![[1035] The Fourth Circle Of Hell](/comics/2018-11-22-1035-the-fourth-circle-of-hell.png "[1035] The Fourth Circle Of Hell")
I’m not bitter of anything, nooooooo…
Here is a repost of the most interesting parts of the latest Kickstarter update:
PDFs in full resolution
I have decided to offer all PDFs in their original full resolution!
The reason for this is that I was not satisfied with the display quality of the originally offered reduced resolution in a test. This would have been contrary to my goal to offer the best possible product. You can think of it as reaching a stretch goal that has never been announced.
Artist reactions
I have sent a PDF of the art book to the featured artists and here are some reactions:
- “I have downloaded the sample and that is an awesome art book!”
- “The book is looking great, Oliver!”
- “BRUUHHH THIS BOOK LOOKS FIIRRREEE!!! Love it! U done so well putting this whole project together. […] Thanks again for adding my fan art in this amazing project. I’ll be getting a copy of this book myself!”
- Boss: Richard, as you know we need to ship these twenty parcels to our customers in the Netherlands by the end of this week.
- Boss: One option is we could ship them with USPS’ Priority Mail Express International™ service.
- Richard: Certainly.
- Boss: Or you could drive to New York, fly to Amsterdam with the parcels in your luggage, rent a car at the airport, drive around in Holland to deliver the parcels, stay two days in a hotel, fly back to New York, and drive back home.
- Richard: You gotta be kidding me–
- Boss: … Which would be $476 cheaper according to my calculations.
- Richard: — Wait, what…?
- Scrooge McDuck: I’m in awe, but also slightly repulsed.
- Sign: United States Postal Service – A Flintheart Glomgold company
- Caption: Example calculationTrip costs:
Gasoline: $60 for 400 km in the United States at $0.80 per liter + 400 km in the Netherlands at $1.93 per liter.
Flight: $389 for a round trip from New York to Amsterdam on 4 December 2018 and back on 6 December 2018 with Norwegian Airlines.
Baggage fees: $114 for one carry-on bag at 10 kg and two suitcases at 20kg each.
Rented car: $179 for an Opel Astra station wagon from SIXT for two days.
Hotel: $179 for two days in the XO Hotels Couture, Amsterdam.
Miscellaneous: $132 for additional fees and costs.
$1059 in totalPostage costs:
$1,535 for 20 parcels at $76.75 each.
|
I mean it is not USPS problem… a lot of it is customs and don’t forget Netherlands postal service share too…
Althou you have to remember the lost profit Richard can’t generate as a programmer while spending time delivering parcels. Plus there’s a chance that he’d request extra pay for being sent out of country seeing as that’s technically ~48 hours of company time (at least if it’s done the same way in the US as here).
Awww… You’re not using the current versions of Scrooge and Glomgold
Almost became 21 parcels but sadly couldn’t spare the money at the moment… Otherwise I would definitely have pitched in, seeing those awesome rewards.
So you will be coming to Amsterdam then? 😛 No but jokes aside that is hella expensive!!
Thought partially understandable shipping sometimes makes no sense. For example:”
Sending it one way is more expensive than the other way around, Netherlands to Germany is 13 euros while Germany to Netherlands is 18.
Or for example: If I drive 5 kilometers I can spare about 10 euros as I’ll be sending the package within the same country. While they aren’t checked at the border of Germany and the Netherlands so no extra charges are needed there.
You should just make it a holiday trip 🙂
@ BjarkeForch:
Yup – even if all 48h are only partially counted, his 476$ would be lost in less than 10 hours given the hourly wages for programmers (especially if richard’s a senior dev…)
That plus the fact that richard won’t be able to do much during this time…
That’s not even accounting for the customs ! Nothing to declare…. hum :p
For sure, it’s less fun when reality ensues ^^
Take it up to thirty parcels (and three days), and the cost of Richard’s time can be included too.
I will be putting in for one of the S&W books from the international shipping … I think. AUD78 is a decent chunk … but one of the reasons I am planning to do it anyway is that I’m really hoping to see a printing of Gaia at 10 years or at completion – they may not be too far apart?
(I recently read an article about Mr Card Game, a kickstarter that raised lots and drowned itself in stretch goals. I’m glad Novil isn’t making that mistake.)
Trimutius wrote:
I’m not an expert, but when I see how you can buy various items on Aliexpress for one or two dollars with free shipping from China to anywhere in the world, I somehow doubt that the local postal services get a particularly huge share – or any share at all.
And customs? Don’t the recipients usually have to pay for that?
@ Titan:
thank all heavens that he does not… the new animations are terrible.
Well If I ever won at lottery I am going to ask for beeing paid in smallest coins and I am getting Scroodge McDucks treasury 😀
https://www.prequeladventure.com/merchandise-retrospective/
You might be interested on the “shipping” section
Titan wrote:
Barks/Rosa is the only source of truth regarding the Duck universe.
BjarkeForch wrote:
He’s a programmer, just get him a laptop and have him code during the flight.
I’m not even surprised. I had to deal with USPS before when buying stuff here to Europe, and their charges are absolutely ludicrous. Something like $25 for a package half the size of a CD.
@ Novil:
“Barks/Rosa is the only source of truth regarding the Duck universe.”
Rosa is no truer than Scarpa or Artibani, and I say that as someone who likes Rosa the best.
Barks is the primary source of “truth”, Rosa is not in anyway that.
Scarpa was the one who actually took the baton from Barks and the closest to a real successor in that way.
You forgot to include his wage. If he’s going there as part of work, he should be paid hourly. As such, it would be more expensive. Especially considering his normal job is programming but he’d be delivering packages instead, meaning he’s not getting real work done, costing even more.
Not sure if this would help any, but have you talked to other web cartoonists that might have already gone through this process? I know David Willis of Shortpacked/Dumbing of Age runs a kickstarter each year that’s always met and I’m sure he’s run into this issue. Maybe even Eric Schwartz of Sabrina Online as well.
I am in awe.
…also slightly repulsed.
Given Scrooge’s penny pinching tendencies, the second method would be the one he uses. Especially with Donald as the courier. Which would lead to wacky adventures and antics.
This feels Kickstarter-related 😛
@ Novil:
Aw, but being Duke Baloney makes Glomgold not completely repulsive.
Phil wrote:
Ali Express has prepaid deals with postal services… Same as Amazon and all other delivery services… And cost of that prepaid deal is just included in the pricing of products… (which isn’t very high in case of Ali Express just because of sheer amount of products sold) And I mean sure if you do personal package recipient would pay for custom duties, but when you are sending business packages, recipients kinda expect all that to be taken care of…
400Km Inside the netherlands.. so 200 km from and to the airport..
The heck are you going. Shiphol Roermond/middelburg/groningen ???
(Those are cities at the other end of the country where schiphol is the most central and biggest airport)
As someone who has worked for a firm that was importing and exporting all the time I can just suggest you shop around a bit. Try calling UPS, DHL and any other carrier you can think of. I know we managed to get some incredible deals doing that. I have no idea how hard it is, but we were able to cut the cost to considerably less than half of what we used to pay.
Now I can’t guarantee this works, but I think it’s worth a try…
PREACH!
Scrooge McDuck was ever my hero! I learned to read with his comix.
You forgot to account for the work he’d be missing, unless he gets paid for delivering the packages, and the short vacation.
This makes for a good reason why the old standby of “the main characters seem to have little adult supervision” is in this comic. On the other, more destructive, hand- that means at least a solid two days to come where Sandra and her racoon will not have her father running the house. I predict either Sandra will be annexed by Larissa (because she can’t keep X at her house), a “mud and spear” Sandra living in the trees, or a cereal and tv version of- no, wait, looking for that Ye Thusa and greek philosophy about sloth just led me to this: http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2017/10/02/0925-run-of-the-house/
I’ve been checkmated a year in advance, good work Oliver.
@ Vicious Sand:
I to wondered this, and am also suprised to have been checkmated a year in advance.
I am also glad of that link, because #1 that is a hilarious comic, as always and #2 I love the artwork of Larissa in panel three. It’s simply amazing, no better way to put it.
Other expenses that would come out of Miscellaneous would be tolls for driving to/from New York, parking both in New York and Amsterdam, and meals.
There’s a slight miscalculation or two in that spreadsheet…
1. Odds are that tickets will be cheaper in February.
2. Fans would probably go nuts and insist you stay with them instead of at a boring hotel…
As for customs charges on the USPS shipping, that isn’t included in the cost. That is tacked on as the stuff arrives at a country.
Luckily, in some countries books and other printed matter is excempt from TOLL and VAT.
If you deliver yourself, you have to pay customs yourself. Only a large shipping company gets the leisure to bill the recipients instead of having to foot the cost. On the other hand, you can just go through the red lane, and report some cheap product from the Duty Free. Nobody ever checks your begs in the red lane (You’re mostly just disturbing their sleep).
Why does everyone always want to send ‘Priority’ and ‘Express’? (and maybe also ‘Registered / Whatever’) … Don’t you have something simple, like ‘Standard Airmail’?
… you forgot to calculate Richard’s per-hour salary into the calculation / what it would cost the company if a top-level programmer is away for two days delivering parcels. 😉
@ Leomon:
Eric Schwartz / Sabrina Online had a Kickstarter Comic? I only ever got the first two or three printed comic Versions of ‘Sabrina’ that were listed in Previews, waaaay back when.
@ Yue:
Also meals. On the cheap end that’s only going to be 40ish dollars, but yeah, assuming he’s not salaried and a midrange $20 per hour, that’s a minimum of $160 more in expensive. And even if he is salaried, it’s still him doing things that aren’t his job.
@ Phil, @ Trimutius and everybody else wondering about the shipping fees. NPR hat a great podcast that explains a lot:
The Postal Illuminat.
Probably the Netherlands Postal Service is not making any profit here.
Well, at least he can do some sightseeing while he’s there.
@ Sgt_flyer:
Programmers are paid a salary not a wage. They aren’t paid by the hour but by either by the job or monthly installments of an annual salary.
You forgot two items in your calculation: expenses for overseas stay for the employee (2 full and two half days for Netherlands is around 250€) And of course 4 days of salary to that employee… Which is even for one of those cheap guys at least $400.
Now you loose money…
What I’m not getting though:
You live in Germany, at least according to your public info. Is it really impossible to have an European version printed locally over here?
Phil wrote:
This actually came up about a month ago. China has been benefiting from some special postal rate created to help the economies of poor countries.
Well what about customs charges?
On top of that lost productive time from him for the company?
You could fly to Amsterdam, drag your parcels to the nearest post office and have them delivered by mail (which should be quick enough in most cases unless you really want that guarantee), pay only roughly half as much for postage (at 7 € per parcel up to 10 kg and 100x50x50 cm) as you would pay for hotel and car combined and save on some of the cost of opportunity you incur for having Richard play delivery boy.
Okay, there seem to be some good explanations why Aliexpress can offer free shipping even for the lowest-priced products.
That however is no sufficient explanation why USPS prices have to be that high.
DHL offers shipping a 2kg 60x30x15cm package from Germany to the USA for 15,89 EUR. That’s a quarter of what the USPS price for shipping from the USA to the Netherlands is (according to the abovementioned information – I would guess the price for shipping to Germany must be similar).
So either someone is for all intents and purposes defrauding USPS customers or there are some very incompetent morons working for USPS working out deals with foreigh postal services.
And before anyone thinks of mentioning any kind of possible economic considerations (though I can’t imagine any): These prices also mean that US exports suffer the loss of every foreign customer who would have ordered something from a US company only to abort the purchase upon seeing the astronomic shipping costs.
I forgot:
Yes, I know that DHL have their own cargo planes and don’t have to pay anyone else for that.
I don’t know about USPS. But suppose they don’t have their own cargo planes, what’s stopping them making a deal with DHL? That should enable them to offer shipping from the USA to Europe for similar (if not just as low) rates as DHL is offering for shipping from Europe to the USA. That should still be only a third of their current prices.
@ 627235:
This is exactly what I was thinking. You wouldn’t even need to leave Schiphol airport (there’s a PostNL service point on Schiphol Boulevard.) Fly in, landing early morning, drop off the parcels at the post office, take the train to Amsterdam, enjoy the day, get back on the plane on the afternoon flight. Not evrn a hotel needed. (You might potentially have to pay import duties and BTW/tax coming through customs though)
@ Phil:
Take note that you have to pay DHL quite a bit, too, if they are to guarantee quick delivery. There’s a difference between a parcel being flown or sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. (Not sure if parcels are actually shipped by boat but it would explain the difference in shipping cost).
https://www.gocomics.com/savage-chickens/2018/11/22
More Cartoon Masked dudes. One mans “gift” is another man’s “poison”.
Driving distance Amsterdam, Arnhem, Maastricht, Amsterdam. is 312 km.Throwing in Rotterdam Utrectht and The Haugewould probably take this well over 400km. just to cover the major southern cities, and return to spend the night in Amsterdam.
Going to Gronigen in the north the next day would add 292 km. None of this counts additional km added driving within the cities. So dependiing on how many separate destinations and their locations the 400 km could be a severe underestimate, wiping out the savings.
And of course, as others have noted, you are using a high priced employee as a delivery boy. You might want to facto in some traffic violations, too, unless Richard has experience with things such as European traffic signs (About a six hour course when we were preparing to deploy to Europe.
Some other issues — effect of jet lag on driving skills lower DUIblood alcoohol limits, etc.
Some sort of schedule would need to be developed to ensure the most efficient route, whiich is not obvious unless you know which roads might look good be one way routes in the wrong direction.
Fela wrote:
I was thinking the same thing, though I suspect some form of exclusivity deal got something to do with this. No proof, but I cannot think of another reason.
As a former employee of the usps, no its all them.
@ Trimutius: