Entertainment For Lively Minds
Word 93: on sale today!
It's only a matter of time before the entire nation is walking up to Mark Ellen and Kate Mossman presenting breakfast television from the comfort of an expensive looking sofa overlooking a suitably spectacular urban landscape, but in the meantime you'll have to settle for their monthly round-up of all things new at The Word.
Also in this issue: the Sex Pistols, Belle & Sebastian, Down Terrace, the Best & Worst bits in rock 'n roll, metal memoirs, Dave Fanning, Armstrong & Miller, Jim Sullivan, Simon Pegg, Elvis Costello, Janelle Monae, Phil Collins, Herman Leonard, Mad Men, how the internet ate the record business, columnists Andrew Collins, David Hepworth and Andrew Harrison, our regular round-up of the very best in new music, books, film and DVD, and all sorts of other goodness.
Hang about!
I haven't received the October issue yet!
Your replacement copy
Was posted yesterday. Apologies again for the delay.
Thanks, Fraser and...
... no need to apologize. Just send me an iPad and I'll make do with the "e" version each month!
And it arrived...
... today! Cheers!
Still waiting too
The Brian Ferry cover issue hasn't made it to Cincinnati yet either Billybob. I've thought of subscribing to see if that helps, but all the negative comments from other non-UK based subscribers on the site have given me pause.
I've been a subscriber since issue #2
... and this is only the second or third time it's been late. That's not bad over the course of about 7 years and 90-odd issues.
re:" negative comments from other non-UK based subscribers "
FWIW I had an overseas subscription for almost two years, and had no problems at all.
I am a subscriber and have yet to get the latest issue
Any issues with postage to Oxfordshire?
Not that we know of
Let us know if you haven't had it by the beginning of next week, and we'll send out a replacement.
I blame...
the tourists.
Overseas subs
I have been an overseas subscriber since issue 2 and the delivery this year has been the worst for several years (at least for my copy). Out of nine issues so far, two have completely failed to arrive and two others have been very late. Fraser and Jerry have been very helpful with replacements etc but it would be good if the magazine could be sent on time. When will this month's overseas subs copies be sent out, ie when will DHL actually send them rather than the date they are supposed to send them?
An ex-overseas subscriber writes
I've let my subscription lapse.
The first year the service was very sluggish but more or less worked. After renewing, though, it became such a comedy of errors that in the end I just gave up shooting off e-mails to those purportedly running the outsourced subscriptions service (they don't seem to have even bothered reading them until I mithered Fraser to get someone on their case, which shouldn't have been necessary). It reached the point where I frankly couldn't be arsed to complain any more, and in the end I was almost relieved when the subscription ran out, to be honest.
Living, as I do, only 75 miles from a British airport (Gibraltar), which in turn is only a two-and-a half-hour flight from London, I'm still baffled by why the average issue should have taken 2–3 weeks to arrive, if it ever arrived at all. I mean, come on - even by surface mail it'd only take 3–4 days if you drove it down through the picturesque Massif Central and over the most tortuous Pyrenees pass in a 1983 Transit that was burning oil.
Meanwhile, I ordered a Kindle from Amazon on a Friday. According to the tracking note, it was shipped from Kentucky the next day, arrived in Madrid and cleared customs on Sunday, was driven down to Seville on Monday and by Tuesday mid-morning I was reading the thing. That was no fast-track premium service, either, but just their standard system, costing no more for shipping charges than the p+p that's whopped on an overseas Word subscription. In five years of ordering stuff from Amazon, only once has an order failed to arrive, and I got a full replacement package within 36 hours of querying them about it. Compare and contrast with my Word subscription "welcome gift", which took seven months and almost as many e-mails.
Maybe I've just been really, really unlucky, I don't know. But if you go to a restaurant and the service - despite your repeated badgering of the maître d', who promises to have serious words with the waiter – is absurdly slow, some of the dishes that you ordered never arrive, the special-offer "starter course" eventually turns up in the middle of your dessert, and when the bill comes you notice it includes a 40% extra cover charge for non-locals, what do you do? You shrug and you don't go back, that's what you do, no matter how yumtastic the actual food - or what you got to see of it - might have been.
Sorry we lost you
If we had the clout that Amazon did, then I'm sure that would be reflected in increased speed and reduced cost of overseas delivery. But we don't, and nor does any other small business.
However, we do pay for a "priority" service with DHL, and (with the exception of this month) it appears to work pretty well - the adverse feedback we get reflects a tiny percentage of copies sent abroad. That's not to say it's perfect, by any means - Irish delivery appears to be much slower than it should be, for instance - but overall the service is a lot better than 12 months ago. There will always be readers for whom this isn't the case, but we can't possibly select a specific delivery partner for each individual reader.
Suffice to say, non-delivery is something we take very seriously, because we have to: at the risk of labouring the point, we're a small, independent company, and we absolutely rely on subscriptions to keep the business afloat. The minute we have to send a replacement copy of a magazine out, doing so becomes more difficult.
I'm sorry to go too
But you do understand why, don't you? After all, we've exchanged enough e-mails about it (and I've dropped enough hints on the blog too) over the last year or so!
If it's not possible to find a reliable international courier, at least for certain locations - because I'm not the only one who's moaned about how shoddy the service has been, and after all it's one we do pay top whack for - have you considered offering a digital-only subscription for, say, 20-25 quid a year? That way, you wouldn't be totally dependent on the vagaries of the performance of third-party intermediaries, while we'd be as sure of receiving our monthly URL as we are of getting our SFTW mailout every Thursday.
Have you perhaps discussed this as an option? Because if as a small company you admit you can't match the performance and reliability of the Amazons of the world when it comes to overseas deliveries, and I appreciate you probably can't, then surely it's time to consider offering something that you can control the quality of.
Isn't it a basic rule of good business not to promise what you're not sure you can deliver (in this case, literally)?
I understand
And while I'm entirely happy to accept that delivery is our ultimate responsibility, it will always remain - unfortunately - outside of our actual control, whoever we choose. But as I said in my previous post, the overwhelming majority of overseas subscribers get their magazines when they should. Weirdly, it's certainly a much higher success rate that that for delivery of the SFTW mail (believe me, I see the bounces).
As far as a digital subscriber edition goes, we've considered several different options, but I'm not in a position to say anything more than "watch this space" at the moment.
Overseas Subs
Were despatched on 11 October. Or so DHL tell us.
Arrived
Since I complained about last month's issue not arriving (still not here), it is only fair to report that this month's copy arrived today. Hopefully everything is now back to normal with DHL (but could be wishful thinking).
How dare you!
Hideous physiognomy? Grotesque visage?
That's fighting talk!
I'll grant you Zappa was no Johnny Depp, but neither was he a Mark E. Smith lookalike. In fact few rock stars looked cooler than FZ during the 60s and 70s.
And anyway Frank is, in fact, yawning on that adaptation of the Chunga's Revenge album sleeve you've utilised for this month's cover.
And to those moaning about late magazines, speaking as one who is too busy/disorganised to take out a subscription, you should try forking out over £6 for a three month old sea mail copy or £9 for last month's issue, as we do in the Antipodes.
My final issue
Right then, this is the last one I buy until there's a reasonably priced iPad version. Pretty much anyone other than Zappa on the cover and I could have left it on the shelf.
By the way, I just subscribed to a rival mag through the Zinio app, 25 quid for 12 issues.
It is here!
Issue 92 arrived today at my local magazine store. Now it is going to be a good weekend! This gives me some quality reading during my 3 daughters' 5 soccer games tomorrow.
Any Issue
I rarely ever see the Word on shop shelf to consider buying a copy. Admittedly I don't have a large newsagent locally but it never seems to be in any of the numerous large supermarkets where I do see most of the rivals.
Both my local Sainsburys sell The Word
I subscribe though. Its cheaper, its quicker, its more reliable than my memory (no problems in 2 years), its a nice surprise finding it at home when I get home from work and the publishers prefer it.
Mine arrived earlier than....
usual this time! I'd be interested in a digital version as well, because most of my reading seems to be done on the laptop these days. The only thing about the digital version is that when I zoom into the text it blurs a bit. Anyone know of anyway around this? I'm using a Macbook. Also, is the October Spotify playlist supposed to be empty?!*
*Found it! When I clicked on 'TheWordMagazine' in Spotify it took me to all the playlists!
I have been
a subscriber for a few years. Every copy has arrived safely and way before the magazine appears in the shops.
Of course, Berkshire isn't Spain or Australia, but in any mass mail out, something will happen sometimes, because systems can never be perfect. Life is like that.
A friend who lives within 400 yards of Oxford Street tells me her (mailed) copy of Vanity Fair is late every month.
Probably says more about
her postman. Is he particularly well dressed?
You're right!
He wears a cravat and a jaunty smile.
On a more positive note...
I'm in Australia and have been subscribing for nearly 2 years now.
I've received every issue, and they're seldom more than 2 weeks later than the UK subscribers receive theirs. And it's cheaper and quicker than buying it from the local newsagent.
I'd still always choose to have a printed version sent over a cheaper electronic version.
Kicking a courier while they're down
Off-topic (ish), but I've lost all faith in DHL. Recently bought a mobile phone online. Never arrived. DHL claimed they had tried to deliver it three times (they hadn't) and that they'd left cards to that effect each time (they hadn't) Just plain old lying, unfortunately. Phone was returned to retailer, who offered to let me re-order, but at the new price which was £20 more! No thanks.