We didn’t get our paper today and when my wife called about it, she got a recorded message that our account was credited for the subscription cost.
We’ve had missed deliveries before, but never so apparently rampant as to cause the paper to generate a recorded message.
I checked the Times’ website. Nada.
Have you heard anything?
I haven’t heard anything, but that is not unusual where I live. Occasionally the recording says there was a “production problem.” Sometimes they deliver it the following day, sometimes I get a credit.
It’s probably something as innocent as they know a particular route wasn’t delivered (truck broke down, driver out sick and they couldn’t get a replacement, etc.) and they’re using caller ID to automatically match affected accounts with the message.
I think you might be right.
Where are you located, Barn Owl?
Not a snoopy question, but something that may be relevant to the distribution question.
Twice for a two-year period each, I worked for distribution companies with franchises to deliver the New York Times (and Daily News and Wall Street Journal) in rural/small-city areas in Upstate New York. (This is before the Post went mornings.) In both cases, the system used to get the papers from the Big Apple to distibution points and then to the customers was so strange that Rube Goildberg stopped by and took notes. 
Any number of possible scenarios interrupting a distribution system could be at blame w/r/t a local delivery. (I remember one blizzardy winter day when I finally got the Times to Alexandria Bay at 3:30 in the afternoon – surprising my clients, who figured they weren’t going to get a delivery at all that day.)
Today’s Times has the Spitzer story that got a lot of publicity yesterday. Additional sales may have overwhlemed their printing and distribution system.
I’d be surprised. At least at my paper, the first edition printed is the one that goes the farthest out, and the last editions are the newsstand and local subscriber copies. They’d have to take back subscriber papers after sending them on the trucks and divert them to newsstands to do what you’re saying.
I’m in Brookfield, CT, Polycarp.
The problem must be associated with my carrier. My wife just got back from errands during which she picked up the Times at our local Mobil gas station store.