So AMSA happened. Francis, Hon and I got to meet with a bunch of cool folks, partied with some rockstar pre-med and med-students and amazingly, unbelievably, sold almost our entire consignment of Healing Blade games. In the words of Neo, upon discovering the existence of the Matrix, ‘Whoa.’ And then we got this email:
I just received my copy of Healing Blade and I must say that I am extremely disappointed. I have read your note about the print quality being substandard but this is completely unexceptable. I have attached non-resized photos of the cards. The cards are so blurry that I have trouble reading a line of text with about getting a headache. I know that the price has been reduced by $5 but this type of quality makes the cards unusable. I would like to return the product but still hold faith in your product. When can we see properly printed cards that are glossy and clearer to read?
Disaster. My dad, who is an orthopedic surgeon, once infamously said, “Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, you little punk and I’ll give you something to really cry about.” However, he would also say, “Don’t even start a job unless you’ve got the right tools.” Selling someone a game with blurred print on the very object that they are supposed to outwit, outplay and outgame their opponent with is nothing other than an epic fail in our books. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re sorry.
How do we fix it? Well, we notified the solid folks at Superior Pod, our printing company who looked into it and not only identified the problem, but created a solution.
We discovered that the issue with the printing of the cards was with the Registration Unit on our Printer. It malfunctioned during the printing process, which caused the printing to become blurred on the cards. We regret that this happened and caused the problems that you are now facing.
So what we propose to do is this:We will drop ship the playing cards directly to each of your customers that ordered the game at no charge to them. No shipping charges will be applied. This will relieve you of any work on your part . We understand that when the error is on our part, we will do everything we can to correct the problem. We hope that this meets with your approval.
When I round with students, interns, residents, etc, one of the key things I look for is not only the accurate identification of problems and diagnoses, but also creative solutions to these diagnoses. Whether it be identifying a patient’s financial constraints and proposing medications that are affordable or working with our case managers to insure proper follow-up care, inevitably the more thoughtful a plan is, the higher the likelihood of success. We’re not really business dudes, so expect the occasional eff up – however, folks like the person that wrote in and the good people of Superior Pod are showing us that there are parallels between the world of publishing and medicine.
So in a nutshell – if you purchased a copy of the Healing Blade from us at AMSA, drop us a line at sales[at]nerdcorelearning[dot]com and while it would be awesome if you could send us a copy of your receipt, it won’t be a deal breaker if you can’t. Just remind us about your playing experience and don’t forget to include your shipping address that we can forward to our printers to get you your freshly re-printed cards!
ps – thanks to Junichi from Poplicks.com for the image. Swiffer Wetjets FTW.
Mathews out.