The newsletter for Realclassic subscribers only

The astute among you might’ve noticed something a little odd about last month’s magazine. I’m referring to RC239, the March issue… although what you received claimed to be the April / May magazine. There was also a bright red bubble on the cover which suggested you’d be getting two magazines for only £5.50 – when of course the plastic wrapper contained only RC itself, lonesome as a cloud. (Or possibly a pine). Your second magazine didn’t go missing en route, it wasn’t pilfered from the post, and aliens did not abduct it. You were sent one copy of RC, as usual. However, that magazine had the wrong cover on it. What’s all that about?

A couple of times each year, our publisher runs promotions to introduce the unsuspecting public to the delight that is Realclassic. This often involves pairing us with another magazine from the stable, and offering the titles in a bumper fun bundle at supermarkets and such. It’s a great way for us to find new readers – because not everyone encounters us on the internet or at events. Indeed, a fair few of you reading now may well have enjoyed your initial copy of RC thanks to one of these promotions. Hurrah, etc.

Wouldn’t it be simpler, you may ask, to just sell RC through newsagents like all those other (boringly conventional, I might suggest) monthly magazines? Yes, it would be simpler… but then RC would also be staggeringly more expensive. Our current subscription rate means that an issue of the magazine costs you a fraction over £3. If you bought an individual copy at the shops then it would cost more like £7.50. Ouch. That’s why we started RC as a subscription title in the first place.

Back to the promotion. The issue which gets bagged up with another title needs to have a slightly different cover, which explains to the supermarket shopper what-the-heck they’re looking at. So the promoted issue had a blob on it describing the contents and the price. Subscriber copies should get an entirely different cover without that blob – and this was where the printer made one of those errors which only comes to light after thousands of magazines have been handed over to the Royal Mail for delivery…

So your copy had the wrong cover on it, with the wrong date, and the wrong price. Apologies all round for the confusion. You weren’t sent two magazines – but then, you paid considerably less than £5.50! Normal service has, we hope, been resumed this month. Although I’m sure that we’ll creatively introduce an entirely original error into the production process in future, just to keep us all on our toes.

This little bump in the road raised another couple of interesting questions, which I thought it might be useful to consider. First off, if you ever have any queries about delivery, subscriptions, missing magazines or anything admin related, you need to contact the admin office. That’s 01507 529529 or subscriptions@realclassic.net

Frank and I don’t have access to any of the subscriber data or postal services and such, so we can’t resolve any of these queries. All we can do is forward them to the admin office – which is impossible to do if you leave a voicemail on an old phone number, message us on Facebook or post a query in the RC group. Those enquiries are very likely to go astray – we may not even get them! If you haven’t had a response to an enquiry, please contact the admin team in Horncastle. The number is 01507 529529 and it’s on the subs page and Frank’s intro page in every issue.

The next questions to arise refer to this very page, our bonus bit for subscribers only (lesser mortals who buy the supermarket bundles definitely don’t get a Members’ Enc). Firstly, an aggrieved digital subscriber asked once again why people who subscribe to the electronic version of the magazine weren’t getting an electronic version of Members’ Enc. Great question, which we’ve been asking for centuries, and finally it appears that this has been resolved. I hope. Any queries on that subject go to Digital Darren: dhendley@mortons.co.uk

Next question. On physical copies, why are two separate sheets of paper used for the newsletter and the address label? Why not print Members’ Enclosure on the back of the address label, and save a whole sheet of paper? Great question, that. Back in the mists of time, when Frank and I packed every copy of RC by hand on the kitchen table, our laser printer churned away for a day and a half doing exactly that, and there was double-sided delight and no wastage and we all earned our place in environmental heaven.

But since things switched to being handled by professional printers and packers, the labels and newsletter go through separate processes at different sites. They aren’t united until the packing stage for reasons which I don’t quite understand. We have asked before whether the two could be reunited (because surely it’s cheaper to use one piece of paper instead of two?) but haven’t made any headway. We’ll ask the question again. Maybe – like the digital Members’ Enc for digital subscribers – the time is right to resolve this. You will be able to tell if we’re successful…

And finally, apologies for standing you up at the Bristol Show. We were really looking forward to rolling along with the RC Roadshow, meeting many of you, sharing Jaffa Cakes and admiring the old bikes – but actual life intervened and we were needed elsewhere. We’ll try again later in the year – maybe at the next Bideford Classic Bike Show, which will be in early September. Watch this space!