Remaining Orders Announcement
Hi! My name is Cari, or @Storyofthedoor online, and I will try to explain what is taking so long with the shipping! :D Sorry this announcement is really long, it is quite detailed, I tried to thoroughly explain what has happened with the remaining 60ish orders.
TL;DR version: 60 orders to go! Struggling with getting money transferred from one mod to the other. Still trying though!
First I want to apologize that it is taking so long to finish the last orders. When I joined this project, I really wanted to make sure the shipping was fast! I’ve been a part of, and purchased, a lot of zines that take months and months and months …. To the point that I’ve wondered if the zine is actually coming or….? So I didn’t want that to happen to Bonds Across Time. I’m sorry that for some orders, they have had to wait a long long time.
So I’m gonna start at the beginning, and then try to explain the difficulty.
In the beginning there were two mods! They were Nayuun and (x). They worked on Bonds Across Time together throughout the making of the zine. Nayuun organized artists, and (x) organized writers, and the zine came together to the point of being a book ready for preorders. At this time, I was just an artist. My total involvement was to make an art, and occasionally talk to Nayuun. I didn’t attend to anything other than that.
And then the paypal problems started.
Some of you who have been wanting a book since the beginning of January remember the paypal account being frozen with funds in it just a little bit into preorders. There was never a way to get the funds out of paypal. Nayuun tried to talk to paypal several times, and if you’ve ever had a problem with paypal, you can imagine how that went. Their customer service does not particularly deserve applause. At all. There was no resolution, all the preorders were returned to the buyers. Around this time, (x) needed to leave the project. Their work is still in the zine, but they had no other involvement after the initial paypal problems.
This left Nayuun by herself, and this is her first zine. It is most definitely difficult to run a zine, especially as a single mod, and especially if you’ve never done it before.
So I, Story, joined the mod team! C: My duties are getting stuff printed, and shipping out US and further abroad orders. Nayuun will handle Canadian shipping.
I’ve run a few projects, including kickstarters and a tarot deck zine, so I feel comfortable working with printers and doing shipping.
With this new layout of mod tasks, Nayuun and I opened preorders again! This time with payments being directed to Stripe, through the Storenvy shop.
Now begins the second round of financial problems. Remember: Nayuun has not run a zine before, so couldn’t see this coming. I *have* run zines before, but I and my fellow mods have been completely US based while running them. Nayuun and (x) are both Canadian.
Preorders go great through Storenvy with Stripe receiving payment! Honestly thank you for that. C: We are both really grateful that the preorders went well.
Storenvy is set up to receive payment in USD and dish it out to Stripe in CAD. (Because both prior organizers are Canadian this set up makes sense. This right here is where the problem happened. If hindsight was helpful at all, I would use hindsight to make Stripe receive funds in USD.)
Because I, Story, am handling the printing and most of the shipping, we determine it’d be easiest if I received the payout from Stripe.
Stripe is holding the money as CAD.
My bank accounts are all in USD.
This isn’t really that big of a problem ….? Americans and Canadians transfer money to each other and conduct trade all the time…..?
We deposit the money into Nayuun’s bank, Stripe won’t let anything else happen.
There are plenty of ways to transfer money internationally. Paypal comes to mind, but we’ve just had huge problems with paypal freezing funds. Also they take a percentage instead of a flat fee. So two other methods are more common with large amounts of money. Wire transfers, and money orders. I’ve done both wire transfers and money orders, but only to US and China receivers. I’ve never tried to receive a wire transfer or money order from Canada.
I think a wire transfer is faster than a money order. It only takes a few days. So I tell Nayuun to try it. I provide bank info for me.
For this first wire transfer attempt, I use my local credit union. I go in person and speak to them, they say a wire transfer from Canada is fine? It just needs to land as USD. Sounds fine.
A few days later, Nayuun’s bank receives the money back and claims they can’t send money to my credit union. To be fair, that credit union I use is small, who knows if they even know what they’re doing.
So I use a larger online bank for a second attempt at a wire transfer.
I guess which banks we’re using is not terribly important private information. This is a wire transfer from TD Bank in Canada, to Discover Bank in the US. These are two giant, common banks. They both know how to do wire transfers. I mean they probably both do wire transfers, to each other, dozens of times a day, independent of Nayuun and myself. Is there something I’m missing or not understanding?
We wait for the transfer to work. Nothing. TD Bank says it will take 4 - 5 business days.
I call Discover Bank. They say it will take 14 business days. They also say they cannot look up the wire transfer without a firm USD amount. When we initiated the wire transfer, it was for this large sum of CAD, and I assume a fixed USD amount was not given because it would be based on the exchange rate the day the transfer occurs……………? Discover Bank will not look up the transfer with the firm CAD amount. Who knows why. No amount of asking or calling will change their refusal. If I were to try a wire transfer a third time, I think we should initiate it as a firm USD amount, and whatever CAD is required is what goes. Not exactly convenient there but possibly more traceable by Discover.
TD Bank now claims the wire transfer may take up to 20 business days.
We waited a week for the first wire transfer to fail.
The second wire transfer fails.
No explanation is given. None. At. All.
I know it’s hard for you, the preorderers, to count out the time here and understand why things are taking so long.
We closed preorders mid Feb or something like that?
And then had to wait about two weeks for Stripe to release all the funds to Nayuun’s bank.
And then we work on the zine and put it all together and get the printing going. Maybe a week or two for print prep and initiate the printing. I think I paid for printing beginning of March on all the merch and books.
A week to try a wire transfer.
Four weeks to try ANOTHER wire transfer ….
And we arrive now at mid April.
This …. Might? Maybe? Lead you to ask how any merch has been printed at all? Or how any zines have been shipped at present? If the funds have been tied up in multiple failed wire transfer attempts?
I, Story, have been paying for the printing and the shipping so far, just on my credit card. I don’t mind getting it all going. I do really care about the project. C: I love zines, and I love self publishing. I really want people to feel happy preordering an artist produced book, too! The helpfulness of a credit card is it does allow me to get a project going! While I wait for Stripe to make funds available … while I wait for a wire transfer … and a second wire transfer … but of course a credit card payment does come due. I paid for all these things at the beginning of March. That billing cycle closes end of March. That bill becomes due end of April, and I must pay the card bill or pay an additional interest penalty. That is how the credit cards do the do.
So! Here in a week or two I am indeed paying this card bill, for a few thousand dollars of printing and shipping. ^^; I have a bit of money saved, it will be ok.
But I’ve got about 40 orders left to ship, and about 20 orders that are Canadian and need to go to Nayuun for her to ship. And I have no more money to get stuff going until one of these methods of fund transfers works out.
It is pretty tiresome and frustrating that the funds exist, they just can’t be moved from Canada to the United States? None of our banks will tell us why.
Now we are trying a money order. When I last shipped a proof copy of the book to Nayuun, it took about 9 days? She lives in Alberta, I live in Maryland. Maybe in 9 days I’ll have a money order in my mailbox? *But can I just point out here that we have experienced first hand that MAIL DOES INDEED MOVE BETWEEN US …. Ok money order, you have no excuses.*
I’m sure you can imagine, I feel pretty dumb now. I’ve spent a lot of money, and am struggling to be reimbursed, and it is no one’s fault. Not Nayuun’s, not mine, just cosmic bad luck maybe. All we can do is keep trying to find a way to deal with a funds transfer? If not a money order through the post office … then…. Western Union? Or we try paypal again (my hopes are not high.)
I’m sorry again that I’ve got all this stuff printed and I’m unable to get the remaining orders going until we can manage this funds transfer. ;_; I really hope a money order would finally work. That would be really great if this kind of old fashioned method could just go through and be fine. ^^;
Thank you to those who have received your orders so far and loved them! You’ve made all the effort worth while, and I really appreciate it. C: I hope that when the remaining orders go out, they will be worth the wait.
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