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| Bacal & Associates - Meeting your learning needs for almost two decades |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)We understand you may want to know more about this site, our products and our company. Here we have information about ordering, products, etc. Thank you for your interest. The Company - Bacal and Associates How long have you been in business? Bacal and Associated was founded in 1992, and has been operating continuously since then. What does Bacal & Associates do? We are a company that specializes in creating learning, whether it's through publishing material (like the resources on this site), or consulting to businesses, designing and delivering seminars, or through authoring books published through major publishers (notably McGraw-Hill). What clients have you worked with and who buys your material? While this is a good question, the number of customers that have used our material or our services is very large. In part, due to CEO Robert Bacal's contacts, many clients have been governments in North America, but we've worked for school boards, private companies, and NGO's and non-profits. Our learning resources are used all over the world in all sectors, running from the United Nations to individuals wanting to self-develop their own skills. Do you have other websites and how can I find them? Yes. Actually the busylearners.com site whic is where you are was started in 2008, but we've developed resource based sites as early as 1998. Click here if you want a list of our sites for learning, and what they offer. How can I find out more about the company? Our flagship site is The Bacal & Associates Workplace Supersite. You can visit that but sometime in 2009 we will be unveiling our brand new corporate site which will be available at bacalassociates.com. When the new site is finished you'll be able to find extensive information about our services, clients and so on. What is a helpcard? A helpcard is an 8.5 x 11 double sided card (although some subjects may have more than one page) devoted to a single topic. It is meant to be used by busy people who need to know how to do something or learn about a topic but who prefer to do so without purchasing a long book. Who writes the helpcards? Most of the helpcards are authored by Robert Bacal, and some are based on his best selling McGraw-Hill or Idiot's Guide books. Some are written or co-written by experts in the field specifically solicited by Bacal and Associates. Why aren't helpcards cheaper? It's simple. It's really difficult to create them. Any writer will know that it's much easier to write something long than to capture the essence of something in a very limited space. Some of our helpcards take months to develop. One of them has been "in design" for over a year. Trust me. They are bargains. How did the idea of helpcards come about? From a client, actually. We were doing a seminar on Defusing Hostile Customers and the client wanted a take-away. We created it with the client, and the attendees loved that they could have something short and to the point they could keep at their desks for reference. Many of our ideas come directly from customer requests. Can I print out the helpcards? Yes, please do. We recommend that you print in color, if you have that ability, either color laser or inkjet works fine. However, we've used colors and a design that will print out fine on a black and white printer. Do you offer the helpcards via regular post? Yes. In fact our printed versions are done on high-grade cardstock and laminated for durability. At the moment, if you want printed versions mailed to you via regular post, you need to order using a different website and system (see the section on ordering, below). Do you offer other products besides helpcards? Yes. We publish books of various lengths ranging up to 200+ pages for our Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook. We anticipate several new titles in 2009. We also may feature material of merit we believe may be useful to visitors. We also plan on automating our article reprint service so our customers can arrange to reprint our articles (not our products). I see a "totally free" section listed in your main menu up top. What's that all about? That's something we're quite proud of. We partner with a company that provides free whitepapers, subscriptions, webinars and other goodies to support learning. They want qualified readers, so they make their material available free of charge. We've used the service so we feel confident it's all on the level, so to speak. Take a look. You'll probably find something of interest. Is your order system secure? Yes. In fact we decided to go to the experts and have them process your orders. The system is so secure, not even we can access your payment information, or credit card information. The companies we use have been in business for a a decade and have impeccable credentials. What forms of payment do you accept? Forms of payment can change over time, but at present we accept all major credit cards. You may find we accept paypal and purchase orders. In any event you will see your options when you place your order. I don't want to give my credit card information online. What can I do? We have fax, telephone and purchase order availability for ordering, but they may or may not be enabled for a specific product. Please note that alternative ways to order can't be used to get information about the products. To place a fax order please click here and follow the instructions. If you would like to order by phone please click here, and follow the instructions. What's your return policy? While we would love to provide a money-back guarantee we are faced with the same problem any developer of digital material faces, the spectre of copying and then returning items. Our official policy is that we cannot process refunds for digital downloadable products, and that is consistent with the same policies used by video, dvd, cd and software vendors. However, we have an unofficial policy that we apply on a case by case basis. So if there is a problem (for example, you order one thing and meant to order another) get in touch. Do you offer bulk discounts? Yes. In fact if you order multiple copies of the same product or even different products discounts will be automatically applied. They can be as high as 75%. We do this so you can economically buy many copies to use in your organization. In essence you purchase a licence to reproduce "x" copies, download a single copy and make as many copies as you've purchased. What formats do your products use? All our products use Adobe Acrobat (PDF). After carefully weighing various options we believe that's the best format for our customers, since the reader is free, and is available on virtually every major platform (windows, Mac's, Linux). Why should I trust you? There is so much junk out there. It's true that everyone and his dog is trying to sell digital products or "e-books" that aren't worth the electrons they use. The harsh truth is that not everyone can write, or has the expertise to do anything but regurgitate material they steal elsewhere. Our products aren't like that. First, CEO and author, Robert Bacal has established his credentials in the traditional publishing marketplace with McGraw-Hill and the Idiot's Guide series). He has over 30 years experience helping people learn, at all levels including teaching at university and college levels, has 20 years experience consulting, and 16 years experience running the company. We could throw in the academic degrees, too. There are simply few people producing this kind of learning material who come close to having the credentials and track record. Sales of close to 500,000 books worldwide, in a number of languages speaks loudly. We can't guarantee all our products are going to seem like rocket science or brain surgery, but we can tell you that you will find original material presented in concise forms. Can I preview before purchase? Actually, yes. For most of our products we've created free previews (although with parts concealed). However, at the time of this writing we haven't integrated access to free previews into THIS site. If you want to access the free previews, you need to go to our Supersite at work911.com/products Can I make multiple copies and share them with others? No, not unless you've paid for them. If you order five copies, you can make five printouts, or distribute five copies total to five people. If you don't pay for them, it's theft, and it also means you reduce the liklihood we will produce more material on other topics. We don't expect riches from this, but please don't take food from our mouths. Can you walk me through the ordering process? We use two different companies with somewhat different procedures, but in general the process follows the steps below. Note: It's really easier than it sounds. If anything gets messed up, we promise we'll fix it so don't worry.
You will also receive email confirmation with the links, so if you miss them when you order you should be able to get your documents by clicking on the links in the email. I've written a book and I'd like you to sell it. What do I do? We will consider your book or learning product but it must a) be of a quality that it could be published by a serious publisher, and b) fit a niche for which we do not currently provide products. Contact us via email at ceo@work911.com. Please do not send documents to us unsolicited, since all such emails are deleted, usually automatically. I have a purchasing question you haven't answered here. How can I ask you? Please do so via email. We are a small company so please understand we do the best we can to respond quickly, but it can take some time. It is far faster to use email rather than phone us, since we can be virtually impossible to get through to via phone. Sorry, it's just a business necessity. Use ceo@work911.com
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Question and Answer Categories The Company Things you might want to know about Bacal & Associates before purchasing from us. Buy with confidence. Our Products Information about our products, including explanation of what a helpcard is, how they came about, and more. Ordering Details on order security, credit card ordering, alternatives, formats, how to, refund and return policy, product previews, and most details about how to get our products. Miscellaneous Whatever doesn't fit anywhere else - information for authors, etc. |
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