Dude, where's my zine? Citadel21 VOL1 Q & A

And to provide a little bit of context here, my role in the project is dispatch. So I'm taking care of the printing and shipping. And thus, in this 3-person mini panel, we probably have the best knowledge about the shipping process. So we'll be going through all your questions. And also, if you have more further questions, you can also send them to shop@citadel21.com. That's the customer service email. You will get a response within 24 hours. That's the goal at least. And we respond to everybody's inquiries. So that's the channel to use. It's probably the better channel compared to Twitter. I mean, obviously you can reach out on Twitter as well, but I would think that The best way to streamline the process is to use the email. And also, that's great because it will leave some kind of reminder or memory for you guys that you have been in contact with us. And then it will be easier to find your case and get back to you.

Yeah.

Totally. Sorry.

Niko, as a If you check Telegram, I sent you an image on Telegram. Maybe you can screen share that as a start to this thing, because I think it kind of catches the sentiment or the vibe of Volume 1, how people have experienced it. We ran this meme contest on Twitter and I kind of think— I think this was the best one. Made me laugh. It's kind of sad, but it made me laugh.

Yeah, it was the same thing for me when I saw this. It cracked me up immediately. I know that feeling. And yeah, it's really unfortunate when you, when you are really excited about something you bought online, and especially when you use your sats to do it, and then you have been waiting for quite a bit. So definitely can sympathize with your feelings. So this is really funny and sad at the same time.

Yeah. I think it's worth mentioning that at least my impression right as of now, it's mostly North America that's affected. There is some pockets elsewhere as well, like Italy. But yeah, mostly North America. And fortunately, we're seeing them come in in higher frequency these last couple of weeks. So hopefully this will be resolved Yeah,

there's a couple— sorry, Katya, go ahead.

Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to add that I read a little bit about this, like how do they ship right now and why actually America is affected. Like, obviously it's just overseas, and the thing is like we ship from Europe, so if some guys are actually located in Europe, then the postal services, they can use road. But for shipping overseas, they have to use either ships or air traffic, and both are actually severely affected by COVID stuff.

Yeah, that's one thing. But also I have to point out that the vast majority of all shipments go to North America. So it's only natural that most of the lost shipments or delayed are also there. I think from volume 1, more than half went to North America. But that being said, there's also countries like Czech Republic, Portugal, Serbia, I believe, in Europe that I, from the top of my head, that I can remember that still haven't received volume 1. So it's not entirely about that, but obviously even in the regular situation, the European delivery time ranges for economy letter. And this I think is key here that we use the economy letter in the first batch because it's slightly cheaper, but apparently it is the most affected by these delays and the priority class has been moving a little bit better. So even in the regular situation, of course, it takes less time to Europe and more time to overseas. So I think the problem polarizes because of the long distance, COVID, and yeah, I think it makes it seem like there's a bigger problem with US and Canada specifically when that might not be the case. It's just that the vast majority is from there.

Yeah, seems to be a lot of unknown factors or like very specific factors in international shipping right now. For example, Last couple of days I've been talking to a lot of people about these shipping issues and it seems like UK and US has a very solid connection for some reason. Like even letter mail seems to be moving pretty good from UK to US, but like mainland Europe is a completely different story. So it's hard to like see the whole picture here and there are probably a lot of factors involved and at different times as well. So yeah, it's just a difficult time to do international shipping.

It's true.

Totally true. And also like what I read, like it's true that UK probably has less problems, but also like the thing is it really varies from country to country. like the delayed times also because we don't, do not really know like how do those postal services like inside the countries work. Because I checked through like pretty a lot of postal services websites and all of them basically say like, yeah, like be ready for the delays because like there are lockdowns, layoffs, and just basically like less workforce. Yeah. in some countries. But the amount of letters and other shipments are basically still the same. So it just gets harder for people who work in this sphere to actually deliver in time.

Yeah, we really don't have any control after we dispatch. If it's not a tracked shipment, Which is, by the way, something that has been added to Volume 2 to get extra insurance and to mitigate the problem with the possible delays and possible lost shipments too. Of course, it's a little bit extra money, but when you talk about collectibles, some people have been finding it useful. So that's something you can do now. But unfortunately, after it leaves the dispatch, there's really nothing we can do. Except wait. And the thing that got us a little bit by surprise, we've been shipping books and stuff all around the world a lot. And just now recently this year, like maybe around the summer, they really started to cut down the connections. Like it was a little bit of a surprise to me that some countries were cut out completely. Like for example, Australia. which gladly we managed to use a courier service to service that area. But there's also countries that actually ordered the volume 1, customers from countries that the connection is completely broken. There's no way except using courier, and that's obviously not plausible for single magazines. So we even have some volume 1s that have not been shipped at all because it's simply not possible. Or it's not plausible.

Big shout out to Wizard of Oz for helping us distribute Australian zines.

Indeed.

Thanks, brother.

Huge help.

Yeah.

And the second thing that caught us by surprise was the disproportionate effect on priority and economy mail. So economy mail seems really, really bad right now, so I don't recommend anybody use it for anything. I've literally seen a picture of a truck drove over the envelope of the magazine with the tire tracks on top of it. And one magazine, I believe, was bent by the mailman. So that was kind of a disappointment. But luckily now it seems the volume 2 is— we're using the priority envelopes. People have been reporting that the magazine is in good condition and arrives timely. So that's something good news at least.

Yeah. Yeah, should we have a look at like what questions have people been asking in the support emails, Niko?

Sure, let me just see here. So I think one of the biggest, most frequent questions is, is there any tracking number for the letter or have they been shipped? People have been unsure. And this is also reflected both in DMs and also in the emails. People aren't sure if the magazines have been shipped. And I think one reason for this is that which we've also been telling people over email that in the beginning, the very first batch, the huge batch of orders got confirmed by the automatic system, but it didn't send the shipping confirmations to the clients, which means that it's possible that you didn't even receive a shipping notification even though your magazine was shipped. So that's probably some source of confusion. So all magazines have been shipped. I can personally guarantee that because I've overseen the process. And about the tracking number, generally when you get the regular mail, you don't get the tracking number for that. You have to pay extra for that. And to be able to provide global free shipping, the tracking number is not included by default. But since we realized there can be a lot of problems and even in regular situations, there's always some chance for a lost shipment. So we have added the possibility to purchase that tracking code, which is just basically a little bit of extra money. I think it's around $9-something for Europe. and $17 for outside Europe, something to that effect. So definitely you can do that. And also we changed the Australian shipping. So if you're ordering from Australia, be aware that we only ship once a month, that joint shipment. And if you miss that, then you have to wait for the next month. So you can always order, but we will ship the new volume in 2 weeks from print. So then if you make an order before that, you will get it in the same batch.

Yeah. I like the names you chose for the 2 shipping options, Niko. Can you— Oh, right.

Yeah, actually I can probably share the screen here. I have your shop open here. Hold on. Right, so you should be able to see that now. So if you go to the shop and you put the, put the zine in your cart, and here you can see, so low time preference is now what used to be just, there was no options, but now there's low time preference and high time preference. So if you have low time preference, that means you will get just no tracking code. You will just get the— at this moment it's the priority mail, but it used to be the economy mail. And if you want high— if you have high time preference, you want some extra protection, then you will pay the extra. You can pay the extra cost and get it a little bit faster, get some extra assurance. And this is especially handy if you want to order multiple multiple zines. For one, it might be a little bit steep, especially if you live outside Europe. But if you get a multiple zine order, I would definitely consider that. So those are the ways to do it. And I'll show you the Australian while I'm at it. So if we check, if you are changing your address to Australia, so then you will only have the option to do UPS group shipping. And because UPS is a rather expensive service, we will have to charge you an extra $750 to be included in the group shipping. So while it's not quite free global shipping, it is still doable. So if you really want this in and the prices, because we generally get around 20-ish orders per volume, at least so far from Australia. So this makes it possible for us to actually ship it. And then also we have to consider the cost of shipping inside Australia, so there's like 2 rounds of handling and shipping.

Yeah, and hopefully these shipping routes will normalize, right? Even though it doesn't look at the moment like the global stage is going to calm down near term, but hopefully at some point we will have normalized shipping again and then Once again, we will be able to ship to Australia for $21 shipping included, right?

Yeah, of course. Of course. I'm keeping an eye on the situation all the time, but like you said, it doesn't look too good about the panic dying down, but we'll see. I think also the entrepreneurs are getting kind of tired of this kind of interference. So hopefully things will get better soon.

Yeah.

Yeah, actually I remembered Wizard sent us a screenshot of the route. Do you remember, Hobonat? Like the route, how the parcel went, and it went from Helsinki to Glostrup in Denmark, and then it went to Köln in Germany, and then it was like circling around the United States in Newmark, Louisville, and Honolulu. And it was not the end. So it took like really a lot of stages to get to Australia.

Yeah, completely crazy logistics gymnastics going on.

Yeah, so there's no wonder, like even the UPS and DHL, what I've seen, they've raised their prices and also they pulled out their guarantees for delivery times, like entirely. They don't guarantee any delivery times anymore. Which is kind of like, tells a kind of a story of the state of the global infrastructure right now. It's worse than you would think. So more, some more questions. There's also a question about the plastic wrapping and the wrapping of the magazines. A lot of people have been asking about the, you know, kind of like vacuum seal on that because it's a collectible to many. And this is something that we have actually been talking about. Do you guys have any input on this?

Nothing firm. I mean, we talked briefly about it, Niko, and it will include added cost for us to do that. It's definitely something we're looking at, and I think basically we'll announce what's going to happen with that soonish. I mean, there were several things we were discussing, like possibility of including maybe some stickers here and there in the package and stuff like that. So yeah, we will bring more clarity on that soon.

Yeah, that's— I think that could be nice, at least as an option for some people. Definitely something to look into. But Yeah, like you said, at this point when it's not entirely clear how the future volumes are going to sell and if the enterprise will be profitable, it's best to avoid any extra costs.

Exactly. It's like we have a lot of balls in the air already, so I think it's a matter of streamlining and making our current commitment solid and then branch from

So another question is people are wondering perhaps we shipped to a wrong address because there's also shipping address and there's the billing address. And I will say right now it's impossible because the order export only fetches the shipping address. So as long as you filled the shipping address correctly, it has been shipped to your shipping address. There was a case where a customer accidentally put their address in the comments and it got shipped to the wrong place, but that's another thing. So just be careful to make sure the shipping address is correct and also include the country. There was, I think, some orders that didn't include country from the US. Perhaps they thought that the zines are shipped from inside US. I think they There was a couple of customers like that. Just make sure that the shipping address has all the information that is required for the delivery and then our system should take care of the rest. Yeah. So also, yeah, like we mentioned earlier, the Volume 2 has been arriving to many customers before the Volume 1. This is also something that has caused some anxiety to people that perhaps it will never arrive or it was never shipped. But I think it's still the case of economy versus priority. So it takes apparently weeks longer with the economy compared to the priority. And that's the only logical conclusion that I can come to at this point. that they just simply don't prioritize at all the economy. They will, they will just ship it if they have some time or if they have some resources. I think that they probably have some buffer storage that the ledgers can just stay there for. If they don't have capacity, then the ledgers can just stay there for a long while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, Katja.

No, I was just thinking that, yeah, I guess Niko, you're totally right because Like yesterday I was researching what is going on with international shipping, like maybe there are some resources that actually report on the situation. And as I understood, really they do not prioritize this economy shipping because with the current situation in the world, what they actually prioritize is a lot of medical stuff being shipped. And that includes medicaments and masks. and tests, and that is like the highest priority. And as we know, like every country now imports that stuff from China. So I guess that the shipping routes that are left, they are first used for this like medical purposes, and then like basically the priority, like probably some business stuff and priority mail, and then in the end, Economy shipping. So it really takes probably like months, like a couple of months to get the economy letter. Yeah.

And this situation polarizes the difference because regularly, like I've been shipping a lot of stuff and I always use the economy because the difference is, monetary difference is so huge and the time difference is so small. But right now it's the opposite way, that the economic difference is negligible and the time difference is unbearable. So it's a no-brainer that we go with a priority from now on. I think that was all of the questions. If you guys didn't have any more questions, I think it's pretty much just, where's my zine? You know? Yeah. And the short answer is, It's on the way. And the longer answer is, if it's not going to arrive, if it's not going to be returned to us or it's not going to reach the destination, we will find a way to make you whole so you haven't lost your money, you haven't been scammed. I think that's the number one thing that everybody should understand.

Yeah. And also that's important to mention that we have put a cutoff date on this. If you have not received your zines 120 days from the order date, we will make you whole. We'll get in contact with you and we will find a way to make you whole, either through a refund or some other means, maybe send you a replacement zine from another volume or something like that. We will— no one will— no one has been scammed here and we will make people whole.

And one more thing to add is to— if you are waiting for your zine and you haven't contacted shop@citadel21.com, please do so, so I can add you to the list of non-shipments. So I will have an idea of how many shipments are still on the way. And also kindly, if you do get it, then I would ask you also to let us know so we can then take you off the list because we do have a very small buffer of zines left for reshipments. But if we start reshipping right now, there's a chance that everybody doesn't get one, and it's going to suck because I think most people would still prefer the zine over a refund. So it's very important that We are sure that the shipment is lost before we ship another one, because there's not going to be enough for everybody, I think.

Yeah, and it wouldn't really make sense to start resending now, even if we had enough scenes to do it. Just also to clarify, when you say that we had a reshipment buffer, we said— was it 10 scenes, Niko?

It's actually just 5.

Yeah, okay. It was supposed to be 10, but then we had some— we had like, we miscommunicated a little bit and then it turned out that we had sold more than we thought. Isn't that right?

Yeah, actually what happened was that some customers, I think around 7 of them, put a really low fee on the Bitcoin payment and as a result, The order failed by the shop. But as everybody knows, eventually the Bitcoin payment did clear up. So it was a made sale. So that kind of ate the buffer, which was unfortunate. We didn't account for that, but that's what happened.

So just to be clear, when we say buffer, that doesn't mean we have printed more than 1,000 zins. Only 1,000 zins have been printed. We just kept a small buffer to account for possible non-shipment or non-received zines. But we are seeing zines arrive every day now. Like just today, I think I've seen 2 or 3 people tweeting from the US that their volume 1 arrived. So if you still haven't received it, we still believe you will. And if you end up not receiving it, we will make you whole.

Right. And as I said earlier, please be in touch with the email. And let us know if you're still waiting, if you haven't yet. It's really important to get the most accurate picture.

Yeah. And yeah, Volume 3 is being printed soon, Niko. We're hoping to have the design ready now in a few days. Really looking forward to that. And that will be shipped as priority, just like Volume 2, and hopefully will reach customers in a timely fashion.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. Did you guys have any other things you wanted to discuss? Should we wrap it up?

I think we're good. Do you have anything, Katya?

No, I don't. I was just thinking, Niko, that we can help you with this waiting list because we can scrap the emails from all the orders and make the survey so people— so we actually know from which country and who didn't receive and send them directly in their mailbox. Maybe that would be easier than they will, like, reach out to us.

Yeah, sure, whichever way you like.

Yeah, I mean, we can do that. So maybe we just get, like, More information about who is waiting. I was just wondering about the split between actually received zines and non-received.

Yeah, it's just we have no way to know who has received the zines without tracking. So there's probably a lot of people who have— who are still waiting but who chose not to bother us with their Yeah. Requests. So that's kind of like what I was going for. Yeah. All right, so, so to sum it up, your zine is on the way. And if you have any further questions or you want to sign up for the non-shipment list, the email is

shop@sitadel21.com. Yeah, it's also possible to DM us on Twitter if you have just a short, easy question, but if it's shipping related, you should probably send the mail to shop@sitadel21.com.

Great.

Yeah,

thank you,

Håkon.

Thank you, Katja, and thank you for Everybody for their support, whoever bought the zine. It's really great. I love the zine. I think it's nice to have more culture, Bitcoin culture like this. I'm looking forward to Volume 3. I hope everybody else is too.

Yeah, thank you, Niko. Thank you to everyone who supports us.

All right, take care. Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.