As part of the TypePad service, it provides you stats on who has visited your blog and how they got there. Often, hits come via Google searches for reprographic or construction terms and TypePad shows you what people have looked for. (I actually get an unprecedented number of hits from people looking at the photo that I took of the new bridge over the Hoover Dam).
Today, one of the Google searches that someone did was this, and I quote:
"reprographics places are charging outrageous prices for cd"
This is the first of it's kind that I've ever had, and in case this person comes back looking for the answer, here's what I would say in response to your query.
I still hold the belief that the media does not define the value. If you look at this argument from any other industry's viewpoint, you will see that one should not define how much something should cost by whether or not you could physically do it using supplies you found at Office Depot.
The simplest example I can think of is software developers like Microsoft or Apple. The hard costs for them to burn the latest OS to a CD and package it up for sale is probably $10.00 per package, if that. Do you, as a consumer of their goods, truly believe that you should only pay $10.00 for the value of what they're providing you? If you buy a new bestselling book, is the value of that book somehow limited by the cost per pound of the paper and ink they printed it on? Why are those any different from reprographers charging you a cost to have a perfectly organized, easily accessible format to access drawings?
You should really be complaining about the Architects. Think about it. If they get 4% of a $5 million job ($200,000) as a fee, and produce 100 pages of drawings for you, they are charging you $2,000 per page!!! Larceny!!!
Additionally, you used to pay hundreds of dollars for a set of drawings in paper, and I would venture to say that the true cost of that paper wasn't that much. Why did you feel it was okay to pay hundreds of dollars, for the same information, in paper format? What made it more real for you? Weren't we still organizing and making the information consumable for you? Are you any better served by receiving AutoCAD files straight from the Architect?
I get what it looks like. I get that it looks like we're trying to rob you for something that you could burn right now on your computer. However, I will say that there is a lot more going on to produce that pretty and perfect CD than you realize. Reprographers are not charging that much money because they want to. They do it because they have to.
Jared Willis
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