Thread: Do you have a subscription to FWW magazine?

I have just received an email from Customer Service. This will look familiar to some of you. It’s the third time I have received it.

Regards from Perth

Derek


Thank you for contacting Fine Woodworking.

Your subscription began with the March/April 2021 issue. [note: renewed in February 2021]

We are correcting our records and extending your subscription to
compensate for any inconvenience caused. Your new expiration date will
be the July/August 2023 issue and will be reflected on your address
label.

Copies are being mailed to your address listed below.

Derek Cohen
XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXX

Once your issue is in the postal system, we no longer have control over
delivery. Please verify that your address label is complete and
accurate. Foreign post offices/carriers require additional information
to ensure delivery.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. To ensure your
future concerns are handled in a timely fashion, please include all
previous e-mail correspondence.

Thank you,
Glenn
Fine Woodworking Customer Service
[email protected]

For all your subscription service needs, visit Taunton Press - Customer Service
the quick, easy and safe way to manage your magazine account and answer
any questions you may have in one convenient place.

Derek, I just checked my copies, last was April 2021. But I've been a subscriber for 20+ years and this is the first significant delay. Mostly they arrive promptly, often ahead of the issue month. Anyway, as someone noted, your Account page lets you order replacements for missing copies and that has worked well the couple of times I've used it, and I'll try again now. From memory the last replacement a few years ago now came from Singapore. I still very much enjoy having the hard copy open on the workbench. Cheers

I heard back from FWW this morning. They are correcting their records and will extend my subscription expiry date to compensate. This sounds like that issue is at their end atleast in my case.

Digital edition can be accessed via Magazine - FineWoodworking or via their Apple and Android apps. I am assuming that you need finewoodworking.com digital subscription (users with continued subscription pre unlimited membership) or unlimited membership.

Cheers

Originally Posted by derekcohen

If so, have you been receiving a copy if Fine Woodworking magazine over the past year? That is, is delivery being made?

I ask because I renewed my magazine subscription in February 2021 (it is now August 2021). I have not yet received a copy in all this time! Twice I have reported this to Customer Support. Twice they have emailed back to say that my subscription has been extended to cover the missed period. BUT I have yet to receive a copy, and it is now two publications since the last exchange with CS.

I am fully aware that Covid has wrecked havoc with delivery dates, and that I live in Australia. However, I have received other shipped items from other vendors in a reasonable time frame. Usually within a few weeks. (And if it was a slow delivery at play, I would have received something by now .. nada).

I expect that Customer Support will respond by extending the subscription period yet again, but this does not get me the magazine.

I wonder how many others are experiencing the same issue?

Hi Derek
I've been a subscriber to Fine Woodworking for 25 or more years.
What I've noticed is that very early on (mid 90s) FWW were posted direct from the US.
Then the "system" changed to FWW being shipped to Europe and entering the regular mail system there. The distributors of Scientific American had a similar system -- ship to Europe and post from there.
Starting sometime in the 2000s, FWW was air freighted in bulk to Sydney (to TNT's Mascot depot?) and placed into the Australia Post delivery system.
The last copy I received in Australia (in 2018?) used this method.

More recently I switched the delivery address to where I live in Canada.
With delivery to Canada, the magazine appears to be trucked to a shipping depot in Ontario, from whence it enters the Canada Post system for delivery to Canadian destinations. It appears to take the magazine about a week to get across Canada, and prior to Covid, I was receiving the magazine well before the following issue was printed.
Since Covid struck and the Canadian-US border was closed, it appears to take two or so months for the magazine to get from the US into Canada.
I received Issue #290 about 3 weeks ago (mid-July) although the issue seems to have been available on US bookshelves in mid May.
I see from the FWW website that issue#291 (September / October 2021) is on US bookshelves as I type.


For Australia, limited flights into Australia (thanks NOT ScoMo), has possibly led to a huge backlog of "only when space available" air freight from the US to Australia. Pre-Covid, around 80%(?) of air cargo arriving into Sydney arrived in the holds of regular passenger services and not on DHL, FedEx or UPS freighters. (To keep the fishing industry going the Federal Govt happily leased air cargo space so lobsters could be flown from WA to China -- but didn't provide similar support to regular air fright from the US or Europe.)
So I think the current AUS border restrictions -- especially the caps on air line passenger numbers -- have a lot to do with the non-delivery of your issues of FWW.


Note,
that as far as I know, FWW has massively outsourced their businesses.
From what I can gleam, customer service at Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding, Fine Threads, etc., is no longer part of "Taunton Press". The operators are employed by a third party which only has a service contract with Taunton Press. Popular woodworking has adopted a similar "customer service" model.
Also, in 2019, FWW closed their Connecticut wood shop.

Based on how the last episode (#243) of Shop Talk Live I watched was produced, the FWW employees are still doing the show from their home locations.

I thought they were shipping through Hong Kong but it matters not. The idea that magazine cargo is being bumped for higher revenue freight is valid although I wonder what happens to the inevitable backlog. Another possibility is that the airfreight shipments never leave the U.S.

The timing of my problems definitely correlate with Covid.

mick

Thanks, Derek, same problem here.

For the last three or four years, at least, my copy of FWW Magazine has been mailed from Holland - no problem, its in English!

Then it changed and the last three copies that I received came from the Channel Islands.

Then it stopped; the last FWW Magazine that I received was #288 Mar/April 2021.

I checked the Taunton website and find that I have not received:

1. #289 May/Jun 2021,
2. #290 Jul/Aug 2021, and
3. #291 Sep/Oct 2021.

Have emailed Taunton and await a response.

Originally Posted by Ian

... For Australia, limited flights into Australia (thanks NOT ScoMo), has possibly led to a huge backlog of "only when space available" air freight from the US to Australia. Pre-Covid, around 80%(?) of air cargo arriving into Sydney arrived in the holds of regular passenger services and not on DHL, FedEx or UPS freighters. ...

Not sure that its quite that bad, Ian. Even when there was a total ban on international passengers into Melbourne (quarantine bed spaces full) there were still about 20 international flights per day landing there. Some were pure freighters, but most were passenger planes fully loaded with inward freight. On the outward flights they carried both passengers and freight.

There have been delays but freight is still moving.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Not sure that its quite that bad, Ian. Even when there was a total ban on international passengers into Melbourne (quarantine bed spaces full) there were still about 20 international flights per day landing there. Some were pure freighters, but most were passenger planes fully loaded with inward freight. On the outward flights they carried both passengers and freight.

There have been delays but freight is still moving.

Graeme
the following data is from the ABS

Country of citizenship	Jun-19	Jun-20	May-21	Jun-21	Jun-19 to Jun-21 % change
New Zealand	144,970	2,740	52,280	43,780	-69.8%
UK(b)	50,640	800	2,440	2,150	-95.7%
China(c)	107,030	1,190	1,920	1,880	-98.2%
India	53,800	1,370	1,400	1,820	-96.6%
USA	62,000	460	1,080	1,290	-97.9%
Philippines	20,480	290	870	870	-95.8%
Vanuatu	810	0	600	770	-4.5%
Samoa	570	0	200	530	-7.2%
France	14,740	110	330	410	-97.2%
South Africa	5,870	330	460	370	-93.6%

(a) To confidentialise, estimates have been rounded to the nearest 10.
(b) Includes the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.
(c) Excludes SARs & Taiwan.

So, based on the ABS's provision stats
flights from the UK, US, China, India, France, the Philippines and South Africa (roughly totalling 300,000 passengers per month) are now only delivering about 8,000 passengers per month.

I'm not sure how that translates into the numbers of aircraft landing in Australia each day, but what I do know is that at Sydney Airport ...
Qantas is not servicing any destinations other than New Zealand,
Air Canada is not operating any flights to Australia (prior to Covid there was 1 return flight per day, plus direct flights to Brisbane and also(?) Melbourne),
Emirates is down to 1 flight per day into Sydney (prior to Covid there were 3 per day),
Cathay Pacific is down to 1 flight every 2nd day (prior to Covid Cathay Pacific was providing 3 flights most days),
Singapore airlines is down to 1 flight per day,
and it's a similar story with other airlines.

Given that mail is typically carried in the hold of regular passenger services, and my personal experience is that mail from Australia to Canada is taking 2 to 3 weeks longer to arrive than it was pre Covid, I'm estimating that daily aircraft arrivals are down about 70%.
A 70% reduction in daily flights would have a significant impact on air freight volumes.

I am not in the least surprised by those figures, Ian, as they relate to passengers.

At present, the only green zone is New Zealand, but New Zealand currently classifies Australia as a red zone. People who have been in NZ for more than 14 days can travel to Australia without quarantine.

All the rest of the world is classified as a red zone. Essentially the rules are:

• Generally, foreigners cannot enter Australia,
• Returning citizens and permanent residents must do 14 days quarantine in a hotel,
• Available quarantine places are very limited - 2,000 per week in Sydney, 1,000-1,200 per week in other mainland capitals plus NT.
• Passenger numbers are restricted to 50 per aircraft - for safe ground processing reasons,
• There is a massive list of expatriates trying to get home.

Passenger arrivals are greatly reduced.

But cargo is still flying. Those planes carrying 50 passengers are not flying empty; they fill them up with cargo and the the airline algorithm auctions off those 50 seats for frequently extortionate prices.

For illustration, the following flights are scheduled to land in Melbourne between 8.00pm and midnight tonight (I am typing just before 8pm).

• Etihad EY460 from Abu Dhabi
• Singapore Airlines SQ217 from Singapore,
• Qatar Cargo QR8356 from Sapporo,
• Emirates EK408 from Dubai,
• Sri Lankan Airlines UL406 from Colombo,
• Japan Airlines JL773 from Tokyo,
• Cathay Pacific CX163 from Hong Kong,

Collectively, those 7 flights might be able carry over 2,000 passengers but Melbourne will allow only 1,200 passengers per week - an average of 171 passengers per day, and I have picked only the immediate 4 hour slot. The airlines are not flying those planes empty; they a loaded with cargo. And only one flight is a nominal cargo flight.


EDIT: Managed to find a listing of international flights into Sydney yesterday (10-8-21). Thirteen flights with potential capacity around 4,000 passengers, but Sydney quarantine restricting arrivals to 2,000 passengers a week (average 285 per day) - less than 10% passenger load! Four flights from USA, 3 from Sinnngapore, 2 from Middle East. There must be carrying a lot of cargo to justify their fuel expenditure!

Flights.jpg

My last copy of FFW was No. 288 my subscription is valid. I am claiming a non delivery on the editions since.

Regards
Keith

My last copy of FFW was No. 288 my subscription is valid. I am claiming a non delivery on the editions since.

Regards
Keith

On overseas stuff, my little tchotchkes from China are slightly delayed. Nothing like a year ago though, but not too bad. From the tracking used for everything I can see customs sits on EVERYTHING for about a month.

OS Amazon comes straight through though.... Hmmm....

I'd bet the people who live under the Sydney flight paths think it's nirvana 😜🙂🙂🙂

I have received two replies from Fine Wood Working Magazine Customer Service which included:

Fine Wood Working Magazine Customer Service

... Please allow until September 1, 2021 for delivery of your September/October 2021 issue.

... We are correcting our records and extending your subscription to
compensate for any inconvenience and missing issue caused.
...

No mention of replacing the other two missing issues, and I no longer subscribe to the electronic version. Another email sent.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

No mention of replacing the other two missing issues, and I no longer subscribe to the electronic version. Another email sent.

And that is the problem, they don't give a rats.... It's all about $

Regards,
Ross

Got reply saying back issues being sent, and asking me to verify snailmail address.

We'll see.