The latest FWW CAME TODAY WITH A NEW MAILING LABEL THAT DOES NOT COME OFF EASILY! In fact, you ruin the cover trying to get it off! I always remove it because it usually obscures something important on the cover. I should be able to have a pristine cover-what gives???
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Replies
Yep, ditto. Presumably FWW contracts with some fulfillment house to label and mail - you'll get this fixed by the next issue, right?
Ditto. No doubt money was saved on adhesive. Sad
The label on the previous issue had the same problem. I told the publisher that the issue was spoiled in the mail and requested a duplicate. I will do so again with this one.
Using a hair dryer to moisten the glue doesn’t help?
It does not. The label comes off easier, but the adhesive is still left behind. So sticky that issues stick together in the slipcase. Ruins the archival value of the magazine.
I find it more telling that no one at FWW has yet to answer this.
I totally agree. As I understand the intent to eliminate the plastic bag for environmental concerns, I'm really obset about a label on my magazine covers. FWW should also be a Fine Magazine and hiding Fine pictures is unnaceptable. If you can't find a peeling label adequate, please provide a label placeholder on your back cover design.
I wrote and complained about this last month, and got a reply that basically said “we’ll look into it”. Nada since then.
Curious if you tell them it is spoiled, do you get a magazine shipped in an envelope without the damned label?
Hmmmm .... a bit of a First World problem here methinks. :-)
I long ago stopped buying paper-transmitted info. A pdf can be so much easier to use as an info-source, not least because its very easy to store, organise and search for it.
I do know some with a magazine-fetish, though. Many are also stamp collectors and some are trainspotters. I did once buy a large box of FWW magazine back-copies, when I too was a magazine fetishist. They've long ago gone to a dentist's waiting room.
I'll forward this to our circulation department.
Any resolution?
Resolution? I passed it along.
I think you're overestimating how many people are truly bothered by the glue and underestimating how many magazines the company prints with a given printer that is probably contracted to use x glue across dozens of titles.
The fact of the matter is ya... it's probably about money, but don't mistake a change in glue equating to someone driving a new Porsche. Magazine publishing isn't printing money anymore and added costs very definitely equate to few jobs.
This stuff costs more than many think. Last I remember hearing it, plastic bags on a year's worth of FW alone would equal more or less an annual salary. We'd rather have the position thank you. Nobody wants to say "Bob, sorry... gotta let you go because the labels on the magazines are annoying."
Now, maybe at some point, we sell individual pristine issues for archival purposes. Labels bother a very small but vocal number of subscribers. Most people are not setting aside their issues for archival purposes—that's not really the business we're in. Some magazines are, and that's cool.
I’ll throw my name out there as someone not losing sleep over this one. Keep up the good work Ben.
I concur, Ben…you’re doing great work! As to the archival value, I couldn’t give away my collection, even to a nursing home…
Ditto - the magazine is an information conveyor (and a very good one) not a fetish object - unless you make it one.
Thanks Ben,
I also find this bothersome. I usually remove the label before passing it on to others. I don't want everyone to know my home address, so will peel off the label for that reason as well as the ones listed above.
I am happy not to have the plastic bags around my issue.
As Lat-axe comments, this is truly a 1st world problem, but also one that should be easily fixed.
could it have to do with the new owners trying to make their money back? also, maybe its me but didnt you used to list articles on line by issue number as well as date? most people file their copies by issues. very hard to find the right issue. thomas06010
We still do. Any article in an issue should be listed as from that issue.
Please include me with all the chaps who disapprove the new mailing label..
The same Media Company that now owns Fine Working did the same thing after they purchased Popular Working. The same thing happened when you removed the mailing label.
If you need another voice to add emphasis to this problem, you have mine. To rip the cover while trying to remove the mailing label is very annoying. This started happening with Woodsmith several issues ago. At the time I remember thinking that at least FWW has good (removable) labels. So much for that thought.
Just got my magazine. In a new twist, there was no label. My address was printed directly on the magazine. I'm surprised USPS could read it to deliver.
Those AI robots are getting pretty good.....
That's worse. Can't remove the personal information without destroying the cover.
I doubt AI will ever be able to understand emotion with only text. At least not in the context of a business matter where customer service is concerned.
No reason it could not be placed on the back cover.
What’s to stop people from getting your address off the back cover.
We have no privacy as it is as a nation.
Back in the day - we used a pen and/or sharpie to blackout personal information
Nothing there that wasn't in the phone book when we all had land lines..
What's a "land line"?
When we all had corded phones we didn’t have the internet.
There's still a corded phone in our hoose, although I never use it or answer it (nor any other kind of phone - work of the divvil, them). I does have the interweb, as you can see. This is actually worse than them phones .... but I'm addicted now.
The Chief Spy of places like FWW knows everything about my likes - and the buttons to press to invoke one so as I might buy a new toy (I mean essential tool to fondle - I mean use). I frustrate their attempts to press my buttons by employing a cunning advert blocker and similar wards-at-the-screen-door.
Sadly, some glamour-tools do manage to get a pic of themselves to my eye. Luckily the ladywife (AKA The Chief Accountant) can be an adamantine barrier to tool lust - unless she wants a-one for making leather things, teddy bears or my next shirt.
*****************
Anyone can easily find out where I live but none of them seem to want to, even the blokes selling "Italian leather jackets" that are "cheap as they're stock I don't have room for". :-)
🤣
If someone did/does look you up they aren’t going to tell you. 😁 Why do we all use obscure usernames here.
If I’m going to get stalked hopefully she’s attractive.
**edit by Ben**
But this to the side.
Are you suggesting that I and others may be an entry on the secret lists of malefactors, exploiter-leeches and various other harmful entities, just waiting 'round the corner for our weak moments!? Should we dust off our bludgeons and whacker-offs?
Perhaps I should order paper copies of FWW magazine (although they refuse to send them to West Wales these days) using a false address? Spies trying to get my whereabouts from the stamp on the cover would then go and pester someone else .... although I'd never see the paper magazine. But then I don't want to, as the pdf of articles is better, eh?
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life, it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid ......
Etc..
(Buffalo Springfield)
Um... I edited the first bit of this. I'm not sure if something was lost in translation coming over the ocean... but let's keep it a little less graphic lat_axe.
Yes to all of those 😆
Censored! And, in the process, maligned!
You require a dictionary, Mr Strano. Here's an extract from the Merriam-Webster for you:
Glamour-puss: : a glamorously attractive person.
There's nothing "graphic" (whatever that means) about this term.
Can we get feedback from FWW ? Are you looking at this annoying issue ?
Scroll up to post #29, from Ben Strano. I don't see what the big deal is. Everything I get in the mail has a label on it.
My magazine still comes in a plastic wrapper (maybe because I live in Europe?) which is a form of packaging well past its sell-by-date. My only other subscription magazine (The Barge Association magazine) comes in a potato-based wrapper, fully biodegradable. As a woodworker with an eye to the environment, that appeals. And no more expensive, I am assured.
I just got the Tools and Shops issue and found the sticker a pain in the butt to remove.