It never fails to amaze me that print media subscriptions take three to five weeks to get “processed.” The Internet apparently provides no means to short cut the time, and I have seen no difference between instances where I dead directly with the publisher in lieu of a subscription broker.

What do newspaper and magazine companies do during these several weeks? You would think that the Web could live up to its credo of “faster, better, smarter, cheaper and more convenient.

Not in this case. My credit card get duly debited in an matter of hours, but the product does not arrive until well after you think some bogus company has absconded with both credit card account number of cash.

My latest challenge: convincing the Wall Street Journal to follow through on a reactivated print and online subscription . Repeated telephone calls and online messages generate unhelpful, wrong “canned responses.” They know how to process payment, but apparently take weeks to deliver the quo to my quid.

So much for living in Internet time.