Candidate has trouble with flyer distribution

Chris Gunn just wanted to know what happened to his campaign flyers, but the distributor had ‘‘gone cold’’.

Waimakariri Council candidate and public transport advocate Gunn contracted Auckland based distribution company Reach Media to distribute 6300 flyers around Rangiora on August 27 and 28.

Soon after, people told him they hadn’t received them, he said.

‘‘So far I’ve only found one person in Rangiora who recalls it being delivered.’’

At a meeting in Rangiora on Monday night, when Gunn asked people if they had seen his flyer, he said ‘‘three quarters’’ of the room indicated they had not and other candidates told him they had issues with Reach Media in the past.

He said he was told by a woman, whose daughter had worked in distribution, that some distributors would ‘‘dump’’ their deliveries and still get paid.

‘‘Most of these distribution companies seem to not monitor the actual delivery by the people they employ to do it, most of them being school students.

‘‘It’s hard to take action against someone who is 16 ... but the organisation that is hiring them should be held to account.’’

Gunn said he would be satisfied if he knew where his flyers ended up and if they had been delivered, but said Reach Media would not put him in contact with the area’s delivery supervisor.

‘‘All I want to do is find out [if they were delivered] ... they won’t let me find out,’’ he said. ‘‘I want them to either help me or do some research, but they are not playing ball.’’

Gunn found that two thirds of the streets he had contracted had not received his flyers and said he would be only be satisfied with a representative sampling.

Reach Media’s operations manager Aaron Glass said in an email to Gunn on Wednesday that they would follow up on his concerns by door knocking in the streets where the flyers were reportedly not delivered.

Glass said the company had received six non-delivery complaints in the Rangiora area over the last four months, only one of which was proven, and had fired a distribution contractor over the issue.

The company regularly undertook audits on deliveries and had originally found no issues with Gunn’s deliveries, Glass said.