I've had my Player's Handbook less than a month. I have opened it about fifty or so times, and the pages are already falling out of the binding. I guess you fooled me. Take the fifty bucks I paid for it and shove it.
Not all PHBs have this problem but it is a well-known fault with some of them. Go back to the store and get a replacement.
If they are going to charge 50 bucks for them they should be smyth sewn. That they didn't do that is ridiculous.
kalil wrote:
This definitely seems to be a problem for some copies, but I tend to treat all of my books (regardless of being a D&D book) with great care, so I may never know if mine is a dud!
I take care of my books as well, but my first book fell apart as well. Contacted customer support and got a new one in about 3 weeks, no questions asked.
Another reason I like PDFs. 
This is a great example of why any customer service job has a ridiculously high turn-over rate: people jumping straight past "this product is defective, how about a replacement since I assume you want me to get my money's worth out of this product so that I consider making other purchases from you in the future?" to assumptions of trickery, intentionally faulty products, and the ridiculously flawed notion that a business that wants your money (which all businesses do) would rather get $50 from you the one time they can trick you into buying something than get you satisfied with their products and spending $50 on a somewhat regular basis as you keep coming back for more.
Thanks for the indepth analysis Aaron, your skepticism and paranoia does not help the industry become better for us.
joeburgos wrote:
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
There's no point in extremism either way - there are plenty of companies who want money but also deliberately put out products they knew were faulty. They simply play a math game of credibility Vs Rate of failure (Vs the number of people who actually return faulty products) that'd make a sociopath proud. Companies min max.
Further it takes time to return something - the company certainly charges you for its time, but not the other way around? It's not generous of a company to replace the book in that regard and they are legally required to by certain consumer laws, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
There's no point in extremism, but there's no point projecting some benevolent father figure onto companies, either.
Noon wrote:
I have two phbs, both are still fine. In fact out of everyone I know only 1 person has a faulty phb, so if it's any indicaiton of failure rate it's probably somewhere around 10%. Just a guess based on what I've observed. That seems like a pretty reasonable rate of failure for a reputable and good printer, no one can be 100% perfect. But go back to the place where you bought it and request a new one, most FLGS and large chain book stores will be happy to help you.
In either case be glad WotC dosen't use the same printers Catalyst does, they'll charge you 60 bucks for a book and it's all but guaranteed to fall apart within days of getting it.
ankiyavon wrote:
Noon wrote:
tehsquirrely wrote:
EviscerVIII wrote:
Is China mixing up the glue and baby formula again?
At one of our local stores, I know of at least two players who PHB has fallen apart. Mine is on the brink of falling apart. Not sure about the others but I'll may take a poll this upcoming week. When two of three PHB at my table are in pieces, and the third is nearly there too, those are REALLY bad odds.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
HoboJustice wrote:
Gunthar wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Can you please cite an RPG publisher that produced books of a similar quality (excepting binding) and charges at a similar cost while using smyth sewn binding.
After all, we can claim WotC cut corners by not using using vellum pages.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
I had a nightmare last night that my PHB fell apart
JohnLynch wrote:
Another issue could be what shift the specific books were produced by. Managers and other senior level employees only like working the standard work hours. This means they really only see most of first shift (which starts before they come in) and the very beginning of second shift (which starts shortly before they leave), and never interact with 3rd shift beyond hiring them. The less supervision and immediate oversight there is the more likely problems are going to slip through, either due to fewer errors being caught or people getting lazy (especially easy to happen when there's no incentive to not be lazy, such as having your boss around or additional personnel who can report such).
Quality control/assurance doesn't catch everything either, as they don't watch every single book through every stage of printing and binding, as that would also be a nightmare and drastically raise costs. QC/QA does make sure proper procedures are done, checks random books that have been made to ensure the lines are making them properly (like making sure there's enough binding glue to hold pages, but not fill up the first half inch of the pages, make sure the pages aren't upside-down, etc), puts problematic product or production lines on hold (which either leads to their supervisor making the ultimate decision if it qualifies as an okay product or just gets scrapped, or stops a line from making even more bad product until the problems are corrected), as well as keeping up on the production paperwork. This is just simply how production lines work, whether it be food, shampoo, medicine, or books (though food, and to a greater extent medicinal, production has additional procedures they have to follow for safety reasons).
All it really takes for something to mess up is for the ink or binding glue to not be mixed right, mechanical problems to crop up, or someone messing up what they're supposed to do. There's also the question of what conditions the bindings designed to work at, and if conditions go outside of that there can be post production failures (such as if the binding isn't designed to be stored below 15°F but the warehouse or shipping truck/container gets colder than that).
This is, at least, what I've learned from my husband who's worked several years as QC/QA in production.
HoboJustice wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
IMO, the fact that this issue keeps coming up is proof that the book(s) were probably printed by the lowest bidder, with inferior techniques, and materials.
The only negative Amazon reviews even mention low quility bindings, lol.
Oh well. I wish I had a 14'x10' tablet (with a micro XDSC card slot) and every D&D book on a high quality PDF.