Dearest Comics Retailer...
More bloggers are sharing their experiences with different comic
shops:
Laura
"Tegan" Gjovaag (who points out that I was probably being overly
generous in referring to Golden Age Collectables as a "comics store"
rather than a "tourist trap") writes fondly about her local comic shop,
Corner Comics (which gets a
short little write-up
from the local newspaper);
David
Allen Jones likes his shop so much that he doesn't even mind the
35-mile drive (although it helps that there's a place to buy beer
nearby); and
Kevin
Melrose bemoans the fact that he can't buy
his own
published comic work at his local shop, even when he offers to
order twenty copies.
After reading all of these good and bad accounts of various comic
shops, I felt moved to chime in with some words about my own comics
retailer,
Mailordercomics.
(Yes, as you can probably guess from
the name, Mailordercomics (MOC for short) is a mail-order
service. I like the convenience and the savings (in terms of both
money and time), OK?) As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I
stumbled across MOC at a time when I was
truly burned out on
comics (not just the general, good-natured grumbling I've been
expressing lately). Even though I had stopped buying comics, I
was still following the main comics news sites and lurking in various
message boards. Someone (I don't remember who or where) mentioned
that you could buy comics online at a sizable discount. I
checked out the various sites and settled on MOC. Well, "settled
on" is putting it mildly. I was
seduced by the generous
discounts (35% off most "mainstream" books—even more than Amazon's
standard 30%!!) and one-time offer of "Free Shipping!" on your first
order (something I'm not sure MOC still offers, but it certainly got my
attention at the time, which I think was before Amazon offered free
shipping on orders over $25).
Now one objection that some people might raise is that ordering online
is so impersonal. On the one hand, this is true: I'm
certainly not interacting with any clerks or other customers in order
to get my comics (which could be a Very Good Thing, depending on your
feelings/experiences with comic store clerks and customers). On
the other hand, it's not completely impersonal. I've found other
MOC customers online, and we share our experiences (and orders and pull
lists). And I've gotten to know MOC's owner, Michael Robinson,
pretty well—mainly because I email him so often with suggestions, but
also because (partial disclosure time) I used to review comics for MOC
(something I eventually bowed out of because I was so bad at meeting my
deadlines). Michael is always prompt in returning my emails, even
when I look back at my original emails and think, "Geez, how annoying
am I? I don't think I would have addressed my comments if I were
Michael." But Michael is so committed to customer service that he
even takes the time to respond to my long-winded pestering.
But maybe that's not the best example to prove Michael's commitment to
great service. Heck, for all I know, MOC uses an automated
response system and I simply trigger the "Verbose Nitpicker"
replies: "Dear JOHN, thank you for your wonderful
suggestion(s)..." (Just kidding, Michael; I still believe you
really write the emails yourself.) So here's another example.
Michael sent out an email today outlining some upcoming
improvements in MOC. The one that probably got most people
excited was the news about EVEN
BIGGER DISCOUNTS!! OK,
yeah, that
got me excited too, but what really grabbed my attention was this info:
Each month we have a small number of customers that are
either shipped a book that didn't belong to them or didn't get
something that was listed on their packing list. With the hiring
of some new employees, this is to be expected until they can become
acclimated to the new job. However, in an attempt to reduce these
mis-sorts even further, we hired a consultant to come out and spend a
few days with us on our methods of pulling. I think you're going
to find that the changes we have made in our pulling system will
guarantee you 100% accurate results in your monthly shipping....Next is
our packaging. I actually had a
packaging manager from a major catalog company come out to our
warehouse and examine our current packing methods and materials.
He made some very good recommendations in both how we pack and the
items we use in our void fill.
It might seem like a small thing, but the fact that MOC is willing to
hire two consultants to analyze their processes really impressed
me. Part of it is that I'm a QA in my day job, so process stuff
like that resonates with me. But mainly I'm impressed because MOC
is making a focused effort to improve its service, service that (from
my perspective anyway) didn't even
need tweaking. (I do
know of one case where a friend on the Broken Frontier boards had a
shipment stolen, but that was a failure on UPS's part, not MOC's.
Still, MOC addressed that situation by replacing all the comics that it
could (as you can guess, replacing the missing Marvel comics was a
chore) and by switching to Fed Ex as its carrier.) Maybe part of
the reason I'm so impressed is because I've heard stories in the past
of readers not getting something in their pull box that they
preordered, but being brushed off by their retailers when they brought
it up. I'm impressed MOC is taking the steps to correct the
problem rather than just shrugging and saying, "What do you want us to
do about it?"
OK, love letter to my retailer over. I'll try to be in a grumpier
mood next week. If I stick to my plan of reviewing
Avengers/JLA
#2 and
Amazing Spider-Man #500, a grumpier mood can pretty much
be guaranteed.
(And because Dictator-For-Life Sean Collins doesn't have a comments
section on his blog: Sean, how am
I the
man who started it all when I was inspired in part by
two
threads
other bloggers linked to? I call entrapment!! (But I still
want credit for the
Derek Kirk Kim masturbation webcomic link, even
though
Mr.
Bacardi whines that
he's had a link to Kim's site forever
and I actually got the link from the
Termite Terrace blog
(which linked to it way back on Oct. 15th). And did you get the
Tomie
books yet?))
