunately, customer numbers in our Morrisons Daily in Abbots Langley can no longer support the costs of maintaining our own dedicated delivery network from the store.
“Following a thorough review, we’ve made the difficult decision to close the service and transition remaining customers to News Team Ltd, which operates the UK’s largest news and magazine delivery network.
“As News Team Ltd already operates in this area, we’ve been able to build our customers into their existing deliveries and offer a more efficient service.
“This has allowed us to protect the service for customers, including vulnerable customers, who rely on their daily newspaper delivery.
“Regrettably, this will result in our newspaper delivery colleagues being put at risk of redundancy. We have commenced consultations with those colleagues affected and are committed to supporting them throughout this process.”
I think that is very sad very soon there will be nothing in abbots Langley and that is very sad.
News Group have manged to deliver a paper (not always the right one) once in the past four weekends.
Have never phoned in that time but do have a good answering machined that informs customers that the “wait time” is less than 20hours and 15 minutes.
They are very efficient to provide such a good service.