Digital Delivery

Some months ago this magazine suspended deliveries of the REAL magazine to Australia on the excuse that we would be better served by getting the digital version.

"Live Steam" continues to arrive here from the USA (their mail service is usually much worse than the Poms) and the last edition was posted apparently from Jersey in the Channel Islands It arrived hereafter only about 4 weeks.

So, As I hate reading the mag on line - so much so that I have not bothered more than a few times - would the Editor please recommence deliveries with real paper magazines including all of those missed after cancelling mail delivery.

Other mail from overseas still gets here, though not as quickly as it used to. I cannot help suspecting that this is a money saving plot dressed up as a service to clients,

Alternatively if you will not resume paperr delivery cancel my subscription and refund the balance from when the online business started.

John Andrews

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Hi John,

The situation had to be seen against the background of thousands of overseas subscribers across many countries. As the situation across each country was different but we used the one fulfilment method it wants practical to implement a different delivery model for each country according to its situation.

The alternative would have been to put all the subs copies into the international post and hope. This would have worked for some countries but not others and would really only be practical if our international readership was much smaller, and we would have no clear idea which of those thousands of issues were getting through and which were just held up.

Also, our whole production system has been thrown out of kilter. Many smaller UK special interest publications have suspended production entirely as a quick look around any UK supermarket or newsagent will demonstrate. As for ME and MEW we have had to make adjustments, including reducing the print frequency, which as you can imagine has many implications, including for freelance editors!

We therefore took the route of suspension, but you should be aware that you will be compensated for any missing copies by extending your subscription, notwithstanding the digital access arrangement, so we won't be making any money out of the suspension - quite the opposite as all our renewals will be put back several months.

The good news is that as from MEW 295 (which was printed this week), we have been able to resume overseas distribution but we do ask for patience.

We may be able to match four weeks, but one Australian reader told me he had received a first-class letter that took seven weeks to get there from the UK, and things may well still be patchy, so please be patient and bear with us, we are doing our best.

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 04/07/2020 14:59:00