Agree with @Just-B. In 21 years of doing this, I’ve never heard of “page growth” either.
Also, it’s better to have the same printer always printing the issues for the same magazine. They get to know it better and they likely will give you a better deal if you give them ongoing work rather than here and there. And if you have advertisers, the printer can keep an eye out for proper color in the ads from issue to issue.
Inconsistencies are bound to crop up if you use different printers for different issues.
The place I work has to put jobs like this out for bid. Unfortunately, the lowest bidder who meets the specs is awarded the bid. They won the bid for the latest issue. The page growth was just as bad and in some cases the pages weren’t in order. We put a lot of effort into the magazine. I’d like to have them disqualified from bidding. Unfortunately, they have to do something criminal for that to happen.
I understand what you mean about having a consistent printer though. I do another twice monthly magazine from home and have had the same printer for over 10 years. Always on time, always accommodating. They even send me a Christmas present. I wish I could have that with the other magazine.
Bit late to the party… in over 20 years in printing I have never heard of such a thing, and I have worked for some of the biggest litho/digital printing companies. Sounds like a poor excuse.
Regardless, you didn’t order that - so you don’t pay for that! It needs to be redone and sent in correctly.
I’m another guy that never had that issue (on that magnitude)
There can be smaller issues with humidity, for example, if you print some inks one day, and add an additional pass to add an extra ink another day, yes, it can be a bit out of registry.
What I have encountered (which clearly is not this case) Is the shrinking of the covers (not the growth of the interior pages) but only when the covers have some poor quality plasticized finish.
Anyhow, let´s assume the issue of paper being dehydrated is a real one because it is a new process to speed up the drying of some cool ecological ink… They should tell that the magazine has potentially this problem and they should wait for some days before trimming. Then you can make an informed decision if you can wait or not.