weeks prior

It occurred to me last night, suddenly, well into November, that I had not received the Nov/Dec issue of SkyNews. Which is rather odd, given that on September 13, I informed the magazine—directly—of my address change (which they acknowledged) while at the same time I updated my online data at the RASC National web site (not acknowledged).

'Round midnight, I sent out an email to a few friends, to see if they had received their copy.

The copy of the message to Katrina bounced. Her host, or an associated service provider, host mx.spamexperts.com, issued a 550 error: High probability of spam. I had blind-copied people. Ugh. Sent her the same message but directly, personally. Bounced again. Peas and rice!

A little after 9 in the morning, Charles replied, "Late possibly." Um...

Later, chatted with Katrina via the Book of Face. She said she had received her copy. Damn. Well, that's not bad. For her.

Visited the (new and improved) SkyNews web site. Checked the "current issue" page, which usually takes a while to get updated. There was the current cover. And it did not look familiar.

Denise at SkyNews responded promptly. Not surprisingly, it was a bit out of her hands. But generously and immediately put a copy in the mail for me. Fast!

Surfed into the RASC National web site and logged in... Crikey. They don't make it at all obvious how you change your contact info. Grumble, click, grumble, click, scan, scan, back up, scan, click, no, click, retreat, grumble, scan, no. No. I recalled this feeling of frustration from before... No apparent links from the "main" site. So I headed to the eStore, logged in again, and verified what I knew: the address was correct.

Let Phil and Ralph that I had updated my address with both parties but had not received the magazine. Posited that this was due to a long time delay between RASC providing the active membership list to magazine's people. Apparently about 4 weeks. And that that seemed strange. Should it not be ALAP?!

Messaged Melissa at National. At noon.

Phoned the office around 3:30 regarding another matter... Melissa picked up. Funny (odd): she didn't say a thing about the address issue.

Melissa replied to my email at 4:23 PM.

Thank you for contacting the Society office.  We pull the list weeks prior to publication and distribution dates.

I shot back, "Why?" I wondered if doing it as late as possible wouldn't solve some problems...

Sending a list that is weeks old will have expired (past the grace period) members, not embrace new members (who may have immediate gratification issues), and not reflect dynamic changes in data (which is what appears to have happened to me).

But I also considered it may be out of their hands:

I can imagine SkyNews needs some lead time of course to receive the data, do what they need to do to it, print labels, and submit the labels.  Do they need "weeks" of time for that?

In the Age of the Internet, this just seems peculiar to me. Slow. Old fashioned? Is this happening due to an old, established process, predating electronic communications?

Once again, to me, this speaks to something deeper. Should RASC be driving toward faster and more accurate response so to improve the customer experience? It would be better for members if these kinds of things didn't happen at all. Is that possible? No. But surely "weeks" is too big a gap. No matter. Again, maybe this is dictated by the magazine's requirements or demands.

Still—and here's the simple part—tell us! If it's gonna take 4 or 5 weeks for an address change to trickle down, say that! State it on the web site. State it in the address form. Add the sentence. Be transparent. Reduce surprise. Comfort the member. Simple!