Linns/Amos Idiocy And The Pain Of Subscription Renewal

He was fuming recently about an order he sent them for a full set of Schaubek US National pages/binders, came to over $1200. It cost Amos $25 or so shipping, he was charged the full 10% shipping- over $120. He took a hit on that rather than pass the cost onto his customer. He apparently wound up not making much or anything on the deal. They wouldn't budge on the shipping.

Flat percentage rate shipping with no cap is an insane ripoff to the customer. Many supply companies use this model, and it is abhorrent.

Yeah, a flat 10% is ridiculous. In my opinion (which does not and should not matter a whit to Amos) any markup on shipping more than 25% or so is robbery. I know that boxes, tape and other supplies have costs as well, and I don't see anything wrong with a small markup on the actual costs. But adding another $90 or so seems a bit much.

When you are selling lots of different things - the sizes, shapes, weights - and they can be bought in any combination - writing a really good shipping algorithm requires 1) a lot of research into what actually costs what, and 2) codifying that information, and 3) writing all that math & tabular data into code, and 4) taking the risk of being wrong - up and down the management line.

Percentage rules are simple - simple to write, simple to understand, simple to implement.

Though individual outcomes will be ridiculous, a system that is simple to formulate & implement has important advantages, too.

All that having been said, I met a kitchen-cabinets-type carpenter in Dallas almost thirty years ago who had written a cut optimization program. Enter the dimensions of all the pieces to be cut from a given material (eg white laminate plywood sheets) and the program would tell the carpenter how to cut the most pieces from the fewest sheets with the least amount of waste. I forget the price - perhaps north of U$D 1000 - but I do remember he was selling it on a 5.25" floppy disk and that, as a bonus, it would run even faster on an XT.

It that guy - with no background in computers, learning in his spare time, working in his spare time - could solve this problem, presumably Amos could figure-out NRL (Near Real Life) shipping costs for its products - and in whatever combination a customer happened to order them.

My guess is that they think that they have bigger problems than angering the occasional over-spending-hobbyist (or his/her spouse/partner/whatever), and that improving their shipping costing would be dusting the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Or... they simply don't give a damn.

;)

The oft-expressed future-minded netsy-literate consensus opinion on SCF seems to be that Amos does not need to better manage their shipping charges as much as they need to figure-out how to stop shipping things.

Perhaps we could do Amos a real favor by finding information-compiling companies that have successfully moved on from bind'n'sell and its evil spawn, Shipping & Handling.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I notice Mystic just redid their website. I haven't looked through it in detail, but it appears to be well organized and fast, with easy online ordering, zoom features, etc. Amos could take some pointers from them, to be sure. I've often wondered if Mystic will end up as the publisher of Scott someday, although I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable with that or if Mystic would even have a desire to get involved in publishing. But, at least it appears there is one company with the ability and the desire to create a good online experience.

A retail dealer owning an industry standard catalog is a major conflict of interest, IMO. Stanley Gibbons operates under that model and their pricing is viewed with an extremely skeptical eye (that, combined with their ponzi-esque "investment portfolios").

Mystic customers should have receive an email today, I get one to annonce the new features.

Or it might be the only way for the retailer/service provider to get the message.

The future of (any) market is not dependant on corporations defining the market, but rather their ability to evolve to meet the needs/desires of the consumer AND proactively research and develope new technology.

If Linns/Amos can't evolve, then someone else will eventually pick up the baton.

Brian

Agreed that a retailer doubling as a catalog publisher is a conflict of interest and I'm not rooting for Mystic (or any retailer) to take over Scott. If Amos doesn't adapt, it's likely their overall revenues will decline to the point where someone will be able to buy the rights to Scott for a song. At that point, any buyer would have all the content already done, they'd just need to repackage it in ways that the market is demanding. I could (possibly) foresee a retailer such as Mystic being interested as they'd already have the technical expertise to make something better and they'd probably have the financial wherewithal to do so as well. All that depends, of course, on whether they'd see any profit in it and weren't worried about the conflict of interest themselves.

Mystic may have improved their site but in my opinion they missed the boat. For common material I have no issues with a simple high resolution image of the stamp that I am buying. But do they really expect me to fork over $1895.00 for a set of Zeps without any images of the back of the stamps?
Don

Don:

I think you're missing a more subtle point -- the images are for advertising. You're not getting those actual stamps anyway. So why worry about the back of a stamp you're not getting?

Kirk,
Actually they seem to have a scrolling bar which shows many examples of a particular stamp and or multiples. If you click on one of them, they seem to describe that particular stamp, centering, grade etc.

I took this to mean that you were buying THAT particular stamp, but I could be wrong.
Don

Yeah, I'd like to see pictures of specific stamps (front and back) if I'm even paying $20 but would probably still buy from a reputable seller with clear grading standards at that much and up. I'd probably insist on pictures of the specific stamp, front and back, while still south of $100. Still, Mystic says they have 120,000 items for sale online now. That's quite an undertaking, even even if all items aren't pictured or described to my satisfaction, a situation that I anticipate will improve over time. Given their pricing, it's probably fairly unlikely they'll see much business from me, but I'll be sure to check there occasionally for items I'm just not finding elsewhere. I'm sure their expense in doing this was considerable, but they're now well positioned to capture a lot more business as a result.