Paul Stock of Librairie Astro in Montreal, Canada is back with some additional comments regarding Diamond's "Day Early Delivery" survey (see "Diamond Surveys Tuesday Comics"):Much like for Friendly Frank in Kansas City, during the mid to late 1990s, Tuesday pickup was available to most retailers in Montreal. Our experience was that no one bothered to "break" street date. It was only a casual mention (by the local drop point manager) to the Diamond manager in Plattsburgh that resulted in Tuesday pickup being closed off, and the proper Wednesday procedure being instituted. I wonder if anyone in other markets shared the situation, and if so, whether their experience mirrored Frank's or ours?
In any event, I'm none too concerned about my local competition; in general they're a pretty decent bunch of folks. We actually had a competitor call us once, asking that we put our books out earlier! He opened an hour before us (a block away) and was tired of customers browsing, then leaving with an "Oops, Astro's open, time to go get the new books, catch ya next week, Ace!" We had him beat on selection and service and an hour (or even a day) isn't such a terrible amount of time to wait. Perhaps the situation would be very different in a hysteria-fueled marketplace, but I'm sure none of us really want to see a return to that--we're all getting a little too old for the pressures of 1994 MTG style activity or even the days of "zero overprint and no reorder availability" from Marvel.
As far as the effectiveness of secret shoppers goes, I'm not too worried. These are professional outfits, accustomed to finding miscreants in all sorts of endeavours and procedures. While the odd "clever" retailer might be able to figure out a way to cheat, I'm sure it won't take long before the method is uncovered, and that particular door gets nailed shut. Yes there are bad apples amongst us, but there are bad guys throughout society. That's why we have things like policemen and prisons. But no matter how much cheating and criminality may be around us, very few of us are living in the South Bronx of 1974. Most of us don't live our lives barricaded against junkies with weapons, and security in this situation is more akin to looking both ways before crossing a residential street than trying to fly a plane through a hurricane. If someone cheats at selling comics early and does get away with it, still nobody's likely to die.
Nonetheless, to me there is a problem with the program as Diamond outlined it, and that problem is the penalty for DED (Day Early Delivery) abuse. To simply lose DED service is a hardship, but it's one that can be managed. I'd like to see a much more tangible penalty. As I've expressed it to others, "The retailer is fined on a subsequent invoice in an amount that will be significant but not crippling. Perhaps 1% of the most recent year's invoice total would be feasible: I spend about $200,000--$250,000 a year at Diamond, and believe me, the possibility of having to fork out an extra $2,000 would go a long way towards convincing me that any advantage I might gain by selling books early would have to be huge before I'd even think of trying it." If we're not going to mete out some form of real punishment on those who "break street," we might as well just operate entirely on the honour system, and hope for the best. Come to think of it, why not? The "honour system" actually worked pretty well here all those years ago.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
