One of the most common magazine supply complaints I hear from newsagents relates to partworks supply and the difficulty in getting backorders to help partworks collectors complete their collection. Here is an email I received from a colleague newsagent that outlines a current concern:
I have had a few issues with missing parts for partworks recently and feel that all the responsibility falls onto the newsagent.
When an item is back ordered and it takes time to arrive they go outside of their return dates and become firm sale.
So we have to take it on firm sale because the distributor/supplier did not have enough parts, and in doing the right thing for the customer we have to take the risk.
I have a current instance where I have a back order for number 68 of the James Bond DB5 model. The customer has spend in excess of $1300 and has been waiting more than 10 weeks for a part.
They are now hesitant to pick up parts as they feel it may not arrive (and NDC does not impart a great deal of confidence that it will).
This has also happened with other partworks, and customers drop off because parts have to be back ordered, so we do the legwork early and then due to short deliveries we miss out on the sales further down the track.
Anyway, this one case has been a bone of contention (and to make it that little bit harder this particular customer is profoundly deaf so all communications is on a sheet of paper!). Thought it might make a good blog post.
The issue outlined here is often experienced by newsagents. Magazine distributors and partworks publishers need to find a better solution for newsagents and partworks collectors.
We take payment up front for all back orders to protect ourselves but this is of little help to the customer. Some years back we were putting customers in direct contact at management level so that the distributors could own their problems and show the customer that we were doing our up most to fulfill their order. Amazingly this seemed to get results as in a couple of cases the distributor “found” stock that had been unavailable to us for over six months. What I can’t believe is that we have been advised that although back orders for a couple of these booming partworks will be supplied, the distributor intends to fall back to the expected decay rate. This is stupid for models and even the Ultimate Marvel Heroes series as clearly many more customers than expected are willing to complete the collection.
We had one last missing piece on B/O for a customer a few years back for one of the model series……..it took almost 18 months.
Partworks are one extreme to another. They are good revenue when receiving on time but a pain in the bum when having to chase up missing orders that were never received or continually chasing up backorders from months ago. If they want to advertise and sell and distribute them as a series they have made a committment to the newsagent and customer and should be made liable for not fulfilling this obligation. If you promise something and can’t deliver don’t promise at all.
My husband collects the Fighter Aircraft collection, these seem to be turning up broken on a continual basis and are then on backorder for weeks to chase up a issue that isn’t broken, not entirely the same issue but nearly as bad as having a broken partworks model, as no part work model at all.
Silly silly newsagent they want to cut you out ,just do the next to nothing leg work at the start and then you get from them
Said it before and will say it again. Partworks is not worth the effort. The euphoria of a few easy dollars at the beginning of the series is soon overwhelmed by the bitterness and disappointment of atrocious fulfilment later in the series.
In fact it’s probably a concept that ACCC could be interested in. There’s more than a whiff of bait & switch about the Partworks model.
Dave it would be misinformed to call the T2020 trial in Queensland a trial. It is a trial for a very good reason. Newsagents I have spoken with are working through it. Reps at News execs are too – they have been meeting with newsagents this week on this.
Wow, James Bond DB5 series now finished, received a congrats for making it a success email from NDC.
Still no word on parts yet, short delivered, broken and no replacements available.
NDC needs to sort this out because we the retailer is the one who looks stupid. We are the ones that need to speak to irate customers.
Maybe Dave is right, the 40 issues at $1.99 ($20 margin) is not worth the work later on…
We have 6 putaways for the DB5 and today received supply for 3. We have been short supplied for weeks now and these customers WILL pick up every issue so why the short supply? Any customer building a model such as this is committed to complete it particularly as we get deeper into the series. I will make this same complaint to Network via email today but wonder who the UK distributor is as I would like to strongly take them to task for not sending enough into the country…if this is in fact the case.
Same issue here Brendan except I have a single put away for it and seem to only be receiving it on odd issue numbers with several weeks where it wasn’t supplied at all.
Back orders never seem to arrive even after a couple of months. With the dolls House series it got so bad towards the end that a couple of the people who had put aways just gave up collecting and cancelled their standing orders.