12:47 – We’re still surviving here, and Barbara returns tomorrow. I’ve done everything I can to get the new batch of 30 biology kits ready. All they lack is one bottle, a 125 mL polypropylene bottle of fertilizer concentrate. I have 60 of those bottles on order, not to mention another 60 around here somewhere if I could only find them. The bottles should arrive Monday or Tuesday, at which time I’ll fill them and get biology kits ready to ship. Fortunately, we haven’t quite run out of biology kits. We’re down to exactly one in stock as of now. (I found half a dozen of them downstairs that I’d forgotten we had.) So, worst case, we may get biology kit orders today and tomorrow that won’t ship until Tuesday or Wednesday instead of Monday.
I don’t know why it always surprises me what it costs to send a kit to New England. I just shipped one this morning to Vermont, which cost $10.80 to ship (zone 5 postage). I guess I think of New England as “close”, given that I grew up in Pennsylvania. But much of New England is USPS zone 5 from here in Winston-Salem. That seems a bit high, considering that northern New England is only about 1,000 to 1,200 miles from us and many zone 8 addresses are anything from 3,000 to 6,000 miles from us. Of course, the military gets a bit of a break. That kit we shipped recently to an APO address cost $8.18 to ship (zone 4 postage). I emailed the woman who ordered it to ask where she actually was. Stuttgart, Germany.
Speaking of shipping kits long distances, I got email this morning from a man in Adelaide, South Australia asking if there was any way we could ship a chemistry kit to him. Here’s how I replied:
On Saturday 27 October 2012 12:18:15 am you wrote:
Dear Home ScientistsI am most impressed by your excellent scientific kits. I would like to very much like to obtain one of your CK01A kits for my daughter (and myself).
I understand possible regulatory issues, but is there any possibility of shipping to South Australia (obviously I would cover all transport costs).
Sincerely
Rob <redacted>Hi, Rob
Thanks for the kind words.
Alas, at this point we ship only to the US and Canada. When we first considered shipping internationally, we wanted to ship to the English-speaking world. Then we found out how much it costs to ship to Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. At 40US$ extra, Canada is bad enough. The UK costs $60 extra, and Australia $75 extra. We didn’t bother to check NZ.
The second issue is that IATA regulations for international transport of hazardous materials make it impossible for us to ship some of the chemicals. I’m attaching a PDF that details the differences between the US and Canadian versions of the kit. If we shipped kits to Australia, the changes would be the same.
Finally, there’s the problem of loss or damage in shipping. Although it’s rare (although probably more common with international shipments), we do sometimes have a package damaged in transit; a broken beaker or thermometer, and so on. The extremely high cost of shipping means our usual policy of shipping replacements no-questions-asked is impractical.
Although insurance is available, it’s costly and from what we’re told it’s just about useless. Filing a claim takes hours of work, many/most claims are denied, and even if a claim is approved, it may be for only a fraction of the true loss and the payment may take literally months to be processed.
So our only practical alternative would be to ship FOB origin. In other words, our responsibility would end when we handed the package to the US Postal Service. All risk of loss or damage would be the buyer’s responsibility. I wouldn’t be comfortable buying a kit from us on those terms, and I’m not comfortable asking a potential customer to do so.
Best regards.
Bob
15:36 – One of the things I enjoy about Heartland is that it features many Canadian musicians, most of whom are not well-known outside Canada and probably some who aren’t well known even inside Canada. One of those is Jenn Grant, whose track Dreamer is used as the opening theme music for all six seasons of the program and whose track White Horses is used in one of the first-season episodes. Of course, most people know of the many internationally-popular Canadian musicians–Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Linda Rondstadt, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, and so on–but Canada also turns out a lot of very skilled musicians who haven’t yet made it big. Heartland features quite a few of them.
17:11 – I’m beginning to think that both campaigns now believe that Obama can’t win North Carolina. Today has been the first day in recent memory that I haven’t gotten a phone call for either candidate. It appears that both Obama and Romney believe that Romney will win North Carolina, so they’re both refocusing their efforts elsewhere. I’d mentioned before that the political signs for both campaigns were present in relatively even numbers in our neighborhood four years ago, but now Romney signs far outnumber Obama signs. And I noticed that three more Romney signs have gone up in the neighborhood in the last 24 hours, while the number of Obama signs is the same. That puts Romney up in terms of sign count by about an 8:1 or 10:1 margin. From other stuff I’m reading, it appears that Obama has gone from what he perceived as a comfortable lead a month or so ago to running scared today.