08:47 – The prepared microscope slides I ordered for the LK01 Life Science Kit arrived Monday. As I was unboxing and checking off items on the packing list, I was struck by a cunning plan. Although these slides are intended for the Life Science kit, there’s no reason they couldn’t be used as a core slide set by people using the BK01 Biology Kit. So I sent the following email to people who’d purchased the biology kit:
We spent several hundred dollars buying the prepared microscope slides that we used to shoot the images in Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments, so we know how expensive it can be to obtain the prepared slides you need for a biology course. That’s why we included a disc of high-resolution copies of the images from the book with the BK01 Biology Kit. And, although those images are useful, they’re not a complete substitute for using actual slides.
We’ve had many emails from people who’ve bought the BK01 Biology Kit, asking us if there is a source for a core set of prepared slides that would at least hit the high points. After a great deal of looking around, we concluded that the slide sets available were either too expensive, had a poor selection of subjects, or were of very poor quality. So we decided to put together our own set of core prepared slides, with the goal of picking a dozen or so key slides that we could offer at a reasonable price. We finally settled on the following 15 slides:
□ Amoeba (wm)
□ Anthers, lily (cs)
□ Bone, compact (cs)
□ Egg, horse ascaris (sec)
□ Euglena (wm)
□ Frog Liver (sec)
□ Hydra, budding (wm)
□ Leaf, lilac (cs)
□ Lichen (sec)
□ Mitosis, Onion Root Tip (ls)
□ Muscle, involuntary smooth (cs/ls)
□ Muscle, skeletal (cs/ls)
□ Neurons, multi-polar motor (wm)
□ Paramecium (wm)
□ Stems, Monocot and Dicot (cs)These slides are from the same manufacturer who produced the slides we used for the images in Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments.They are of decent quality, although they’re by no means the best available. (We’d love to offer those top-quality slides, but they’d cost anything from $8 to $20 each, so we’d have to price a set of 15 slides at $150 or so rather than the $52 we sell this set for.)
One of the reasons we hesitated to offer a prepared slide set is that our wholesalers typically stock few or no prepared slides. They’re special-order items, and it can take anything from several weeks to six months from the time we order the slides until they actually arrive.
We ordered 30 sets of these individual slides some time ago, and they arrived yesterday. We’ll be assembling the sets over the next few days, and will be ready to ship sets by the first of next week. We wanted to give those of you who’ve already ordered the BK01 Biology Kit the first opportunity to order a slide set or sets.
If you’d like to order a set, visit the BK01 Biology Kit home page:
If the demand exceeds the supply of 30 sets we currently have available, we’ll ship the first 30 orders we receive. If you order a set and are not among the first 30 buyers, at your option we’ll either refund your payment or put your order on our backorder list, to be shipped as soon as we’re able to build more sets.
The set price includes USPS Priority Mail shipping. Unfortunately, we can ship these sets only to US addresses, at least for the time being. No Canadian orders.
So now Barbara and I need to make up a batch of 30 of the prepared slides sets. We’re already taking orders for them, and I’m telling people that the sets will ship Monday. Meanwhile, our inventory of biology kits is getting low enough that it’s becoming critical. Since we started shipping kits more than a year ago, we’ve had to backorder kits only once, and that for only a couple days. If we don’t get on the ball, we’re likely to have to backorder biology kits, and I hate doing that.
14:17 – The other day I ordered a mouse, keyboard, and display from the Costco web site. The display hasn’t shipped yet, but UPS showed up a few minutes ago with the mouse and keyboard, in separate boxes. The mouse was fine, but the keyboard box was badly damaged, with most of the corners crushed in, one end ripped, and the sides dented in and creased. It looked as though the UPS truck had run over it, literally. I shot some images of the box and then called Costco. They’re shipping a replacement, and said it wasn’t cost effective for me to return the damaged one. Waylon, the rep, said to go ahead and open it, to pitch the keyboard if it was damaged, and if it was okay just to keep it as a spare.
This is yet another reminder of why I don’t use UPS, and would prefer that my vendors didn’t either. Of all the hundreds of kits we’ve shipped, almost all of them have arrived intact. We’ve had, IIRC, two broken thermometers and one broken beaker. Oh, yeah, and one kit delivered to a Florida address just before a tropical storm hit. That kit got so wet that the cardboard box disintegrated, but everything in it survived unscathed. I tend to think of the plastic bags we use for interior packing as protecting against leaks from the chemical bottles, but they also do a decent job of protecting the contents from tropical storms.
Conversely, nearly all of my wholesalers use UPS, and we get a lot of boxes delivered. I’d guess that at least a third of those boxes have visible damage, although it’s often minor, such as a crushed corner or two or perhaps a big rip in one side. I guess my wholesalers have learned what they’re up against because there’s usually no damage to the contents.
That’s one of the main reasons I’m loyal to USPS, although by no means the only one. USPS is also, in my experience, faster than UPS or FedEx for any shipping option that’s even close to the USPS price. For example, I shipped a chemistry kit last Saturday to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. The USPS says Priority Mail normally takes one to three business days in transit, according to the zone. Bethlehem is definitely not in the local zone, and I expected the transit time to be two days. It arrived Monday, in one business day. Same deal on shipments out to the west coast, which are definitely supposed to be three days in transit. Quite often, USPS gets the package to an address in LA, Seattle, and other large west coast cities in just two business days.
USPS also doesn’t dick around with all the surcharges that UPS and FedEx charge. The first time I considered shipping kits to Canada, I looked into using UPS or FedEx. The problem was, I couldn’t figure out how much it would cost to ship a package. I knew how much the package weighed, its dimensions, the origin address, and the destination address. That should be sufficient to get a firm price. It’s not. UPS and FedEx both have all kinds of added fees for different stuff. If they attempt to deliver and can’t, they charge a redelivery fee. They charge different amounts depending on whether the address is residential or business. I was flabbergasted when I looked at the number of different add-on fees I might or might not need to pay, many of which were entirely outside my control. USPS, on the other hand, makes it extremely simple. I use flat-rate boxes and regional-rate boxes. The flat-rate boxes are just that; they cost the same amount regardless of where they’re going, as long as it’s a US address and as long as they’re under a generous weight limit. (For example, the large flat-rate box ships to any US address for $14.62, and can weigh up to 70 pounds; the regional-rate box B, which is what I usually use, has a weight limit of 20 pounds.) Oh, and the boxes are free. With UPS or FedEx, I’d have to buy boxes, which aren’t cheap.
Several people have asked me why I ship via USPS instead of using UPS or FedEx. That’s why.