"Free Binder with Part One! Issue One special price!" Anyone here buy these?

whiskeyman

Every year at this time, the advertising slots on TV channels are swamped with these things, covering a whole host of interests... from model cars to aromatherapy.
(You know... these things).

The usual trick is to entice you with a super low low introductory price, and then jack it up for all the rest..... and they usually require you to buy all the series if you really want to complete that collection / model car etc...

Does anyone here actually buy these things?
Do you still have ones you got from previous years?
Have you taken up any new hobbies because of them?
Would you just buy once-off to get good value out of the first copy? (perhaps a cheap DVD?).

There's obviously huge money in them as people look to take up new interests over the New Year.

(Just clarify here - I'm not talking about soccer / cartoon sticker books.
There's a special place in my heart for my World Cup 90 collection...)

Atrocity

The trouble is, this is Ireland and unless you live in a city, near an Easons or proper newsagents, there's no way of completing the collection. All the paper shops and small shops in the towns have the first five or six, then you've no way of getting your hands on the next 50 parts.

I usually buy 1 series every year. I don't know whether that's too much or not.....

whiskeyman

Deleted User wrote:

I usually buy 1 series every year. I don't know whether that's too much or not.....

Wow.
Just out of curiosity, do you have ones you bought from other years?
Taking the last one you bought, how much did you spend on it?

whiskeyman

whiskeyman wrote:

Wow.
Just out of curiosity, do you have ones you bought from other years?
Taking the last one you bought, how much did you spend on it?

Yes. They're all in the attic. Mosly PC ones, also a calligraphy, James Bond, Charles Dickens and a ship modelling one too I think.

The last series was a PC one I think, 100 in the collection. There was a CD with it every second week so the price alternated from €5 to €10 every week. You do the math.

Wertz

I love the way they repeat certain print-runs of these lifestyle changers every 3-4 years...although with the advent of cheap cover dvds, they can afford to open up a whole new avenue, and not have to repeat themselves.

I got sucked into collecting one of these titles when I was a kid, some history thing....got maybe 15 issues in and it was either discontinued or simply unavailable.

They prey on people's NY resolutions IMO...people looking for a smash n grab hobby to replace fags, booze, eationg or whatever....I'd say tat's the reason the print runs never seem to last further in than march...

Endurance Man

They are a big waste of money. I almost fell for one about a year ago, was the Subaru Rally Car kit. I then sat down and worked it out, for the money i would spent buying these things each week i could have gone out and bought 2 of the exact same models :rolleyes: .

starn

I have been buying the Horriblr Science Part works for my little brother for the last year. There based on the series of books by Nick Arnold, and are a great way of introducing him to science. He wont read Arnold's books but loves these. Before he looks at each Issue I sit down and go thru it, coming up with some exsperiments for him to do based on the articles


Edit: With that said I did go to school with a guy who has issue of the Star Trek part work which has been running since 1997, and that is Kinda worrying

muesli_offire

I bought the 'Treasures of the Earth' series from about 10 yrs ago. It was basically an excuse to sell worthless rocks and pieces of dirt to kids.
Ooooo! Shiny!

Capt'n Midnight

Spent €1.70 on the callligraphy one. Ink pen nib and case.
Won't be getting the rest.

There is one for a BMW racing car.
95 issues , regular price € 9.99
Yes folks you too can have a remote control car for only a grand !
And I'd bet you have to buy other stuff too.

senordingdong

I got stooped into buiying a few when I was a nipper.

But haven't done it in a long time.

Endurance Man

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Spent €1.70 on the callligraphy one. Ink pen nib and case.
Won't be getting the rest.

There is one for a BMW racing car.
95 issues , regular price € 9.99
Yes folks you too can have a remote control car for only a grand !
And I'd bet you have to buy other stuff too.

LOL :v: , its crazy, and yet the poor kids and there parents will be sucked in. Its just like a credit card tbh.

Wertz

except a creditcard is actually useful :v:

fade2black

Think I remember collecting one called Find Out More when I was a nipper. The brother used to collect one called Winners. We still have them all.

Stephen

Death to DeAgostini.

illumin

muesli_offire wrote:

I bought the 'Treasures of the Earth' series from about 10 yrs ago. It was basically an excuse to sell worthless rocks and pieces of dirt to kids.
Ooooo! Shiny!

Yep ive this collection as well in my attic. I used to read the books but then it got to the stage where they'd go directly into the binder after a cursory glance. My parents must of spent a fortune on it. I wonder if i could flog em on ebay for a few hundred quid

senordingdong

Stephen wrote:

Death to DeAgostini.

Is there a petition or something?

whiskeyman

senordingdong wrote:

Is there a petition or something?

Death to DeAgostini.
In all good newsagents now!
Free petition binder in issue one....

Pighead

Pighead used to collect the Tree of Knowledge religiously every week. It was an encyclopedia that took about 3 years to build up.
Oh how I used to annoy my poor Mother, "But Mama, you have to buy it for me, it will help me in school and most probably help me to become a much better person.
Ended up collecting every single one of those blighters.
Did Pighead ever use the full and completed Tree of Knowledge throughout his school years?
Did he fcuk! Sorry Mama.

Rb

No, haven't bought one in my entire life and don't plan to as they all look sh1t.

Big Ears

Deleted User wrote:

The last series was a PC one I think, 100 in the collection. There was a CD with it every second week so the price alternated from €5 to €10 every week. You do the math.

Correct me if i'm wrong but I think that's €750 :eek: .

stormkeeper

I'm actually going pale in the face thinking about how many of those things I've bought... I bought the star Trek ones a lot, heh. I usually didn't buy the PC ones unless they had a game I like (in the case of those PC things)... game and magazine usually ended up cheaper than buying the game alone!

Usually couldn't get the game where I lived anyway, heh... either that, or the game is still a tenner... I used to have to go to Dublin to get the bulk of my games, before moving here... now I just have to go either 2-3 miles up the road, sepending if I go to Barking or Ilford, as they both have a Game, and Barking also has a Gamestation, so I don't usually need to travel far for what I need these days...


Back on topic though, some of those magazines are awfully pricey when you get them all... heh.

natter

I remember my brother got hooked on a dinosaur one when he was younger. It was cool enough at the time, there were 3D glasses and pictures of dinousaurs and you'd get a piece of the model dinosaur every week. Doesn't sound quite as great now though, ah well the oul pair were silly enough to buy it for him

nlgbbbblth

I have completed

The World Of Knowledge (1980)
The Home Computer Course (1984)
The Unexplained (1985)
Input (1986)
Nam - The Vietnam Experience (1987)
Eyewitness Nam (1988)

p~b

natter wrote:

I remember my brother got hooked on a dinosaur one when he was younger. It was cool enough at the time, there were 3D glasses and pictures of dinousaurs and you'd get a piece of the model dinosaur every week. Doesn't sound quite as great now though, ah well the oul pair were silly enough to buy it for him

yeah i bought those dinosaur ones aswell, i think i'll be buying the first issue of that marshall arts one for the free dvd fists of fury

billy the squid

completed the tree of knowledge one, and the Images of War one. the latter was actually quite good.

others I have purchased were X factor, star trek factfiles (didnt complete it, got up to like issue 200 and the stuff from volume 1 was going out of date

the marshal cavendish ones tend to be more interesting and better quality.

muckwarrior

natter wrote:

I remember my brother got hooked on a dinosaur one when he was younger. It was cool enough at the time, there were 3D glasses and pictures of dinousaurs and you'd get a piece of the model dinosaur every week. Doesn't sound quite as great now though, ah well the oul pair were silly enough to buy it for him

Yeah, I got that one too. Right untill I got the whole dinosaur built. "The art of fishing" was another one i collected for a while when I was a kid.

Devon

I was hooked on "Quest" in the late 80's and early 90's every fortnight and then gave them all away.

Calibos

Atrocity wrote:

The trouble is, this is Ireland and unless you live in a city, near an Easons or proper newsagents, there's no way of completing the collection. All the paper shops and small shops in the towns have the first five or six, then you've no way of getting your hands on the next 50 parts.

The reason lots of shops only sell the first 5 or 6 is that these partworks as they are called are only sale or return for the first 5 or 6 issues. After that if you don't sell them you are stuck with them. These are the only type of publication that do this. Absolutely every other magazine and paper is sale or return. Never heard of an explanation as to why this is.

These things are a nightmare for the Newsagents.

Without fail there are 10 or 20 of these things launched in January.

Without fail lots of people order them.

Without fail we explain the whole issue of no sale or return meaning it is imperative that the customer let us know a week in advance that they wish to cancel their subscription lest we get left with partworks we will find hard to sell and cannot return. We also explain that 6 out of 10 people don't get past the 10th issue before deciding to cancel and do they really want to bother. We explain that 6 out of 10 people despite having the exact same thing explained to them nevertheless fail to give us advance warning of cancellation never to be seen again leaving us with 3 or 4 issues until we realised they weren't just on holiday but were never coming back.

Without fail each and every customer says," Oh I totally understand and I would never do that, of course I'll give advance warning!"

Without fail 6 out of 10 of them don't.

Worked out that out of last years batch of these publications we probably lost at least half our profit on these things. Theres about 6 or 7 people still collecting them so we shouldn't lost any money on those. Another 6 or 7 gave us the requisite warning of cancellation so we shouldn't lose any money on those people either. The other 20 or so never cancelled and were never seen again with us stuck with 3 or 4 issues apiece which wiped out half the profit we made on the issues they did pay us for and the profit we made on the decent customers who are still collecting or who cancelled properly. EG. our profit margin on these things is 25% I think. So on a partwok costing €10 our cut is €2.50. So 6 or 7 people get the full run of 50 issues say. So 7 people get 50 issues @ €2.50 profit apiece = We make €875 profit on those people. 7 people get half the run before cancelling properly. So 7 x 25 x €2.50 = We make €437.50 profit on these conciencious people. Then say the 20 who didn't cancel. 10 disappear after they've paid for 5 or 6 issues. We made €125 on those. 5 disappear after 10 issues. We made €125 on those. 5 disappear after 15 issues. We made €187.50 on those. Right so profit made on all customers whether they got the full set, cancelled properly or disappeared is €1750. We were stuck with 4 non returnable issues apiece for those 20 people who disappeared. On the €10 partwork in the example the cost price for us was €7.50. So thats 20 people x 4 issues x €7.50 = €600 cancelling out one third of the profit we made on the issues that were paid for. We tried asking for payment in advance last the year before last to stop this and most people said no and said they would get it somewhere else so that was a nogo last year. We decided to give it one more year and just really try to drive it home to people how important it was to give us warning of cancellation. One last try....It didn't work

But why do we let 3 or 4 issues build up before cancelling I hear you ask? Well invariably all the customers even the conciencious ones might miss a week or two several times during the run and come in a week or two later and pick up 2 or 3 issues at once. One never knows if this time its the same thing or that this time we are never going to see that customer again. Another reason is that if we get it wrong and cancel the sub ourselves and then the customer does rematerialise looking for their partworks that we have cancelled they get stroppy that we didn't trust their word that they wouldn't let us down, they get stroppy that it will take 6 or 7 weeks to get the back issue they missed. Why it takes that long I do not know. Its not as if the publisher is waiting for back issues to come back in as returns before they can send them back out as back issues because....these things aren't sale or return as we already know! Another reason for us getting stuck with at least one of those four issues are Easons themselves. Quite often despite us cancelling with Easons on time we will get one more issue. If the Easons CS doesn't enter the cancellation in there computer systems A. it doesn't get cancelled obviously and B. There is no record of the cancellation and the feckers won't give us the credit for it. Anyway after the ticking off by the customer for cancelling on them you are even more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt the next time and its then that they shaft you and you never see them again. A lot of times Easons will send out too many and wont credit you for the extra issues. Quite often we are short issues, we ring easons and ask for the number of copies we were missing. They'll send out the replacement issues and then a day or too later the originals will arrive too. They WILL NOT credit us for these mistakes. So in other words as well as the issues we are left with by customers that disappear we are left with another 60 or 70 copies during a full run (Using the example out of 700 issues delivered in total Easons fcuked up 10% of the orders) through no fault of our own but due to easons incompetance. So thats another €525 knocked off our margin. Easons seem to fcuk up 5% of all magazine orders when averaged out. (Well thats what it feels like when you are on the phone each and every day to them) Partworks orders seem to be prone to more mistakes and whereas the the 5% of fcuk ups with normal mags just cause delays and hassle for us they don't cost us anything. The 10% of screwups with partwork orders cost us big time though because we can't return and get credit for them.

TBH at the best of times Easons are a joke of a company and a nightmare to deal with but the only other distributor is Newspread and they are just as bad. There is simply nothing we can do about it.

Another problem with the partworks is that half the time the 'parts' are broken in transit so you spend an age ordering replacement copies which take.......6 or 7 weeks as we already know! You've already explained the return issue to the customers at the beginning and have already explained the back issues take 6 or 7 weeks. Despite that people get impatient, you get a load of grief, customer still blames you and is probably the reason why they then get pissed off and think its alright to disappear off the face of the planet without cancelling.

These things are a bloody nightmare I tells ya!

Kinda went off on a bit of a rant on the subject but just had a long discussion in work today about how we are finally saying enough was enough with these poxy things and will be joining the legions of newsagents who refuse to sell them anymore. We won't even fall into the trap of opening those unrequested orders of partworks from Easons this year. (The feckers send boxes of partworks out that haven't even been ordered because they know newsagents will be tempted to open the box they intended to send straight back to easons when one or two customers come in looking for that new partwork) ."Ah sure, we'll just sell up to issue six till they stop sale or return". NO NO NO! Its a slippery slope! Staff have been instructed not to take any orders for these things full stop. Its going to get to the stage were it really will be only Easons stores that sell these things. The publishers ie DeAgostini are really cutting off their nose to spite their face at this stage by not doing sale or return. Soon nowhere will sell the bloody things.

Anyway thats why the subject was fresh in my mind today.

Setun

Whoa Calibos!

Collected the Tree of Knowledge and Treasures of the Earth, I was quite the geeky kid with an insatiable curiosity for rocks.