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I like ordering my Pathfinder from Paizo. The shipping fees kill me. I am way behind on running adventures and so if I get my stuff as soon as it is released or 4 months later, it makes no difference to me.
Any chance of adding a "Hold until x dollar value is ready to ship" option?
+1
or a ship quarterly option.
I think the problem is that this will generate a lot of uncertainty and extra cost:
So you subscribe to everything they got, and let it ship quarterly. Now they have to store your stuff for up to 3 months before they get to ship it. That means extra storage cost (because they can't just sell it and wait for the next shipment to contain your stuff).
And now, 3 days before the final stuff arrives and they finally get to ship everything and get your money (months after they would have needed it), you just cancel all subscriptions.
I'm not saying you personally will subscribe to everything and then chicken out in the last second, but somebody will probably do.
Anyway, if a lot of people will opt for quarterly shipment, there will be a lot of stuff sitting around in some warehouse taking up space, costing space money, and not getting payed for.
We'd all be happy (I'd wager) to let a higher percentage of my money go to Paizo (as an international subscriber I probably pay a lot more for shipping than you guys) (though I wouldn't want seasonal shipments, as I'm far too impatient).
And while it would not be an option for me, I always welcome more options.
I just voiced my concerns over the details behind the idea.
Sorry if I came over as a spoil-sport. I don't know everything, either, and maybe it could be worked out. Maybe they could introduce a "seasonal subscription" where you are committed to your subscription for a whole three months and where they send you the stuff in one go.
You might have to pay in advance and get the same deal as the people with ongoing subscriptions (except the shipment thing, of course). That way, the uncertainty of people cancelling on some stuff they had lying around for months would be gone, and maybe the benefit of getting the money early would go a ways to offset the storage costs.
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Anyway, if a lot of people will opt for quarterly shipment, there will be a lot of stuff sitting around in some warehouse taking up space, costing space money, and not getting payed for.
Alternatively though, bimonthly or quarterly subscriptions could be "billed when available, no refunds." So instead of billing at shipping, they bill immediately and then bill for shipping when the sub ships. Thus even if you cancel, you'll still have to pay the shipping fee since you're not getting your money back for the items being held for you.
Chief Technical Officer
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KaeYoss is pretty much right on—we don't want to have a bunch of stuff sitting around waiting to ship, for a number of reasons. And since we've been putting more and more emphasis on making it easier to ship *other* stuff with your subscriptions, it's a bigger issue now than it has ever been before.
As for the idea of charging before we ship, well, one of the fundamental design principles our entire system was built upon is that we charge you when we ship your stuff. Partly, that's because our credit card processing agreement says we *can't* charge you before we ship in most cases. (We know full well that tons of companies ignore that clause in their credit card processing agreements, but we don't, and we won't.)
We'd have to think long and hard before changing anything that circumvents "charge on ship", and if we did, it wouldn't be easy to implement, either on a code point of view or a fulfillment point of view.
Hm.. what about a more classical subscription. I think they should be possible with credit card payment. You don't buy product per se, but the guarantee to receive product without any additional effort on your part. Or something like that. I'm sure credit card companies allow for pre-paid subscriptions.
Of course, there's still the part where you have the stuff lying around for weeks at a time, but I think that way you could at least manage the payment part.
No worries Vic. At least you guys put 'Books' on the customs stuff so that I don't get charged unnecessary tax in the UK.
Hopefully the Pathfinder RPG is going to make Paizo wealthy enough to consider a european warehouse one day :)
Well, I don't know about a warehouse, but when asked about a European fulfilment agent for their subscriptions (i.e. they ship all the Euro stuff wholesale to somewhere in Europe, and a local service provider ships them on to us), they said they don't want to do it because that way, someone else, someone not Paizo, would do something but Paizo would be blamed if something went wrong. It's their name on the line, but they don't have direct control over the quality.
So they would have to put their own people into a local warehouse, and I don't think Paizo wants to grow that big.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Hm.. what about a more classical subscription. I think they should be possible with credit card payment. You don't buy product per se, but the guarantee to receive product without any additional effort on your part. Or something like that. I'm sure credit card companies allow for pre-paid subscriptions.
Credit cards do allow for that, of course... but we hate 'em. We used to do fixed-term subs for our magazines, and often had to spend more time, effort, and money dealing with the issues that result from that than some of the subscriptions were actually worth. Getting people to renew, dealing with gaps in their subs because they failed to renew on time... it's really just a recipe for making people unhappy on both ends.
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I subscribe to most of the options available. I wait until all items are in before they ship. I pay a healthly shipping price that is roughly 50% more than sales tax. My buddies buy their products from the local game shop and get their products before me.
The "monthly" option is not too expensive considering you get the PDF's as well. You can download the PDF's if you wish and the rest shows up a little later, like a monthly Christmas, for a nominal price.
It is actually not a bad plan to go monthly. It works well for Paizo and well for most of the customers. Overall, you still are doing pretty good so keep gaming my brother!