General Instructions for How to Prepare Returns

	Create a Return Credit Memo Online
	General Instructions for How to Prepare Returns
	Print a Blank Return Form

All unsold magazines can be returned for full credit. A returns form must accompany your returns. You can use the blank returns form that we send to you with each shipment. If it is more convenient, you can use your own returns form provided that all the relevant information appears on it and in a usable and readable format. Should you opt to use your return form then we suggest that you send back to us our blank forms so that we can reuse them for other customers. Make sure you indicate your store name, account#, and the date on the returns form. Keep a copy of the return form for your own records.

WHEN TO SEND BACK RETURNS:

Returns should be sent to us as frequently as possible before expired issues age any further. Customers with larger orders should send returns back every one or two weeks, depending on the volume involved. Smaller customers can send returns back once or twice a month or as is appropriate. If you neglect to send back returns with regularity, it can cause your balance to inflate well beyond what it otherwise would be, and this may cause us to suspend service until the overdue portion of the balance is cleared up. You should review the listing of magazines that appear on your shipment invoice as a guide for which magazines to pull from your shelves. It is best to keep a magazine on-sale until you receive a newer issue so that it gets the full benefit of its potential shelf life. The exception is for magazines that have gone out of business, suspended publication, or are special one-shot editions. In this case you need to pull unsold copies from display without a newer issue becoming available, although it is not always immediately clear when to do so. To solve this problem we periodically issue recall notices that identify the inactive titles so that you will know what titles to return. In addition you can refer to our price labels that indicate the on-sale date of a magazine and the frequency it is generally published, which will enable you to determine the likely off-sale date. If the calendar date is much later than the estimated off-sale date for a magazine and you believe it is old or no longer salable, then you can at your discretion return it to us. You can also call us to find out whether a title is inactive or when a newer issue is expected. Some special edition clearly indicate on the front cover the precise date that the magazine expires.

Bear in mind that some of our magazines are specialized titles produced by smaller or foreign publishers that do not conform to all the conventions of the large U.S. based mass-market publishers. As a consequence some of them do not date their magazines with issue designations that are well in advance of the actual sales period, as is commonly practiced by others, so that the magazines appear to be outdated. This does not mean that we are shipping you old issues or that we are shipping you new issues late. Nor does it mean that you should return the magazines to us as you may forfeit the potential sales if you do so. We ship out magazines soon after we receive them, according to the regular shipping cycle, and they remain current until replaced by another issue. We advise publishers to adopt the standards of the marketplace but we cannot guarantee that they will all follow through with our recommendations. It is worth noting that the content of more specialized magazines tend not to become outdated as quickly as is the case for popular trendy consumer magazines, so that even "old" issues often remain salable long after they have expired.

WHAT TO RETURN: To receive credit for unsold copies just send back the front cover. We need the full front cover, as opposed to just the masthead portion from the top of the cover. This is because we need the barcode, which is usually at the bottom, in order to scan the returns. In some cases the barcode is represented on the back cover in which case you should send back to us both the front and back covers. If a magazine is plastic wrapped and the barcode label or our price sticker is affixed to the plastic, then send it back to us along with the front cover. In general we need three things: The front cover which allows us to identify the magazine name, the cover price, and the issue; the barcode which allows us to scan the return; and our price sticker which allows us to identify the magazine as belonging to us.

HOW TO ORGANIZE THE RETURNS:

If you have a SMALL VOLUME of returns, sort them by title, and organize them ALPHABETICALLY. Then enter the publication name, quantity, cover price and extension amount of each title in the appropriate columns on the returns form in alphabetical order. If different issues of a single title have different prices, then separate them and enter the return data on separate rows.

If you have a LARGE VOLUME of returns it is easier to itemize them by PRICE CATEGORY rather than by title, since this will significantly reduce the number of entries on the returns form and simplify the computation. Enter the total quantity for a particular cover price, irrespective of title, in the quantity field and multiply by the price to arrive at the extension amount. If you use this method then you should itemize your entries in numerically ascending price order so a given price can be readily located on the return form

Whether you itemize your returns in alphabetical or price order you should arrange the returns in your package IN THE SAME ORDER as they appear on the return form. This way they can easily be checked-in by us. You can use rubber bands or paper clips to group together multiple copies of a given price category, title or first letter. However do not staple together magazines since removing the staples will create extra work for us.

COVER PRICE: Enter the price as the cover price, not the wholesale price. This saves the work of individually calculating the wholesale price of each title. It is simpler to apply the discount to the total retail value of the returns to arrive at the net wholesale value at the end of the calculation. Be careful not to confuse a Canadian, British, Australian, or other foreign cover price with the U.S. dollar cover price since they often appear next to each other.

COMPUTATION: After calculating the individual extension amounts by multiplying the quantity and price, enter the sum of the extension amounts in the Net Retail box. Finally, multiply the net retail value by one minus the discount, expressed as a decimal, to arrive at the net wholesale value which you should enter in the Credit Due box. For example, for a 30% discount, multiply the retail value by .70 since 1 - .30 = .70. We strongly urge you to DOUBLE-CHECK all of your work, including the counts and your math, since it is very easy to make mistakes.

PRICE LABELS: We place distinctive peach colored price labels on our magazines to help you identify which copies belong to us. This insures that you will return to us only copies that we shipped to you, as opposed to product derived from other distributors. Likewise it also prevents you from returning our magazines to other distributors. When preparing our returns make a point of looking through all the copies to verify that they have our labels on them.

In addition to indicating the cover price, our labels usually indicate the on-sale date and frequency of issuance of the magazine. With these two pieces of information you can predict the theoretical off-sale date by tacking on the duration of an issue to the date it went on sale, and this way also know when the next issue is likely to appear, assuming the publisher adheres to a regular schedule. For example, if you received the Spring issue of a quarterly magazine with on-sale date of March 1, then the off-sale date will probably be three months later or around June 1.

In the upper left hand corner of each label you will see a letter "U" which stands for Ubiquity. To the right of the "U" you will see a single or double-digit number followed by the letter "x" which represents the frequency of the magazine. For example, "4x" means the magazine is published four times a year, or on a quarterly basis, and "52x" means the magazine is published fifty two times a year, or an a weekly basis. Sometimes the frequency may not be indicated either because we do not know what it is or the magazine is issued irregularly. In the upper right hand corner of each label you will see a four-digit umber that represents the on-sale date of the magazine. For example, "0403" is the symbol for April 3.

MISSING LABELS: If for any reason some of our magazines are missing price labels and you are sure that they belong to us, then indicate that this is the case either by writing or placing a note directly on these specific copies or else separately on your returns form. Should you observe copies missing our labels while checking in a shipment of new magazines, we suggest that you write the letters "UBQ" for Ubiquity in the upper left or right hand corner of each copy so that you will know later on that they belong to us when preparing your returns. If we inappropriately reject some returns claiming that they are missing our sticker, and you know that the returns do indeed belong to us, then write up another return form accompanied by a letter explaining why you believe you are entitled to credit.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PACKAGING YOUR RETURNS: Package your returns securely! Use sturdy envelopes or boxes and reinforce them with strong tape, especially along the edges where breakage most often occurs. Yellow manila type envelopes made of paper are particularly vulnerable to tears so if you have more than light quantity of returns it is advisable to instead use padded envelops or envelopes made out of a stronger material than paper such as Tyvek. We are not responsible for returns lost in transit so we recommend that you use carriers such as United Parcel Service or Fedex that have the ability to trace shipments. This way you can determine if we received your return, if it was mis-delivered elsewhere, or if it is missing. In addition these carriers automatically provide a basic level of insurance, usually $100.00, at no extra charge. We suggest that you pay a small extra fee to insure your returns for their total value particularly if your returns are of high value or if you use the U.S. Post Office which is less reliable.