this is an edit: (w/o a response yet, I decided to edit to be more eloquent)
A magazine publisher is actually responding to the wishes of their customers. Use a 24 issue subscription as an example. I get a discount for buying 24 issues over one. Great, that is a value to me. I can purchase at the newstand if I want, but I have the option of this great discount.
Secondly, the publisher of the magazine would love to fulfill that order for 24 magazines, with 24 copies of a March 1998 back issue that is rotting in a warehouse somewhere. Apparantly their St.Patrick's Day with Monica Lewinsky special edition never sold as well as they hoped.
But they can't. You see it is me, as the SUBSCRIBER demanding that they send me only 24 future issues, once each month for 2 years. That is what I want, an information service...not simply 24 issues . And yes, I expect this service to begin almost immediately, I do not plan to pre-order for the 'service'...only that I want the service to continue for 2 years. If I wanted back issues, I would have ordered them....that is offered...if I wanted 24 copies of this months issue, i could do that as well.
The difference between an $800 motherboard and a $5 dollar magazine are two fold...both very important. One is 800 dollars, compared to 5. One is a magazine and the other a motherboard.
Before I edited this, I rambled on and on about the importance of SCALE and CONTEXT, but this letter is more concise. A magazine publisher doesn't show contempt .
But when a company takes pre-payments on computer equipment, its unusual.....and this strangeness is almost always for a reason.
Its anecdotal evidence, to be sure...but I have seen the reason for this unusual behaviour, many times....its because a company is either a cheat, or well meaning, but without much money. In the latter case, many well meaning people have taken people's money and never delivered any product.
And that, ultimately, is a huge sign of disrespect, to take people's money and not deliver any product.
Now I liked the way you linked the unrelated topic of magazine subscriptions and pre-paying for a motherboard, and I also liked the way you highlighted my nickname in your response....both are cool concepts, but, again, scale and context, they can't be dismissed when making those leaps in logic. :-o :-o :-o
OK I edited this about 7 times...I'm done! LOL...sorry about that, just kept seeing opportunities for improvement, and I am keeping myself busy...I'm waiting on something nonAmiga related....
:-)
Cheers, Robert aka MarkTime
