Dispatch is the Shiz!

[taxidave]

Hi cmrmurray,The optional fee for Dispatch can rub members the wrong way, and we certainly can see why some members would be discouraged by this. I think it would be best if I started out by detailing how Dispatch came about, and why we have it set up as an optional upgrade to your membership.The difference between the TAXI Industry Listings and Dispatch listings is deadline -- the Industry's deadline. When a company needs material quickly - say, in a few days - seeing that our TAXI listings come out every 2 weeks, the only way to notify our members of this opportunity is via Dispatch. These are extra listings -- listings that are not available in the TAXI listings due to time restrictions. We run a normal TAXI listing 3-8 weeks, depending on the needs of the company. Add the time it takes to screen/critique the submissions, and get the music to that company, and for some cases it could be 1-3 months from the time that company asks for music and the time they receive it from us. With Dispatch, we can turn around a listing and send forwards to a company in 24 hours if we had to. That's the difference.Keep in mind that the Music Industry doesn't play by our rules/deadlines - we have to play by theirs. Before we had the Dispatch service, we'd get tons of calls throughout the week from companies in emergency situations looking for music quickly. But we had no way - no vehicle - to serve their needs. So we'd have to rush around the office, trying to find music that we could send that music supervisor or editor. After receiving enough of those types of requests, we came up with the idea of an extra service -- Dispatch.Your TAXI membership is not affected by Dispatch - if Dispatch didn't exist, you'd still receive the same number of new TAXI Listings every 2 weeks. Like I mentioned above, the Dispatch listings are extras - more opportunities for those who wish to take advantage of them. If anything, the Dispatch service has brought even more opportunities to our regular TAXI members as well, as companies now know they can come to us with their emergency needs. Not only does that equal the Dispatch listings, but it also affords us more companies to work with when they don't need material as quickly and we can offer some of their requests in the normal TAXI listings.And, running the Dispatch service actually costs us a ton of money to run every year. It's a different department with it's own staff. We wish we could offer it for free. But as a business like any other, losing money every year really isn't a top priority. And by offering the service "a la carte" we're not forcing all of our members to join. Instead of increasing our normal membership fee of $299.95 a year [by the way, we haven't increased that fee since we started the company over 17 years ago, when we only offered 20 listings every 2 weeks instead of today's 100], we felt it would be much more fair to offer Dispatch as simply another option to our members. Those who wanted the extra listings could sign up for the upgraded service and those that didn't want to weren't forced to.I hope that helps explain why we have Dispatch, and why we provide it as an optional service. But feel free to call or e-mail me with any questions you might have. Warm Regards,David Laidlaw (aka Dispatch Dave)Manager, Dispatch818-222-2464dispatch@taxi.com