Rob, et all, I received the special run State of Maine car set done by Bob Mitchell and let me tell you they are outstanding!! They are looking great being pulled by my LIRR Alcos! John
John, as I probably have to wait some more time to get my issue to Germany, could you tell me how I can get my hands on these cars? I badly want them! Thanks, Oliver
Oliver, Welcome to TrainBoard! As Rob said, contact Bob Mitchell, he is very helpful. Where in Germany do you live? John
Thanks a lot for the answers! Funny, but when I got home from work yesterday I found my issue in the mail. As it seems, Germany is a bit closer to Ohio than Wisconsin... I already sent out a mail to Bob. John, I'm living next to Goeppingen in Southern Germany. Some of you might know this town from a certain Z scale manufacturer Oliver
Oliver, Happy to help. Been to Goeppingen several times and the Marklin factory. I lived in Malmsheim - Renningen near Stuttgart for two years. All the best, John
My issue arrived in Milwaukee today! Almost one month exactly to the day since Rob announced they were being mailed. Three states in 30 days!
No Rob, You did your part......insert the sound of postal workers saying....."well gee boss, I dunno, I ain't never seen something like this before and the choo choos are so small...I figured it wasn't important so I just left it on the back storage shelf until someone said I had to get rid of it?" And they wonder why we like the internet so much?
Interestingly, my postal carrier loves trains. He's asked me a couple of times if he could look through my Trains magazine before putting it in the box. I told him I didn't care if he flipped through it at long as it arrived in my mailbox the same day. Now, with Ztrack, it's sealed in an envelope and the U.S.P.S. has absolutely no excuse whatsoever for their poor service to the person paying their bill -- in this case, Rob. The subscriber is the one that suffers the delay, but the publisher is the one that suffers the damage in postage without service and the potential loss of subscribers.
Russ, you are so right. We have lost many subscribers who feel that we offer a poor level of service due to the inconstant issue delivery. But once we deliver the issues to our post office, we loose all control of the distribution. What is more interesting is if you look at publications like Model Railroader, their delivery is very solid and never late. Both Ztrack and Model Railroader have an approved Periodical rate from the USPS. This rate cost us a considerable sum to achieve and we must file paper work every year with the USPS to validate and renew this rate. Issues are to be delivered in 3-4 days, not 3-4 weeks. But what happens is that post office employees ignore our Periodical rate classification and group Ztrack into bulk mail. This is the lowest class mail and can take weeks to deliver. This happens on a regional basis which is why Pennsylvania receives their issue one week, and California two weeks later. It is beyond frustrating. What is more frustrating is that some subscribers are just not nice about this issue. We literally had one former subscriber tell us, and I quote, 'shove it'. Of course, part of his problem was that he moved, failed to inform us, and missed four issues of Ztrack that he demanded that we replace for free since they weren't forwarded. We have no problem sending out replacement issues for free. But this guy was over the top. At the end of the day, we are so proud of Ztrack, the articles, the content, new items and our service to Z scale. We can't wait for readers to get their issues. We love sharing all of the great layout stories that our readers send to us. We understand how important it is to get the word out to readers for our advertisers. We have a dedicated group working behind the scenes to make Ztrack happen, including folks like John Cubbin and Bob Mitchell. Nothing is worse to us then issues not arriving. It is such a let down. We hope folks will not judge us to harshly for these uncontrollable delivery issues. We always guarantee delivery and will send out replacement issues after a given period of time. Unfortunately, as we have discovered, we have little recourse with the Post Office to improve the situation. Rob
Rob, Do you think it is because Ztrack is in an envelope instead of just loose like most magazine subscriptions? Is the post office missing the point that it is a periodical because they can't see it? Russ
I still have the envelope for the latest issue, Russ. It says "PERIODICAL" in big red letters in the corner of the envelope where postage would go. ("Periodical" is the term librarians - like me - and the postal service use to refer to magazines, journals and newspapers.) I know next to zilch about postal regulations, but I assume the "PERIODICALS" label is the cue to the postal service that that is what is inside. You're right that many magazines are shipped "loose", but many others are sent wrapped in clear (well, clear-ish) plastic, and others are in paper envelopes. ZTrack uses the latter.
