Re: bad news on the books

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

>The printer is responsible for the errors he makes. I suggest that nobody
>ship back any books, and that you return the entire remaining shipment to
>the printer. It is *his* responsibility to provide you with accurately
>printed books. Nora and you and whomever should not need to go through the
>books page by page looking for missing stuff.

This is my inclination BUT see below.>Put the whole lot on a packet, ship it back to the printer *at his expense*
>and ask for a new printing. If he wants to go through each and every book,
>and salvage those which he believes are perfect as part of the new
>printing, that's fine, but its up to him. You want perfectly printed books,
>you are paying good money for that, and you will simply not accept this
>shipment because it is defective Tell the printer that some books were
>shipped, and that some of these were also defective, but that you are not
>--More--
>going to pay to have the books shipped back, and you are going to need to
>replace *all* of the books already shipped. If the printer wants to get
>these books back, than he can bloody well pay the shipping costs himself.

I suspect that something like this will happen.

The printer does seem to be a reputable company, but I am dealing with a
cutomer service droid who started with the company less than 3 months ago
(after they started working on our order), and she almost certainly does not feel she has the authoity needed to handle this.

>If the printer doesn't like it and won't act as a responsible businessman
>should, then call the better business bureau, the states attorney general,
>etc, etc and don't stop until you have satisfaction.

We're prepared to do this if necessary, as well as legal action, but if it goes
legla, the legal fees would likely chew up most of the money we would stand 
to win, unless they caved.

>I hope you did not
>prepay for all these books.

Prepay - no.  I only put 40% down in advance, but I had to pay the rest on
delivery, and we have taken delivery and the check has been cashed long 
ago. This isn't "prepayment" though.

>There are other printers, who I assure you will
>be able to print the damn book without missing pages! This could probably
>be brought to small claims court, and resolved satisfactorily, if this were
>absolutely necessary.

I somehow suspect that $20-$50K is not a small claims court level of
argument.

>Frankly, I don't think you should be handling the business end of things.
>You should be working on the dictionary.

What should be and what must be are two different things.  There is noone else
to do the business-running except me.

>Also, you are much too
>accomodating to be a successful businessman.

I am less accomodating than my public image seems to be - remember that I prosecuted the legal action against JCB to make sure we had the right to use "Loglan"
prmotionally, and also to forestall him challenging us on other intellectual
property issues.  But in this case, ity answer is not as simple as it seems
at first glance. to wit:

>You are trying to correct a
>problem by solving itself, instead of by getting the guy who screwed up to
>correct the problem.
Unfortunately we cannot sit back and wait for  the printer to solve the problem.
The reasons:

1) LLG is deeply in debt for the printing costs, and the debt is to me,
putting me in a conflict of interst situation if repayment is not straight-
forward.  The LLG Board decided some preeliminary things to remove this
conflict from me, but this kind of problem wasn't planned for.  Furthermore,
I intended to draw up the agreement as approved by the Board as a written
document, and that has not been done, because I havne;t been good enough
at putting the business aspects first.

3) Because LLG is in such great debt, regardless of to whom the money is owed,
^2)
we do not have an option of taking our business elsewhere - we have no money
to pay for another printer to do the job, andno reasonable hope of
raising that money.  I can bluff the printer with a threat to take the
business elsewhere - i don't intedn to let him know how limited our options
are, but >I< know they are limited.  The only reason we got these books 
printed was that I had money in the bank that I could put on the line for
the project, but having bought a new car last week, I have no assets sitting
idle any more.

3. Our credibility as an organization/published is on the line.  The book is
announbced, and I have 150 paid orders to fill.  That is $6000+ of other
people's money including yours.  Now $2500 of that is not actually in our 
hands since I haven't finsihed the credit card authorization processing
yet (I got the softweare today though).  But the rest of themoney is checks
that have been cashed, and the money has been spent.  It is probably illegal
for me to hold onto peoples' order money without having the means to fill
the orders within, say 6-8 weeks at most.  Those who have gotten books
have the legal right to ship them back to me probably at LLG expense, if they
are defective.  The fact that it is not our fault doesn't remove our 
responsibility to our cutomers.

meanwhile we have credibility to maintain with companies like Amazon.com
(they've already taken 4 of our books for their customers, and at some point
I have to tell THEM about the problem, and make good on it.  With only one 
exception (an unknown person who bought a copy at the science fiction
convention), the amazon.com people are the only ones where we have no direct 
way of contacting the final customer and notfying him of the problem.

And I am too good or too poor (not sure which) a businessman to leave it to 
the customers to find out about bad books somewhere down the pike, when we
know the high level of defect that exists.

The other side of the credibility issue is that we announced this blooody book
back in SEpt, woith an original publication date of 1 Nov.  If the printer
reprints, even at his expense, we will be lucky to have the replacement books
before mid to end of February.  This is because not only do they have to
schedule and run the printing, but the books have to be shipped to smewhere
in the NMidwest for binding, then back to the printer, then to us.  It took
them over 2 months last time, and although there is time to be saved because
of stuff alrteady done, they will have to themselves spend extra time checking
the quality of the print, for obvious reasons.

But keeping people waiting till March to get books will severely hurt our
publsihing claendar and our credibility with those who have been waiting.

Meanwhile I have 1500 flyers shortly ready to be sent out to our snail mail 
list.  They should have gone out in Sept, but I haven't gotten the mailing
list in shape yet.  But a known delay in being able to fill orders means
that I cannot justifiably send the flyers out.  And they are probably going
to be worthless anyway - they have price dates that we almost certainly will
have to change (the end of the $35 price already has past of course, and 
given likely delays, we will be approaching the end of the $39 price date
given in the flyers).  Luckily this is only a $50-60 charge that we will eat,
but it is still a hassle.

And our whole baseline/publsihing calendar remains up in the air pending
the resolution of this, since even if I get the dictionary done, it cannot
be printed until we have made our money back on the refgrammar.

lojbab
============================
>From sbelknap@uic.edu Mon Dec 29 22:03:46 1997
>From sbelknap@uic.edu  Mon Dec 29 22:03:46 1997
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        for <lojbab@access.digex.net>; Mon, 29 Dec 1997 21:01:27 -0600 (CST)
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Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 21:06:07 -0600
To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>
From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@uic.edu>
Subject: Re: bad news on the books
Status: R

lojbab-

The printer is responsible for the errors he makes. I suggest that nobody
ship back any books, and that you return the entire remaining shipment to
the printer. It is *his* responsibility to provide you with accurately
printed books. Nora and you and whomever should not need to go through the
books page by page looking for missing stuff.

Put the whole lot on a packet, ship it back to the printer *at his expense*
and ask for a new printing. If he wants to go through each and every book,
and salvage those which he believes are perfect as part of the new
printing, that's fine, but its up to him. You want perfectly printed books,
you are paying good money for that, and you will simply not accept this
shipment because it is defective Tell the printer that some books were
shipped, and that some of these were also defective, but that you are not
going to pay to have the books shipped back, and you are going to need to
replace *all* of the books already shipped. If the printer wants to get
these books back, than he can bloody well pay the shipping costs himself.

If the printer doesn't like it and won't act as a responsible businessman
should, then call the better business bureau, the states attorney general,
etc, etc and don't stop until you have satisfaction. I hope you did not
prepay for all these books. There are other printers, who I assure you will
be able to print the damn book without missing pages! This could probably
be brought to small claims court, and resolved satisfactorily, if this were
absolutely necessary. No lawyers, quick results. Hopefully, it won't come
to that, but you would have a rock solid case should it need to.

Frankly, I don't think you should be handling the business end of things.
You should be working on the dictionary. Also, you are much too
accomodating to be a successful businessman. You are trying to correct a
problem by solving itself, instead of by getting the guy who screwed up to
correct the problem. You will give yourself heartburn and anxiety, and
jeopardize the success of the lojban enterprise if you continue to operate
in this manner.

-Steven

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria