Wednesday, March 4

Strange Week

It has been a very odd week for me so far. On Monday I decided to go to York for the day, I was running low on shipping boxes, and hoping for a restocking order from the US. It would also give me a chance to do some playtesting with my friend Paul while I was there.

Tuesday started sensibly enough, I had a doctor's appointment about another MS attack I've been experiencing since the beginning of last week. The doctor made a phone call and I had an appointment at the local hospital that morning! Great. I went home grabbed a book (it can take while) and set off to the hospital. I was hoping for a few tests, and then a meeting with a neurologist who would prescribe me steroids to bring the attack to a swift conclusion (I've had the steroids a couple of times before and they've worked wonders). The tests started with blood tests (normal enough) and proceeding through ECG (seemed a little excessive) and then a chest X-Ray! By early afternoon not much had happened so I made some enquiries. The neurologist wasn't in today - I would need to stay in until tomorrow! This seemed totally excessive (I was just lying there taking up a bed, reading my book) and I'd only paid for parking until early evening, so I tried to talk them into letting me home that evening. They let me, provided I returned by 8am today to see the neurologist.

Early start this morning, and I got to the hospital at 7:40am (the traffic was better than I was expecting), I saw the neurologist (who did some basic tests, booked me in for another MRI scan and prescribed the steroids - yeay!) and then had the infusion later this morning. I managed to get home around lunchtime today, which was much better. I've got to go in for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon too. I've also got a canula in my left hand so I've got to try to avoid using that.

On the work front, I've received the first consignment purchase orders from Alliance (yeay!) and I've been struggling to get paid from some of my other distributors, for orders placed in January. It's really frustrating. We've got an agreement in place where they pay thirty days after invoicing (NET 30). Some of then are now nearly a month late. Much as I would like to cease dealing with the tardy companies, I need them, without them my games won't end up in shops and will sell far fewer copies. Still, I received two lots of payment today, and two more have told me the payment is en route. One has responded to my earlier chases, but still not paid and another hasn't responded at all.

I try to be a good customer, I try to make sure that the payment is received on or before the due date (paying early if by a bank transfer, to ensure it clears by the due date, or posting cheques to arrive by the due date), I just wish my customers were as scrupulous.

Hopefully, tomorrow will see an improvement in my symptoms and the arrival of some more money!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting you should discuss cash flow / payments today. I was thinking about that same issue earlier today and how to put together a blog post on it. It's actually a bit more complicated for an online business than you'd expect. Hee.

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Tao,

Well, things are looking up. The largest overdue invoice was paid this morning, and I've managed to get it touch with the other company I'd not heard from. Their accounts payable person has been off sick for three weeks and they haven't been able to pay anyone. I'm apparently on the top of the pile and will get paid this week - because I've been nagging the most!

Cheers,

Jack

Unknown said...

Nagging sometimes helps... :-)

Anonymous said...

Well, it worked for a local publisher over here (Griddly Games). They nagged me to the point to take up their games, I finally gave up and made an order. :)

Actually, I had an idea and wanted your input Jack. I'm thinking of running a featured contest for small publishers once a month. Basically, the idea would be a contest of some form for my customers. The customers would get a free game, the publishers get free publicity (and orders from me) and I get to stay in the loop about the cool games the small publishers are putting out that is desired by customers. An example would be Galactic Emperor that I completely missed last year 'cause there's just too much stuff.

So, input on (a) what kind of contest and (b) how best to publicise this. I'm thinking BGG via either the Forums or a Geeklist. What do you think?

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Tao,

I'd definitely consider telling Eric Martin at Boardgame News as well as running it on BGG. I've had both GeekList and Forum posts do well on BGG, and had them do badly. I think the title is really important, but also timing your post when there's not much competition for the top spot. If you can get near the top of the 'Hot' list by getting the most thumbs you'll probably do pretty well.

Cheers,

Jack