8-bit Software (c) Duncan Webster 1991 Issue 12 Magazine May 1991 MEMBERS ARTICLES. Well I invited the comments of members and PD libraries alike to comment and bring forth their opinions in respect to my charging article last month. So far no PD libraries have aired their views, but one member has written in with his opinion. As promised, his letter appears below. Anyone else who would like to have their views known ESPECIALLY IF YOU RUN A PD LIBRARY, then please write in. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- PD Charges Comments. User ID:- 8CT I will start with ROBIN PIKE who must be in it for the money as You supply the discs and he charges you 95p copying charge PER SIDE. Therefore it is #1.90 for 1 double sided disc. Postage is also charged on top of the rest. Alan Blundell's BBC PD used to allow you to supply Disc's and Postage and Packaging and he only charged 50p copying fee per disc. Whan I sent off to him I foramated the discs (some ADFS some DFS), labeled them all with what format they were and what I required on each disc and sent return postage and sent it all in a Jiffy bag. (You can normally reuse Jiffy Bags so that was the return packing.) I guess some people wern't doing this so now you have to get every thing from him at a cost of:- 50p per disc (I pay less than 30p for mine and am sure he can get them cheaper as he would buy more), 50p postage per disc (this seams rather high as it only cost me 78p to post 17 discs by first class, he would charge #8.50 and packaging does not cost #7.72), and a copying fee of 50p that I will accept is okay. The charge I am realy appauled with is the postage charge I mention above. How can you charge 50p postage per disc when it only costs 22p to send one and as mentioned above 78p to send 17. Alan also runs an EPROM programing service that is grossly over charged as you can get eproms for about #3.00 but he charges a lot more than that. It's a shame that people not formatting discs or not sending return postage are spoiling it for the people who do. I think that what you should do if you're a PD company and someone sends unformatted discs to you is to just send them back with a note, or if they send no postage keep the discs until they send some. It is a shame that it is now costing so much to get software that people have written and donated for free and the programmer doesn't get any the money made from these companies. Cotswold PD is a good one as he only charges #1.00 per disc and this includes disc, postage and copying. J.G.Harston charges #1.00 if you include disc and #2.00 if you want him to supply the disc. These also seam rather high charges. There are a lot that charge the #1.50 per disc fee and I can't quite see how they justify it fully.