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Wayland appears to have done away with giving the customer real information about what is in stock and what is not. For a brief time, they had information about whether or not a given product was in stock.

I've worked with inventory management systems and know how easily things go wrong and numbers get out of whack. So I get the challenges involved.

The problem is that once you have a delayed order or two, you learn that you only ever want to order what is in stock. So now without any confirmation that Wayland actually has the product, how can I place an order with any confidence?

It's entirely possible that 99%+ orders ship within 9 business days, but once you are one of the 1% and have a delayed order you totally and completely lose confidence that "✔ Available (Typically ships in 3-9 working days)" means anything at all.

So how do other online stores list their in stock products?

War Store:
Regular Stock, Usually Ships in 1 Business Day.
Out of Stock, watch the site for new availability

Miniature Market:
Quantity In Stock: X

Troll Trader:
New, X in Stock

Triple Helix:
No stock information whatsoever :(

Dark Sphere:
Regularly Stocked (1-5 days)
Ordered in (2-7 days)

Seeing other companies have specific numbers or at least honestly telling you when they have to order it in makes me cringe when I read "✔ Available (Typically ships in 3-9 working days)". It's become a meaningless statement that gives me no information about whether or not Wayland actually has the product.

Literally, It's not meaningless.

Literally literally seems to have no longer have a meaning to some.

Why do you not have the same issue with the Warstore? They either usually ship in 1 day or don't have it (this was a better example to use literally with btw).

I think the internet is broken....that or some people will moan about anything. It's literally one thing or the other.






(Guess what one word I think is over used all the time and has become somewhat of a bugbear )

I'm sorry your pedantry over one word got in the way of your engaging with my post. I'll edit it out and you can try again.

Getting so worked up about me using a word in the way you didn't like also seemed to have caused you to miss the key distinction for The War Store. They have one status that tells me it is in stock and will ship the next business day and another that tells me it won't.

The War Store consistently delivers and Wayland doesn't. The War Store can promise next day shipping and actually ship the next day. This is a perfect illustration of the difference. Wayland wants to imply that they have it in stock to induce me to order and then hope they get it in before I wonder why it hasn't shipped yet. The War Store has got their inventory and shipping figured out to the point that they can confidently say which items are actually on site and will ship the next day.

Same with Troll Trader and Miniature Market, Discount Games Store and Discount Games Inc and many others.

These threads about Wayland pop up here for a reason. People aren't getting their orders in the time frame they were told they would and feel like they were deceived about the stock status of the order.

.

In my experience, Wayland Games has been garbage for years. Since I found Dark Sphere I've never had cause to go back to them. When DS stopped mailing briefly (they started again now) I found Triple Helix. Both beat Wayland in every meaningful way

 Davylove21 wrote:
Both beat Wayland in every meaningful way

Meaningful according to your specific metrics. I've just looked at both and Triple Helix have a pitifully small range that barely covers anything I'd want to buy (literally just paints and maybe some Perry stuff), and whilst Dark Sphere is better there are still a few gaps where I'd have to go and order from Wayland/Troll Trader anyway, so might as well just do that.

I've just had a notification that my Warmachine Cyriss tokens have been despatched, I ordered them last weekend, well within the 9 working day day turn around.

I think people are expecting too much, I mean, Wayland offer far larger range of products than quite a lot of other companies out there. They seem to be a hell of a lot bigger than Dark Sphere, so of course you're going to get a more personal touch from a store that doesn't handle anywhere near the amount of orders.

For Wayland to hold 'x amount' of stock for each individual item is insane, that's so much "dead money" just sitting on shelves, it isn't a good way to run a business.

I'm only going off my own experience of working in a store that ran online sales, I set it all up and yeh, buying loads of stock in would be ideal if companies like GW didn't want their invoice within 30 days, regardless of how much you've sold.

I've had issues with Wayland before but they're on the products that were most in demand, like the new Tau units and the x-wing minis.

I can see both sides of the story but if I'm getting stuff at a discount, I can't complain too much at any slight delays.

I have used all the major players in the online discount store market and experienced issues from time to time with all of them. The main issue is that we are all a bit spoiled really these days and expect every web vendor to provide an Amazon-like experience without stopping to consider that Amazon are able to provide that service because they have billions sunk into their business and infrastructure.

Wayland remain one of my personal choices for wargaming supplies simply due to the fact that they offer such a wide range of products in one place. I don't necessarily expect and nor does it necessarily follow that ordering stuff online means it will arrive within 1 or 2 working days. It's annoying to have to wait; and I hate it just as much as the next person, but it is a fact of life with any web retailer. The fact that person A ordered something from Dark Sphere and that arrived quickly doesn't mean that Dark Sphere are any better - it could juts have easily been that the particular item was in stock or the order was placed in synchronicity with a restock.

Most people aren't complaining here about shipping times.
They're complaining about the perception that "Available" gives them vs the reality that it might not even ship for two weeks, and you won't know until it either ships or the two weeks is up.

You give me $20. I tell you that the thing you want is available - just wait for it. 5 days later - no communication. 10 days later, I finally tell you it'll be another 10 days before I can even send your thing, regardless of how long it'll actually take to ship. A the initial estimate of 3-9 working days plus shipping has about doubled and you weren't aware until it was far "too late".

Even an email the next day to say "yes, this is in the warehouse" or "we ordered the part, era of blah" or "we must wait to order this part until blah" would go over massively better than the status quo.

Just my opinion.

 stubacca wrote:
I

I think people are expecting too much, I mean, Wayland offer far larger range of products than quite a lot of other companies out there. .

Quantity does not equal quality.

 sing your life wrote:

 stubacca wrote:
I

I think people are expecting too much, I mean, Wayland offer far larger range of products than quite a lot of other companies out there. .

Quantity does not equal quality.

And also, with such a large amount of products, you'd expect a much more organised stock tracking system to be used.

Problem is with Wayland they claim a lot but don't always deliver what they say - just look at what they've said about Salute "representing" companies on their stand when they are only selling the products and maybe doing a demo - the actual representatives are at other stands at Salute as well!! That's a PR disaster waiting to happen. They should only claim what they can actually do especially for shipping and stock - not make claims to big themselves up when they are only going to disappoint people on th day

 sing your life wrote:

 stubacca wrote:
I

I think people are expecting too much, I mean, Wayland offer far larger range of products than quite a lot of other companies out there. .

Quantity does not equal quality.

I read that in Banes voice:p

 SoulDrinker wrote:
Problem is with Wayland they claim a lot but don't always deliver what they say - just look at what they've said about Salute "representing" companies on their stand when they are only selling the products and maybe doing a demo - the actual representatives are at other stands at Salute as well!! That's a PR disaster waiting to happen. They should only claim what they can actually do especially for shipping and stock - not make claims to big themselves up when they are only going to disappoint people on th day

SoulDrinker, not sure who you've been speaking with (maybe your contacts are a little out of date) but Knight Models, Privateer Press, and Corvus Belli are indeed with us for Salute. You should have saved yourself several phone calls and emails and just asked us.

Although we originally hoped to have some of our friends from Corvus Belli to be with us on the day, travel commitments have meant that the studio guys couldn't be with us this year, so they and their buddies at Bandua have sent in their place some of their gorgeous studio painted minis to showcase as well as some of their fantastic terrain to play on. We also have the game designers sending us some cool goodies to give away on the day. You won't be disappointed!

Knight Models (who we distribute for) are sending one of their main guys to spend the day with us chatting to customers about the coolness that is Batman the Miniatures game as well as discussing all the other fantastic miniatures they offer. We have a range of demos of the game using their stunning miniatures and terrain too, so quite an experience!

Privateer are being represented by Wayland again this year (as we successfully did last year too) with a whole bunch of demos and brilliant offers to get players (new and old) really excited about Hordes and Warmachine.

But you are right we aren't just doing what we claimed... We're doing more!

We also have the guys at Esdevium Games with us running some board game demos and showcasing some great card games and party games too - to really get you buzzing.

We hope to have some surprises on the day from the guys at Spartan Games along with demos of the amazing Firestorm Armada as well as some great offers on getting started (Zenian League all the way of course!)

Finally our friends from Battlefront will be showing off the brilliant new Dust Tactics game at the show and we'll be keen to show off the whole range available at show stopping value (the new starter sets are terrific).

So no false claims (we're far too professional for that) - just lots of exciting hobby activity and a great opportunity to meet up with like-minded gamers. If you're an Infinity, Batman, Spartan, Warmachine, Hordes or boardgames fan, make Wayland's stand the place to meet up and chat - you can't miss us, we're the biggest (and we hope friendliest) stand at the show, just over from our old friends at SMG.

Stuart

I realise we've spoken on this subject before, but if you'd indulge me I think it might be useful in this conversation for me to go over some points if I may.

It is a challenge running a hugely successful business in the wargaming and tabletop hobby world - especially when you get to the size we are at Wayland Games (Europe's largest independent retailer in the industry). This is made more difficult when online behemoths such as Amazon are able to give a distorted set of expectations to customers as to when an order would be delivered. Amazon and their like are massive. Compared to our industry they have a degree of sophistication and logistical support that could swallow all of the major companies involved in wargaming in the blink of an eye. The only company that comes close to them in terms of size is Games Workshop, but then you are comparing a 200 million dollar business with a 70+ billion dollar business. Not even remotely in the same league.

We usually hold the best part of two million dollars of stock at any given moment. That said, with roughly 25,000 product lines available to customers on our store - it is not possible to hold multiple items of each in stock at any given time. We do try and hold some stock of the more popular ranges, but even then restrictions placed on us by key manufacturers on aspects such as the number of times we can order in a week or the amount we are allowed to order, can make maintaining that surplus stock very difficult.

Most of our customers come to our site to purchase, at a reasonable discount, miniatures and games by some of the most well known manufacturers in the industry such as Games Workshop, Battlefront, Privateer Press and others. We are not what most would call a 'deep discounter', nor do we offer large chunks of our inventory at 30% off or more. Though there no doubt is a short term appetite for huge discounts - we don't think they are sustainable either by the industry itself or by any business in particular. Poor financial and stock management has been the downfall of several of the larger retailers in the tabletop gaming market as well as many of the smaller ones.

Providing the most sought after products to a wide customer base is one of the things that Wayland tries really hard to do. When these are supplied by large manufacturers, they have (on the whole) reasonably developed supply infrastructure but are all to often let down by poor stock levels or distant manufacture in Asia which causes certain lines to go out of stock for long periods of time. When this happens there is usually little or no information being passed onto distributors or retailers. Even companies like Games Workshop will on occasion misjudge the popularity of certain products and have difficulty in supplying them (remember the Tau Empire launch issues from last year?)

Delays in supply are not limited to the big boys however.

A key part of our mission is to try and offer as wide a range of products as possible. Many of the products we have on our site aren't available anywhere else, or are difficult to find. We are able to use our position to bring to the community many new ranges that otherwise might not get the recognition they deserve. We have a design and marketing team who work closely with our Operations team to try and show this miniatures in the best light possible - with coverage in newsletters as well as on our site.

This wide range and high profile does come with its own inherent difficulties. Some of these new manufacturers cannot supply the products as quickly as larger companies can (for a variety of reasons). This can cause some delays when such a product is included in an order with ranges that we already have in stock or can get into stock quite quickly (typically 3-9 working days for most of our inventory). Despite their initial confidence and promises, it can mean that these rangers take far longer to materialise (or in some extremely rare cases fail to materialise at all).

Our strategy is one of long term growth and development. We believe that customers need to have a number of retail brands they can trust - and we understand that at times that trust has been sorely tested. We are trying to do better, and although there are doubtless those who will seek any opportunity to throw stones our way, we genuinely want to work to improve things. Because of this we've invested almost 100,000 GBP in staff and technology to improve our customer experience. Regardless, as a retailer we are only able to work with the information we are supplied.

We have an eight person operations team who spend every working hour of every working day communicating to customers, manufacturers and suppliers trying to get new and existing ranges into stock so that we can supply them across the world. As part of Operations we have dedicated customer service staff with tools such as our helpdesk, email, social media and live chat in an effort to make us the most accessible and most communicative retailer in the industry.

We don't always get it right, but we are working hard to try and improve with each customer we speak to. Those who may have had a negative experience in the past I ask to try us again, you will notice a positive change (I hope!).

Thanks for your time.

For what it's worth, WaylandGames have been sending me an email every day for the last 3 days saying. "We're still waiting for parts of your order to come from the supplier."

Admittedly, they could do with telling me *what* parts of the order. In fact, if they're still open, I might ring them up now...

If you didn't catch us we're in from 8:30am (GMT) tomorrow morning.

Maybe my wording was a bit off and for that i apologize......

The contacts were the commercial directors at both, so I'd have guessed they'd know, but the guys at knight models don't have great English and my Spanish is just plain awful! I'm trying to set up a couple of UK events for Corvus Belli so I knew they weren't coming over, so to see you say they would be on your stand sort of set me off a bit.

For me sometimes Wayland come across as the big "I am" with some of the PR so I'm not 100% sure where it's PR to draw people to the stand / website and where it's actual good news for the players/customers. You guys are probably the biggest there - so do you really need to shout the loudest? You could have just said you were doing Infinity demos using cool terrain from Bauda and I wouldn't have even blinked.

So I'll guess I'll just have to visit the stand on the day and see who's there and go visit your friends at SMG too so I can see their demo tables and previews too.

However - I've used you in the past and never had any problems with your service or orders - so you are definitely not as the thread suggests (which I'll now stop Hijacking!!) it's just the PR that sometimes comes across as a bit too much

Apology accepted. No need for anyone to fall out - especially friends.

If you are arranging some UK events, the Wayland Games Centre would be a great place to hold them - we have a fully licensed bar, hot food and capacity for two hundred gamers.

As for Wayland being the big 'I am'... Sorry if that's how our passion and enthusiasm comes across.

We are the largest independent tabletop gaming retailer in Europe and twice as large as any other stand at Salute. We have a stand that size because we want to offer as wide a range of products and activities to our customers. We've given up retail space so we can offer more demos and activities. We love the hobby and are passionate about ever one of the 25,000 product lines we offer to the public every hour of every day. We'll be offering the best deals at the show for the ranges we offer. Knight Models and Infinity customers won't get a better deal anywhere else. We aren't looking to go out of our way to cause offence or difficulty for anyone - but people customers are a smart bunch and tend to go to wherever gives them the best combination of entertainment and value. We have eight demo tables at the stand and nearly thirty staff who will be working long and hard to make sure customers get the best experience they can at the show. I'm not going to apologise for making a big deal about what we are doing because, like most of the companies at the show, too many people have invested passion and enthusiasm for the event to not make a fuss about it!

You mentioned SMG, they're good friends of ours and I'm sure if you speak with our good buddy Graham over there he'll tell you what a lovely bunch we really are (and not the big 'I am' at all). They're in Dorset too, so probably not a million miles away from where you are right now.

I've offered you a beer at our get together on another thread - it'd be great for us to get together. We don't bite!

Well gave Wayland another chance on a boardgame I wanted. I didn't badger or pester and let everything run its course. After a month I recieved notice that the item was not going to be available. I think that's me done, that and my partner is still waiting for items from last Christmas.

Good luck to them.

Gave element games a go last Tuesday and they turned up on the Thursday, great service.

 Riquende wrote:

 Davylove21 wrote:
Both beat Wayland in every meaningful way

Meaningful according to your specific metrics. I've just looked at both and Triple Helix have a pitifully small range that barely covers anything I'd want to buy (literally just paints and maybe some Perry stuff), and whilst Dark Sphere is better there are still a few gaps where I'd have to go and order from Wayland/Troll Trader anyway, so might as well just do that.

My metrics are price and service. YMMV. Dark Sphere smashes Wayland Games. As does TH and Gifts for Geeks, who helped me out a lot with an X Wing order on Friday, getting it to me the next day.

I'm the guy the started this thread, and just in the interest of fairness, I thought I should post about this:

I just made a second order from Wayland, and this time the service was excellent!
Ordered at about midnight, and as all items were in stock, it was dispatched at about 10am the next day, and I had the items in my hands about 48 hours later.
cannot complain.

I should also prob point out that this order didn't contain any GW stuff, which seems to the main cause of issues looking at this thread, but it was such a complete opposite of my first experience, i just thought i should share

To sum up this thread:

In stock = great
Out of stock = not great
No way to know for sure before you order.

I placed two orders with them mid March.

one was for a variety of stuff (some GW, some from various different basing makers) and am still awaiting stock.


the other I placed a couple days later regarding 2 GW products only (Necron Catacomb Command Barge and Nightscythe).

The latter arrived two days ago, I'm still waiting for the former. And shipping from UK to here usually takes at least a week.

So it really depends on how much "exotic stuff" you've included in your order for longer waiting times.

They're still better than totalwargamer, though

Lol, if you PayPal me the cash, I go to my nearest GW then WALK the order to Austria, I'll be better than TWG

My first experience with wayland games and it not a positive one so far, Placed an order for Wild West exodus starter sets for me and my gaming group to get started saw that Wayland was doing a free shipping promotion if you send over said amount
now as an Aussie we down here have to for these gems regarding shipping its our biggest issue imo. also as stated by some of you i was also drawn in by the fuzzy logic of the availability icon as well "they got me"

i see wayland games people posting in this thread and it is my hope to get in contact with them here which i shouldn't have to do imo

i put my order in on Mar 06 2014 and i posted this now and all ive got is a bunch of weekly robot emails telling me they are still getting the stock for my order

i am by and large a patient man and while one week or even 2 weeks is kinda ok a whole month and the biggest online retailer over there cant get hold of my items i find hard to believe

1. if you don't have the items actually in stock DO NOT advertise them as available its simple and to the point

2. Robot emails are a time saver but if its been a month for one of your customers do you think maybe a personal email explaining the hold up in more detail may smooth over raised hackles

im not here to bash and im by no means telling people to stay away from them after all this is my first experience, however first impressions and all that count a lot in this day and age

thank you for reading my terrible grammar and paragraphing
Dakka forever
Lurker 81

Lurker81 wrote:
My first experience with wayland games and it not a positive one so far, Placed an order for Wild West exodus starter sets for me and my gaming group to get started saw that Wayland was doing a free shipping promotion if you send over said amount
now as an Aussie we down here have to for these gems regarding shipping its our biggest issue imo. also as stated by some of you i was also drawn in by the fuzzy logic of the availability icon as well "they got me"

i see wayland games people posting in this thread and it is my hope to get in contact with them here which i shouldn't have to do imo

i put my order in on Mar 06 2014 and i posted this now and all ive got is a bunch of weekly robot emails telling me they are still getting the stock for my order

i am by and large a patient man and while one week or even 2 weeks is kinda ok a whole month and the biggest online retailer over there cant get hold of my items i find hard to believe

1. if you don't have the items actually in stock DO NOT advertise them as available its simple and to the point

2. Robot emails are a time saver but if its been a month for one of your customers do you think maybe a personal email explaining the hold up in more detail may smooth over raised hackles

im not here to bash and im by no means telling people to stay away from them after all this is my first experience, however first impressions and all that count a lot in this day and age

thank you for reading my terrible grammar and paragraphing
Dakka forever
Lurker 81

Luker81,

First of all let me say that I am glad our free shipping promotion has helped getting your club a new game to try.

We feel we are a very approachable company and there is no need to post on a Public forum to contact us, as we have many different tools you can use to get in contact with us. We have a Helpdesk system (http://waylandgames.freshdesk.com/support/home), a phone line and a live chat system (which was live when you posted this comment). All of which are manned during our opening hours. We welcome anyone to contact us via any of these if you have any questions.

I have checked our system and I can not locate your order based on just the alias 'Luker81', so please do contact us directly so that we can chat about your order, and give you more information in a secure way.

We have taken the feedback regarding the information we present to customers about our stock levels and if an item is in stock it is now listed as In Stock ('x' Ready to ship). We offer over 26,000 products and simply do not have the space to hold every item in stock all the time (as much as we would like to). Extremely high demand for an item can cause delays. We do everything on our power to prevent this from happening but unfortunately delays can still occur.

The email notifications are there to keep your mind at ease, and let you know we are still working on the your order. We will never forget about an order and we hope the emails will put your mind at ease. We are working on improving this system to give more personal information.

I hope this answers your questions and that you contact us directly to have a chat

Regards
Jake @ Wayland

You can count on me to get in touch , by phone is not an option and live chat isn't either due to time zone shenanigans , so the email pen pal fun will begin thanks for the quick response though

Just wanted to pop in and say my piece about Wayland.

I've dealt with them on behalf of my 40k club for the past 5 years or so and shop for around 2,000£ every year (or more!).

The wait time is often quite high, taking at least 6 weeks usually. But they never screw you over, they always deliver in the end and they are overall my go-to place for my wargaming needs. Would sum it up like this:

In a hurry? Find somewhere else.
Need it for later? Go to Wayland.

Thats how we use them and it has worked perfectly so far

Cheers

Gorlack

So I decided to take advantage of the free shipping offer and grab myself a few things.

I figured that it would probably take a little longer than usual, all things considered. And the fact that the order contained a Knight probably wouldn't help either.

But it would help test out just how good the feedback was, right?

Well, three weeks and counting - no package, no email, no nothing...

See, this is what people are complaining about. There's absolutely no communication going on. The Knight was, and still is, marked as shipping in 3 - 9 days. But not a single email saying "sorry, but your order will be a little delayed".

So what's going on? When will the package be dispatched? Who knows...?