I am gearing up to start taking orders for items from my CD collection Tuesday morning at 10AM Pacific, 1/17/23.
It has been a long time—almost 20 years—since I did hands-on mail order sales. I can’t say I am looking forward to it. I do like hearing from people, especially longtime FSM subscribers and customers.
But I don’t like the sheer labor and management of it all.
It’s not hard to imagine: you might have a perfectly reasonable request or inquiry. By all means, make it.
The problem is that, for the person at the other end (soon to be me), dealing with dozens of perfectly reasonable requests becomes kind of head-spinning.
I think the worst thing is when you get panicked calls (or in the old days, faxes) in the middle of the night asking to change something—or inspect a booklet for wrinkles, a disc for scratches, and so on.
Unfortunately, it only takes one or two extremely obsessive–compulsive customers to make the whole experience debilitating.
I have no problem with helping people, and I’m old school in thinking “The Customer is Always Right”—it’s just exhausting having your entire waking life turn into “the cracked jewel box police.”
But it must be done—so I’ll do it!
I think I will copy Screen Archives’ shipping rates. Holy cow, the prices have jumped up since I last did this, especially internationally. What a shame. I’m sorry, but I can’t eat these costs.
So yes, I will be doing international orders, but I can’t do anything about these shipping prices—and I have to say, my least favorite part of mail order was always when people asked me to lie on the customs forms. We used to fib all the time and mark everything as a gift, but I understand they police this now?
All I can say is that I’m sorry people have to deal with this.
I can tell already that my new least-favorite part of this will be people placing orders via Facebook, Twitter, phone calls, text messages, or anything except what I ask: my email. Thanks!
I will make a final announcement tomorrow (Monday) with shipping rates, ordering instructions, etc. See you soon!