I was quite shocked at this, for a couple of reasons. First was that with well more than 20 years experience of shipping prints within Japan, I have never - and that is no exaggeration - seen anything like this. The post office here is an astonishingly efficient organization (at least as far as the movement of goods goes; I have nothing to say about their financial structure ...) Damage like this - to a simple envelope - is simply unheard of.

So I initially thought that perhaps this was something to do with the customer's children, or some other such cause, but in any case, I made no complaint. I apologized for the problem, and sent off another package immediately. And for this one, to guarantee that there was absolutely no chance of creasing, I sandwiched the senshafuda pack in between firm mat boards before slipping it into the envelope.

He wrote again the next day. He had received the second shipment ...

... also damaged, in exactly the same way. Clearly, something was going on here.

It didn't take me long to figure out. The 'roll-up' package is actually like a tube - flattened, but still a tube. And like any tube, it has absolutely no flexibility. The very stiffness that I had worked hard to create turns out to be the Achilles Heel, and the slightest stress or flex on the envelope causes the roll to instantly buckle in the middle, completely destroying it.

It gets better. :-(

As soon as I realized what had happened, I fired off an email to all the other purchasers, including those overseas. I let them know what I had discovered, and told them that they should expect a problem when they opened the envelope, of course adding that I would make this right as soon as I could.

The emails then started to roll in. Surprisingly, some of the people reported no damage at all. Others described the folding problem that I had seen in the first example. But a couple of people let me know about something else ... a major problem with toner transfer:

Now this one also, I simply could not believe. Ever since I first started using a laser printer for the print packaging some years ago, I have been concerned about the quality of the printing, and have frequently tested the output for such things as smearing or transfer. I have taken sample sheets and folded, pressed, squeezed, banged, and pressed again, and have never been able to make any of them transfer.

But that photo shows that it is indeed happening, and other people reported the same thing.

I have absolutely no idea what is causing this. A close look at that photo seems to show that the transfer is in a kind of 'stripe' pattern, with a blank spot running up the length of the sheet. This would seem to indicate that the transfer is being caused by a roller - presumably in some kind of sorting machine in the post office. I have tried to roll something over a sample package - with a very strong force - but still cannot reproduce this problem here, no matter how much I abuse the printed sheets.

In any case, it is clear that I cannot continue to post the Senshafuda packages in envelopes; from now on they will have to be packed inside inflexible (and unrollable) cardboard mailers. I have raised the postage price (for future orders) from $1.50 to $3.50 to help recoup the costs of doing this.

As for the damaged packages in this first batch, I will of course replace them. As soon as the blocks get back from Tetsui-san, I will print up a number of the front labels, paste them onto fresh packages, and send them out to everybody whose shipment was affected by either the creasing or the toner transfer.

Tomorrow: Ain't we got fun ... Part 2! :-(