Reply To: Page numbers and printers spreads

They also have unbeatable prices and good quality work. And right now cost is a huge factor.

That sounds they have a fixed way of processing others' documents. Hard to argue with, indeed. Can you ask them (nicely) why they won't accept PDFs? IDML only has been around for, what, 18 months? And it's not likely to be going “the document format of the future”, Adobe has always reserved that particular phrase for PDFs.

Alternatively, always do the best job you can and let someone else make a mess — so you can point out that you've been warning everyone, like, forever!