For rare book collectors, a 1926 first edition of Ernest Hemingways “The Sun Also Rises” commands around $2,500. However, when you have an edition that, on page 181, line 26, contains the word stopped printed with three Ps, then youll be $60,000 richer. This is not uncommon: misprints often skyrocket a rare books value.
For example, in 1631, some 1,000 copies of the King James Bible suggested the seventh of the ten commandments was Thou shalt commit adultery,” putting its value at around $100,000. A first edition of Mark Twains “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which saw the mix-up of the word saw” and was , could garner you $18,600.
In the business world, however, content errors can cause irreparable damage to a company. This was further explained by Gavin Drake, vice president of marketing at Quark Enterprise Solutions, who claimed such types of errors happen regularly. The reason is simple: a lack of rigour and control in the content lifecycle driven by inefficient and outdated processes. So whats the answer
Apparently the answer is to keep a vigilant look-out and not do the silly mistakes that cost these six companies quite a lot of money.
(1) NASA
In 1962 NASA’s first interplanetary probe Mariner 1, which was intended to explore Venus, never left the hemisphere and the reason why is far less complex than expected. This cost NASA $80m.
After a decade of meticulous planning, construction and calculation, a single hyphen brought the craft to its untimely demise less than two minutes after takeoff. The omission of the hyphen, part of a code that set trajectory speed, led to an explosion. Arthur C. Clarke, author of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” called it the most expensive hyphen in history.
Richard Morrison, a NASA official, said: [The hyphen] gives a cue for the spacecraft to ignore the data the computer feeds it until radar contact is once again restored. When that hyphen is left out, false information is fed into the spacecraft control systems. In this case, the computer fed the rocket in hard left, nose down and the vehicle obeyed and crashed.
It seems even the greatest of companies sometimes get it wrong.
Eight of the most expensive mistakes in business history
(2) Penguin Australia
Ever heard of “The Pasta Bible”” Well a one-word slip in the recipe book ensured the publisher lost $20,000 as it had to recall thousands of copies from stores across the country due to international outrage. “It can’t be that bad, surely,” you say. It can when your tagliatelle recipe calls for freshly ground black people .
Bob Sessions, the books publisher, acknowledged that it was a silly mistake,” that could have been avoided with more meticulous proofreading. However, he was “mortified that this has become an issue of any kind”, questioning “why anyone would be offended”.
Sessions defended proofreaders for letting through a misprint that he suggested came from a spell-check program, explaining that since almost every recipe in the book calls for black pepper on each page it was an error he considered “quite forgivable”. That, and he called those who complained about the error “small minded”.
Probably the best piece of advice for someone looking to address an error they’ve made is to stay clear from vocalising any negativity they feel towards their target audience it’s sure to have lost the company not only money in recalling the books, but money that could have been raked in later from those loyal to the Penguin brand.
Read on to find out why Companies House and The Yellow Pages were sued.
By Shan Schutte</a ></em ></p >
(3 + 4) The Yellow Pages and Companies House
One of the biggest risks of not double-checking work is that you could risk being sued a lesson that both The Yellow Pages and Companies House found out the hard way.
A simple oversight in the 1980s ended upcosting The Yellow Pages big-time. Banner Travel Services, a small agency specialising in exotic vacations,” decided to run an advert in the phonebook for $230 per month. Note again that the company dealt with exotic vacations something the company got very, very wrong.
The Yellow Pages ended up advertising Banners forte in erotic vacations instead, and the travel agency wasnt, as one could imagine, happy. In fact, it sued, and subsequently won $10m, nearly putting The Yellow Pages out of business. Of course, Banner was also refunded its $230.
Similarly, in 2009, Companies House claimed that Taylor & Sons a 124 year old company had closed shop. This sent the company into chaos. It turned out that Companies House was meant to have recorded the closure of Taylor & Son and due to its mistakeTaylor & Sons was forced to liquidate and leave 250 employees jobless.
Companies House was sued for 8.8m.
Learning from the Hawke and Co customer feedback mistake
(5)Mizuho Securities
December 2005 saw Japans Mizuho Securities introduce a new member to its portfolio of offerings, a recruitment company called J-Com. Ithad just completed an IPO on the market for smaller companies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) and was set to bepriced at 610,000 yen per share.
That’s not what ended up happening. One of Mizuho Securities traders instead sold 610,000 shares at one yen apiece andthe TSE refused to reverse the error. Mizuho Securities lost $340m because of it.
Later on, Mizuho claimed to have tried to withdraw the order four times, and although the number of shares in the order was more than 40 times the actual number of J-Com’s outstanding shares, the TSE processed the trade anyway. The TSE also admitted that its dealing system was unable to cancel sell orders while taking buy orders.
Nonetheless, it left relations between Mizuho, J-Com and the TSE in tatters.
(6) Metropolitan Transportation Authority
In 2013, New York Citys Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) printed 80,000 subway posters with the wrong fare information. The committees intention was to alert riders of a fare increase from $4.50 to $5.
Instead, it ended up printing the new fee as, once again, $4.50. This lone misprint ended up costing the MTA nearly $250,000 in printing fees and even more in employee hours spent tracking down the distributed posters.
Lets say that it was immediately commented on by others.
For example,PaulFlores, anMTAstation agent and union leader was quoted by the New York Post as having said: They werent coming out with a newmapbecause they were changing themap. They were coming out with a newmapbecause they were changing the price. That was the sole purpose. And they couldnt even get that right.
Also, whilst it is true that it has never been easier to become an entrepreneur, there are lots of pitfalls and hurdles to overcome on this journey. Here are the seven biggest mistakes aspiring entrepreneurs make that derails their progress to success!
