Attention all purchasers of my firing arc stickers

billclo

Mongoose
I regret that I have to inform all of you, that a significant error has been discovered on the firing arc stickers that I've been selling to you all.

The Fore and Aft arcs are 80 degrees instead of 90, and the Port/Starboard arcs are 100 degrees instead of 90 degrees. No wonder in my games I've had a hard time getting enemies in the Fore arc; it's 10 degrees too small.

I am amazed that neither I nor the sticker designer ever noticed the error, and am rather dismayed that it took this long for it to be discovered. There was a communication error between myself and the designer, and I failed to take a protractor to the finished product, trusting that he understood my desires.

At this point, even though it's going to cost me significant money to do this, I am offering anyone who purchased my stickers free replacement stickers. I will be emailing/PM'ing everyone who has bought them from me, and offer you free replacements. I won't be able to have a new (very large) batch of stickers made up until I hear back from everyone, which will let me know how many I really need to have printed up for me to send out.

I am really embarrassed about this; it should never have happened. But to not offer to rectify the situation would quite unethical, and even though I'm going to take a beating, I have to at least try to make amends with my customers.

Again, I am so sorry for the error and resulting inconvenience to everyone.
Bill
 
Just a suggestion.

If it is not too late, it would be a good idea to make the revised stickers visibly different from the incorrect ones. That way it is easy for players to know if all of the ships on the table have the right stickers or not.
 
dix said:
Just a suggestion.

If it is not too late, it would be a good idea to make the revised stickers visibly different from the incorrect ones. That way it is easy for players to know if all of the ships on the table have the right stickers or not.

Excellent idea. I asked the designer to add a small "V2" to the sticker, under the right hand orange line next to "Star". I go to pick up the revised graphic today; I manually checked the angles with a protractor, and these should be good to go.

Notes are starting to go out to my customers today, advising them of the situation and my offer to replace the defective stickers with new ones for free. Good thing I kept some sort of rudimentary records (username and how many stickers) so I have some way to contact customers.
 
Anyone know how to contact via some other method than PM, the following who haven't been here for awhile:

Wolverine-X (not here since mid-July)
 
Agreed, many props for doing this! Is there any way you can at least cover some of your losses with a refund from the manufacturer? Seems like this would be mostly their fault...
 
Allerka said:
Agreed, many props for doing this! Is there any way you can at least cover some of your losses with a refund from the manufacturer? Seems like this would be mostly their fault...

Um no. My fault for not noticing the problem. There was a communication problem with the guy who designed the proof, and I stupidly didn't take a protractor to the proof before I approved it. I ASSumed he did what I asked for, and he didn't. He misunderstood me, and I didn't doublecheck his work.

I have a new proof that I have checked a couple times, and will be ordering more stickers in about a week (or less if I hear back from everyone, which is proving problematic as some folk aren't around here all the time and have not responded to my PMs).
 
Bill, you have always been a stand up guy and this is more proof of it. Kudos to you for making it right. Although, I have have won with my Klingons with the old 80 degree front shields, should be even easier with the new 90 degree shields! :D
 
SFU_FEAR said:
Bill, you have always been a stand up guy and this is more proof of it. Kudos to you for making it right. Although, I have have won with my Klingons with the old 80 degree front shields, should be even easier with the new 90 degree shields! :D

I don't think the Klingons are going to benefit all that much from proper 90 degree front arcs; now those Feds on the other hands, they benefit significantly. :)

Thanks, Mike. Replacing the stickers had to be done, painful that it is.

I am reminded, did you get a free fleet box worth of stickers since you won the Nashcon tournament? I gave Tony a set to give away as a prize. If you did, if you would, send me your address and I'll add you to the list to replace with the correct new ones.

The small stickers are being made now, with a couple proofs of the larger ones to triple check mounted vs unmounted.
 
I'm still working on getting the stickers done. The shop was super busy and took 2 weeks to do for me what they normally took a few days. There are also issues with their aging equipment doing product that isn't up to my specs. They seem unconcerned that product isn't coming out like I want it to. Not good. Seems like they don't want to do my product, and and so I'm going to talk to another print shop tomorrow and see if they can do better.

I haven't forgotten about you all...
 
Hi. I've got new stickers on order, and they should be here by the end of next week. I tweaked them a little; a slightly larger center hole, a V2 on the right side to distinguish the new updated stickers from the old ones, and wider orange edges. The wider orange edges should ensure that there is at least some orange all the way around the stickers; there is a technological limitation on how precisely the stickers can be cut to the proper alignment.

I will also have to discontinue the small base sized stickers; due to the aforementioned technological limitations it's hard to get stickers that small without an unacceptably high defect rate. It seems to be much less of an issue with the larger stickers.
 
Da Boss said:
ok sounds good -

Will you be able to send out replacement small stickers or are they not at all practical?

thanks

I was able to hand-pick out the best 50 there were. I ordered 200, and maybe 20-25% of them I considered good enough to sell. I'll send you the best 50 small stickers, and the 60 large I owe you. If you'd rather have your money back on the small stickers after you see them, I'll refund your money and you keep them. Hey, they might be collector's items someday due to rarity. :)

The small stickers are tough to make apparently because of the tolerances on the machine that prints/cuts them. I did some checking around, even on the Net, and sticker makers are insisting upon 1/8" extra around the edges of stickers as margin against cutting errors. Mine were nowhere that bad, but still many of the small ones were not good enough to sell. The first batch of stickers (the old design) had a 40% defect rate; the recent batch of the new ones was about 75-80%.

Even some of the large stickers have had some misalignment, but it's rarely been enough to be an issue. Certainly no one has complained, but I want to keep it that way. I've been using the too marginal to sell stickers for my personal use so I don't have to throw them away.
 
Ack, that sucks. I'm sure a lot of people were looking forward to the small ones. Looking forward to getting the replacements!
 
Thanks again for working so hard to make this right!

smileyface_hand_clapping.gif
 
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