Nibs.Com.... Having a laugh.Arent they???

[Pen Nut]

Now I know Nibs.Com and Mr.J.Mottishaw are held in very high esteem by most if not all people on the FPN. Indeed I have tried a couple of pens which the great man himself has modified nibs on and been very impressed but having recently enquired about having a nib profile changed by them I think a reality check is required.........

 

Ok I will keep it brief, in a recent enquiry to nibs.com I asked for a quote to turn a Mont Blanc OBB nib into an italic profile. Quotes were reasonable, shipping to the U.K. is something I could cope with. V.A.T. is a great English tax which we live with and this is accepted....

 

However they wanted me to accept that my pen would be away for between 5 to 6 MONTHS !! Now come on.... I accept people are busy in business but I deal with Harley Street surgeons in less than three months! But the thing that really baffled me was the, and I quote, " Rush Contingency " This is a really great idea....

 

You agree to pay 100% on top of the quoted price for the work on your pen and guess what ??? Its back within the week !!! :ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd:

 

So I tell a Bentley customer who drops his car in for a service on January 1st .....

" The cost of the required work is $2000 and I will see you in May or June but tell you what give me $4000 and I will see you on January 4th "

 

How long do you think my garage would remain open? EXACTLY!!!!!

 

To all at Nibs.Com please re-arrange this sentence :

 

INTELLIGENCE PLEASE INSULT DONT MY.

[Capt. Pat]

:ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd: :ltcapd:

[Ray]

Well, that's capitalism. I don't really see anything objectionable in this; if I pay extra at the dry cleaner, I can get my suit back sooner. Whether I do or not is my choice.

 

Ray

[Pen Nut]

Ray,

 

No objection to paying a bit more to get something done a bit quicker.

 

Its the timescale and cost which, shall we say, baffles me.

 

I.E. From 6 Months to one week all neatly rounded up to a 100% extra cost

[Ray]

Effectively, he's telling you he has six months of work backed up, but he'll let you come right to the front of the queue if you'll double your price. If you wait until it's a 12 month backlog, you may need to triple it!

 

Ray

[jd50ae]

I have had, and will continue to have business dealings with two nibmeisters over the years, both are members of FPN.

 

I have found them both to be professional and respectful in all transactions, even in the beginning, when my questions had no experience at all behind them.

 

If the growth of membership on FPN is any indication at all, interest in FPs is starting to boom. They were already busy and are getting more and more business all the time.

 

When I was a gunsmith we worked normal hours, usually 10 to 12 a day. 6 days and sometimes 7 days a week. This was on top of doing shows up and down the east coast to drum up new clients. We also let the customer know how long it would take to complete the work. If a customer had to have it now, and we had to work even longer hours, it cost more. We did not put off the jobs we were already obligated to, we worked longer hours. This is no different then overtime pay for an hourly wage earner.

 

We took pride in our work and I am sure both of these gentlemen do also.

Edited January 19, 2007 by jd50ae

[*david*]

His is a popular service. He does the work by himself. Very few people in the world do what he does at a comparable quality. He has a lot of pens in the queue before he gets to yours. Where is the insult in that? Or even the surprise, for that matter?

 

To use your example: if the same two or three Harley Street surgeons had to see every patient in all of Great Britain, the same thing would happen.

[doctorbohica]

Seems rude to current customers that a professional would actively promulgate a fee system that recurrently displaces older agreed upon work for newly assigned work in exchange for a much higher fee. Won't be buying anything at nibs.com. Thanks for the heads-up.

[Pen Nut]

In the US that may well be classed as capitalism...

 

In the UK it goes under another title which I wont put on here...

 

Not questioning the quality of work for a minute and was well impressed by the lengthy e-mail giving options & costs etc but here is an idea.

 

Give a job number to a pen, then when five months of the six months waiting time (!) have elapsed contact the owner who has already paid a deposit to forward the pen.

 

I just look daft me

[solaris]

Give a job number to a pen, then when five months of the six months waiting time (!) have elapsed contact the owner who has already paid a deposit to forward the pen.

Funny, because I thought exactly the same about another business. I contacted once a luthier to scrap the paint off my Fender Stratocaster and paint it in a nice two-color sunburst. I know it is a difficult task, but the guy asked seven months to deliver the guitar (just the body, BTW).

Well, I know the guy is good at that, and has many clients like me who want to change their guitars. But for that I have to spend seven months without my guitar.

Why, I thought, you don´t give some sort of "order ticket", and in six months you send me an email saying next month my bench will be waiting for your strat...

 

I would like to note that I never had the opportunity to deal with nibs.com in any form, and it seems that his job is outstanting. I just ask myself why he does not show the same attitude that other very good professionals show here, sharing info that is very valuable for all of us mere mortals. Of course, Richard, Dillo and Tom Zorn are just some of the names that come to my mind now, other can be added...

[BillTheEditor]

For a time, I made my living as a self-employed consultant. Not bragging, but I sometimes had more business than I could handle. The simple way to handle this problem, when you are self-employed and not looking to add staff or take on a partner, is to raise your price. Gets your backlog down to manageable size very quickly, and yet customers who have an actual pressing need can still get into the queue.

 

This is exactly what John Mottishaw is doing. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. I believe it's done in the best of environments, including the UK. John is a one-man show. Supply will always lag far behind demand, and price is an accepted way to address the situation.

 

And when the backlog gets down to something a human being can handle, you lower your prices. Works like a charm.

 

If you want top-quality work done, be prepared to pay the price. If you want the work done immediately, you can always find someone who doesn't have a backlog. Of course, when you figure out why they don't have a backlog, suddenly their low low low price may not be nearly so attractive. As one often hears, one gets what one pays for.

[Pen Nut]

Oh I get it now.... get dead busy to a point where you just cant cope then put your prices through the roof. Keep all the wealthy customers until you have milked them dry ( or they see the light) then drop your prices to allow less well off people to use your services again and make them feel thankful that they can.

 

What a downright sound buisiness idea that is :blink:

 

Peskey working class types ringing my workshop !!! How dare they

Edited January 19, 2007 by Pen Nut

[BillTheEditor]

Oh I get it now.... get dead busy to a point where you just cant cope then put you prices through the roof. Keep all the wealthy customers until you have milked them dry ( or they see the light) then drop your prices to allow less well off people to use your services again and make them feel thankful that they can.

 

What a downright sound buisiness idea that is :blink:

 

Peskey working class types ringing my workshop !!! How dare they

That's not the way it works. If you have a six month backlog, all that work gets done at the price agreed on when each job was started. Very few people will pay the higher price in order to get to the head of the queue. The folks in the queue will never know that two or three people went straight to the top of the list -- because their work will still be delivered in the timeframe they expected.

 

I believe someone here mentioned -- and yes this is hearsay and no I am not being critical here -- that if you send a pen to (a certain nibmeister here whose name you have used in this thread) to have the nib modified, the wait is (what -- 3 months?) some rather long time. But if you buy a new pen from that nibmeister and ask for the nib to be modified, he does that work more or less right away and sends the pen to you. In other words, if you are going to spend $35 with him, you wait. If you are going to spend $235 with him, you get the work done right away. Makes perfect sense to me, if this is true. It's a reasonable and fair system. I don't think anyone is going to accuse this particular nibmeister of chasing off the poor and soaking the rich. Neither does John Mottishaw.

 

(If the nibmeister in the paragraph above tells me this is not true, I will gladly edit this post and remove the preceeding paragraph. I like the guy, have done business with him, and have often recommended him to others.)

 

Anyway, if you are bound and determined to be offended by a common business practice and by the law of supply and demand, there's nothing I or anyone else can do to change your mind. But I do think you are going to spend a fair amount of your life feeling angry and frustrated. God forbid you ever buy a plane ticket for coach and find out that the people up in first class got much better treatment and much better seats because they could afford to pay four times as much.

 

Riding in coach, I am

y.ob.s.

Bill the Editor

[jsonewald]

BillTheEditor stated it pretty well. One of the basic tests for pricing a service or product is how well it sell at the current price. If you sell everything at your asking price, then it is probably priced too low.

 

Another way to look at it is to ask what you would think if the only price he gave was doubled, but all work had a 1 week turnaround time. Would you think that was bad business?

 

It's the old aphorism, " You can have it good, fast, or cheap - choose any two".

[*david*]

I believe someone here mentioned -- and yes this is hearsay and no I am not being critical here -- that if you send a pen to (a certain nibmeister here whose name you have used in this thread) to have the nib modified, the wait is (what -- 3 months?) some rather long time. But if you buy a new pen from that nibmeister and ask for the nib to be modified, he does that work more or less right away and sends the pen to you. In other words, if you are going to spend $35 with him, you wait. If you are going to spend $235 with him, you get the work done right away. Makes perfect sense to me, if this is true.

I believe this is stated in black and white on the website of the person you're referring to.

[solaris]

I understand the concept: you want it fast, you pay for it.

 

But what happens if I send my pen, ready to wait for five months, and other people with cash keep putting their pens ahead of me just because they can pay...?

 

I don't know, really...

[CD7]

Meh, if he's got a lotta work he should just raise his prices across the board.

Bumping back people who have already paid is lame.

Oh well, there's others.

[PinarelloOnly]

All points are good but it is the service business and when it comes to something

like the dry cleaners, nibs or your Linn turntable getting rebuilt, if a business

person wants to charge you more to get ahead of the line, we should be so lucky.

 

I tried to offer RB more money to get my pen out of his queue this past summer

but he doesn’t accept more $$$ for a faster turn around so I had to wait and wait.

 

As far as nibs.com I would pay the $80 plus for a 1 week turnaround on a nib

grind. I've certainly spent more than that at the gas pump in one week.

 

Scott.

Edited January 19, 2007 by PinarelloOnly

[KCat]

tangent: is there a place on Richard's site where he states his current turn-around?

[umenohana]

I'm pretty sure that (as jd50ae said earlier) Mr. M just works extra hours for those who need it right away. Working over-time usually equals lots more pay.

 

But really, sometimes, the waiting part is kind of excruciating but exciting at the same time. :roflmho: I know that every time I see my Binderized nib, I feel all happy and amazed at what a great job he did.. :)9

 

-Hana