Subscription woes

A fair while ago I decided to have the daily rag delivered to my doorstep, and so the booth of the SJ Mercury News at the Mountain View Arts Festival seemed heaven sent. I signed up for 26 weeks of service with a very chatty guy going for the hard sell, and then I made a strategic mistake: I did what no American ever seems to do, I paid in cash. I spent the next two weeks waiting for delivery and when I called up subscripton services after a week or so I was informed that 10 business days were needed to process the subscription (I don't believe I have ever before waited for anything in the US that long, unless of course it's anything to do with the government, which will by definition take months. But then, the Mercury News had me by the short and curlies, they had both my signature and my money. Or so I thought).
Finally, the third week. And no paper still. Neither the next day. Or the next. Another call to subscription services and I was told that they had no record of me at all. Did I have my receipt? Now, if my memory serves me right, when I paid for the subscription, I actually had to ASK to get the receipt. Which now makes me wonder, is this subsciption sales guy somewhere in the Bahamas with my 65 Dollars? And that receipt is the crappiest thing I've seen in a long time. No ID-number or anything on it, and the writing on the copy I have is practically invisible. I can barely make out my own name, let alone my address. But I am supposed to fax it or send it to Knight Ridder. As you can imagine, by now I will most definitely not part with what little evidence I have that I actually handed over some money to somebody from the paper, on the other hand copying that bloody receipt is utterly useless. So I shall be forced to go into San Jose and present this receipt to someone in the main office. At this point of the explanation I am getting somewhat miffed and point out to the lady on the phone that I consider all this a major hassle and I am completely pissed of at the paper for loosing my money and paperwork AND forcing me to go to their office. To which she tells me the paper has to protect itself, they can't just send their paper to anyone whitout proof. Now I aggree with the content of what sehe was saying, but her phrasing was atrocious: to me that sounds like she's accusing me of trying to defraud Knight-Ridder. I hung up on her before I got really nasty.
Now I've decided to prove to those sods that I indeed leagally purchased a subscription to their rag, and then I will tell them I am no longer interested and want my money back.
This won't change anything, but it will certainly make me feel better.