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I recently decided to purchase a Battlefoam Bag when my current mini bag started showing considerable wear. I'd never bought anything from Battlefoam, but have seen their products and heard that they are unbeatable. A friend had an Army Transport bag which fell apart in the year he owned it, so I wasn't going to go there. I jumped in and ordered a standard load out Malifaux Breach Bag package that came with the smaller Malifaux Bag as well. I figured, what the heck, I may use it someday. My total with shipping came close to 150.00, which was a little steep, but I assumed it would be worth it.
On finishing the order I noticed that they said it would take 2-3 weeks for shipping, my initial response was, WHAT, 2-3 WEEKS JUST TO SHIP! I could understand if I had ordered a custom cut foam bag, for it to take this long, but when I'm ordering a standard load out for a product that has been available for almost 2 years, why would it take so long. I decided to just wait it out and that their product would be worth it.
2 week went by and I was getting a little anxious, I had hoped to have the bag for a local game convention that was coming up, but my order status never changed on their website. I decided to do some research and see what others had experience with shipping. I was shocked to see the complaints that came up. The product was never brought into question, but the service provided by Battlefoam is by far the weakness I had found in this company. Reviews by other Dakka members about nightmares with BF's customer service and delays in shipping made question my choice to go with BF and I very nearly called to ask for a refund. I decided to persevere and see what happened at 3 weeks.
My initial order was on March 16, the 3 week mark passed yesterday and I had heard nothing. From the reviews I'd read, I realized that i would have to start babysitting BF if I ever wanted to get my order. This was frustrating and disappointing, previous to this experience I'd heard nothing but good things about BF. I made my first phone call at about 10 am yesterday. The call immediately went to their recording and I punched in 0 for customer service. I immediately received a message saying that all CS reps were busy and I could leave a message or call back. I left a polite message with my Name, Order #, reason for calling and my return #. I waited until 2pm without receiving a call and decided to try again. I received the same messages as before and left a message stating that I'd waited 3 weeks for my product to ship and would now be going through there employee directory until I got someone.
My first try was for Romeo, I thought to myself, in all the review I'd read, Romeo was usually the one to step in and provide good customer service after all things had failed through other means…I got his voicemail…and it wouldn't let me leave a message because his box was full.
At this point I was very frustrated, all the review I'd read said that the only way to get through to BF was to call, and they'd failed that on 3 counts.
I decided to try one last time for CS and someone answered the phone, I don't know who she was, she never identified herself, but I can only assume that she had listened to my last message and finally decided to answer the phone.
I gave her my name and reason for calling and she asked for my order #. I gave it to her and she said she'd have to put me on hold while she checked. In a few minutes she came back and told me it would ship out that day. I responded positively, thanked her and hung up.
Today I turned on my computer and checked my email expecting to see a notification in my email that my product had shipped, guess what….nothing. I went to their website and check my order status…guess again…no change.
I go to you now, Dakka forums, will you grant me the magic that so many others have experienced when dealing with BF's CS in the past. May I possibly see an appearance of the one named Romeo to complete my order and get it moving onto a truck that will someday deliver it to my house?

I would just relax for a bit. I know it can be agitating when an order takes longer than expected to come in, but it is to be expected with Battle Foam. Not to say that it is good customer service, but if you read the reviews (which you should as an educated consumer), you'd know what to expect.

They recently had a sale, and anytime they have a sale, their ability to keep up with orders is diminished. The annual black friday sale can take3+ MONTHS to arrive.

Your product will be excellent, but it will take a long while to arrive. Best advice is not to dwell on it. Give it five business days before you start to worry.

I am not a fan of Battlefoam and so I am merely playing devil's advocate here, but was the company in attendance at Adepticon? If so, that might explain the difficulty in reaching someone yesterday. It doesn't justify the lack of shipping notification 3 weeks after an order, but it might be something to consider as far as delays are concerned on or around the time of such a big convention.

Thanks for the reassurance guys, I'll try to stay patient.

Be patient; it takes me several weeks to get mine shipped out, but they always do. I have yet to not get customer service on the phone if I call within business hours.

I have multiple foam trays from Battlefoam and have yet to have a negative experience.

Their major fault is that they do take several weeks to ship.

I emailed them looking for a standard cut bag in time for Adepticon, I was past their cutoff date but was hoping for the best.

I got my bag and foam in 4 days, I never used the phone for contact only email.

This was about 3 weeks ago.

 gunslingerpro wrote:
They recently had a sale, and anytime they have a sale, their ability to keep up with orders is diminished. The annual black friday sale can take3+ MONTHS to arrive.

I'm not sure November counts as "recently" in April of the next year. In any case, yes, they can take a while and I finally got my Black Friday order from November at the beginning of March. They have the 2-3 week disclaimer with the amusing blurb about them currently running at that timeframe but they haven't ever changed it to my recollection so it's not an accurate daily account of their backlog.

OP, three weeks is a bit early to start complaining even for standard loadout and this is coming from someone who is critical of battlefoam; I'd give it a full month (30+ days) and if you don't get a shipping update then call them daily until you get a response. If they tell you it'll be done "this week", give them till friday of that week and then call daily again until it ships (regardless of any estimates they give you). I went through "it's shipping this week" two or three times before it actually did.

I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. I ordered my bag with standard foam from KR Multicase [Kaiser 3 badboy] and it took 3 days to arrive, and I was a little annoyed because they said it would take 2. Email replies were same day.

Obviously Battlefoam either need to employ more people, or stop taking orders until they catch up. Don't accept shoddy customer service. I recommend KR [just checked and I think they do free shipping to the US too].

They don't "need" to do anything as people buy their stuff despite the delivery times. I'm guilty of it as well but my item was on clearance so the discount was ridiculous and I knew about the long wait times going in (but was admittedly surprised at just how long it took).

 warboss wrote:
They don't "need" to do anything as people buy their stuff despite the delivery times. I'm guilty of it as well but my item was on clearance so the discount was ridiculous and I knew about the long wait times going in (but was admittedly surprised at just how long it took).

I can see that this seems to be their business plan, I worked in retail at a grocery store for over 6 years, our business plan was to do whatever it took to give the customer a good positive experience, whether it was quality of product or service. This is what has kept the store I worked for in business even though Wal-Mart has built 3 new stores in their area.

 warboss wrote:
They don't "need" to do anything as people buy their stuff despite the delivery times. I'm guilty of it as well but my item was on clearance so the discount was ridiculous and I knew about the long wait times going in (but was admittedly surprised at just how long it took).

You're absolutely right, they don't need to do anything [although they did lose my custom due to their long shipping times, unwieldy website and poor reviews of customer service which have been reinforced by this thread]. I'm just suggesting that if poor customer service is something you don't want to put up with, KR is a fantastic alternative. It seems Battlefoam have done a really good job of lowering people's expectations.

warboss wrote:
I'm not sure November counts as "recently" in April of the next year.

Actually, I was referring to the twenty percent off sale they did through March and early April. I didn't mean to conflate this delay with the Black Friday sale, though it appears I may have done just that.

They do sales throughout the year on various products. They usually have a pretty good 4th of July sale.

tyrannosaurus wrote:
You're absolutely right, they don't need to do anything [although they did lose my custom due to their long shipping times, unwieldy website and poor reviews of customer service which have been reinforced by this thread]. I'm just suggesting that if poor customer service is something you don't want to put up with, KR is a fantastic alternative. It seems Battlefoam have done a really good job of lowering people's expectations.

BattleFoam hasn't lowered anyone's expectations. They sell a quality product that has a long lead time for delivery on occasion. We get it. You don't like Battle Foam. Someone somewhere can add your name to the list of folks who don't. The OP has clearly asked for help regarding BF, not KR.

Side note: You really think their website is unwieldy?

I started this post with the intent to get attention from BF, as I have found from previous threads and reviews here on Dakka, this is the best way to get them to ship my product to me. Another concern I have is that the warranty on said product starts as soon as I order it, so….now my product is going to only have an in hand warranty of less than 11 months(I assume it will take more than a week for my product to arrive once they ship it).

I've had generally good experiences with Battefoam, although they have ludicrous shipping times during convention season and after the black friday sale. So, most of the year, really..

And yes, they were there at Adepticon. I bought a split order, half picked up there, and half will be shipped to me. I"m curious when it will arrive, but they estimated "weeks."

I love the BF case I bought for my Malifaux stuff, and my friends have 3 more between them. However, all were bought at retail, so that avoided the shipping issue.

Having read Dakka for a while now, I understand that should I order from them, to not hold my breath. It's a shame to hear the OP was having such trouble, but there's almost always other things vying for their time. I suspect I may order another case at the end of the year during the anticipated sale, and if so, Warboss' unfortunate experience has taught me to just ignore it for an entire quarter once I finish checking out. That doesn't excuse slow or negligent service, but coming from my ebay experience, I also generally give packages an entire month before I even start sweating them, though if I paid with paypal, they generally start getting the third degree by week 5, because week 6/7 is often the cutoff for an easy dispute if the need arises.

Basically, best of luck, and it's good to have some cautionary tales out there.

I've had several orders with them and my only beef was the last one. I ordered an OK troop tray and everything was great except some of my standard ogres wouldn't fit all the way. If they have swords the tips poke over enough to bend them. I contacted them and they said they would replace it with a deeper tray but I would have to pay shipping to and from so I declined. When I wrote a review ofthe tray on their website they won't post it. I wasn't too happy with that last order.

To the OP's response regarding Battlefoam orders, I heard from their podcast that April is convention month for them, meaning at least a few of their employees will be traveling around instead of fulfilling orders.

This is commom with Battlefoam, The waiting is indeed long even for standard load outs. I ordered twice from BF both times during sales and took about 8 weeks to arrive at my door in Canada. But the end produce is definetly somthing I know will last a long time. The quality is there so I will endorse their products.

 slk28850 wrote:
I've had several orders with them and my only beef was the last one. I ordered an OK troop tray and everything was great except some of my standard ogres wouldn't fit all the way. If they have swords the tips poke over enough to bend them. I contacted them and they said they would replace it with a deeper tray but I would have to pay shipping to and from so I declined. When I wrote a review ofthe tray on their website they won't post it. I wasn't too happy with that last order.

I will say this: they are pretty strict about orders that they properly filled, but were still mistakes. I ordered a few trays that came in the complete wrong bag size (40k vs. PP), and I sent a message letting them know that it's confusiing when you have PP cut trays for the 40k bags. Their response was "We have the dimensions of the trays and what bags they fit in under each product description." Which is, you know, true and all. Just not terribly comforting!

I ordered some stuff from them on March 12 and received my items on April 3rd. I payed for the slow shipping but the send it Priority mail which took 2 days to pennsylvania

I called again today and it only took two calls to get someone this time. I also left them a private message this morning. The woman who answered was the same as yesterday, still didn't identify herself(I assume she doesn't want to be named as the one with the bad customer service). She told me my order was boxed and ready to go, and made an excuse that yesterday she missed the UPS truck and that I would get a notification today when it shipped, we'll see. It's really sad that a consumer has to babysit a company in this way.

 gunslingerpro wrote:

tyrannosaurus wrote:
You're absolutely right, they don't need to do anything [although they did lose my custom due to their long shipping times, unwieldy website and poor reviews of customer service which have been reinforced by this thread]. I'm just suggesting that if poor customer service is something you don't want to put up with, KR is a fantastic alternative. It seems Battlefoam have done a really good job of lowering people's expectations.

BattleFoam hasn't lowered anyone's expectations. They sell a quality product that has a long lead time for delivery on occasion. We get it. You don't like Battle Foam. Someone somewhere can add your name to the list of folks who don't. The OP has clearly asked for help regarding BF, not KR.

Side note: You really think their website is unwieldy?

I don't give a monkey's about Battlefoam, foam is foam, I just think it laughable that the OP is getting advice not to worry and just accept that it could take months. Clearly, BF is understaffed, otherwise it wouldn't take so long to fill orders and they wouldn't have to fob people off with stories about missed UPS trucks. If they cant fill orders in a reasonable time or provide decent customer service they should stop taking people's money. I only used the example of KR to contrast with how it can be done. 3 days vs. 3 months if some of the stories are to be believed, so yeah, BF has lowered people's expectations.

I just checked their website and can't find anything about their slow delivery times. While they're perhaps not hiding it [CBA to check their Facebook page] they're also not highlighting that they're might be some issues.

Edit - forgot to add, but hope the amount of posts causes someone at BF to take notice and get this guy his foam.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:

I don't give a monkey's about Battlefoam, foam is foam, I just think it laughable that the OP is getting advice not to worry and just accept that it could take months.

That's simply not true. People don't buy Battle foam because Romeo is a cool guy (he isn't) or because it has a cachet. It's more durable, larger, and better cut then any other product on the market. For a lot of gamers, there are other options that work. For people with large armies, or that fly, Battlefoam is notably better.

Clearly, BF is understaffed, otherwise it wouldn't take so long to fill orders and they wouldn't have to fob people off with stories about missed UPS trucks. If they cant fill orders in a reasonable time or provide decent customer service they should stop taking people's money. I only used the example of KR to contrast with how it can be done. 3 days vs. 3 months if some of the stories are to be believed, so yeah, BF has lowered people's expectations.

I doubt they are understaffed normally, but they did send like five or six guys to adepticon, and ran a 20% off sale for all adepticon badge holders. That boosts sales at a time when they are short staffed

More realistic projections would be good though.

I have had a similar issue to OP, ordered 2 standard load out shield bags and they took 4 weeks for the status to change to 'dispatched' on the website and then it was another week before the order arrived, at that point I decided never to use they're website again and resigned to ebay for my battlefoam (can be hard to find what you need, but I've had a couple of gems)

Anyway, I was speaking to the owner of a gaming store, and he said that he'd never ordered battlefoam in but that he could get whatever I wanted from them with 2 weeks, so I decided to test his confidence, I asked him to order me in 2 standard load out sword bags.

8 working days later I get a Facebook message off the owner saying 'bags are here to collect whenever your able'. So not only was it faster but I got the 10% off that the shop offers on everything anyway, I didn't have to pay shipping and I got it faster!

I agree this may be a stroke of luck that maybe BF had an abundance of stock, but it may be worth a try for anyone next time? Ask your local store to order it in for you? Might be different in the states but worth a shot?

I would have ordered through my store, but they are not what I would call an FLGS. The store owner is selfish and his son who runs the miniatures is incompetent. Plus they mark up everything ordered through them at least 15%.

Just wanted to add another story to the thread.

Ordered some foam on Black Friday, it just arrived yesterday

Granted, it did say that it was a preorder that would be released on january 31st, and they then moved that date to march 31st without any warning. But it arrived and everything is perfect - and with the deep discount it wasn't that expensive, though I still didn't mention for the Mrs. how much it was

yeah,
Takes a while to get to you but after that it's all good!

Expensive and Slow and Brilliant!

Their custom trays are amazing! and having that option available to you alone is worth the wait.

Seriously my 1500pt grot horde was a nightmare to transport.
21 vehicles, 40+ troops and wreckage markers...


All fits in my battlefoam 432 with space to spare!



Nothing but Praise.
my Pack 432 review... (scroll down for the X-wing update.)

Panic...

 spyderwyr wrote:
I called again today and it only took two calls to get someone this time. I also left them a private message this morning. The woman who answered was the same as yesterday, still didn't identify herself(I assume she doesn't want to be named as the one with the bad customer service). She told me my order was boxed and ready to go, and made an excuse that yesterday she missed the UPS truck and that I would get a notification today when it shipped, we'll see. It's really sad that a consumer has to babysit a company in this way.

See, that doesn't sound like an excuse to me. That sounds pretty reasonable (having done quite a bit of online trading, I've missed pick up and drop off times more than once). YMMV. I think you'll be pleased as punch with the product, even if it took a bit.

I got an shipping confirmation last night at 7:40 pm that my purchase had been shipped. All in all it took 3 weeks, 2 days, 5 phone calls, 2 personal messages sent from my BF account for them to get my order processed. To me, these seem like thinks that a consumer should NOT have to do. My package is supposed to arrive tomorrow and whether my product is stunning and does completely everything I want it to do or it falls short and I have to get another bag in a year time will on tell. I know one thing for sure…I WILL NEVER BUY FROM BATTLEFOAM DIRECTLY AGAIN. PERIOD. I hope other buyers who read this will beware this company and take precautions as needed.

yeah,
It says 2-3 weeks to dispatch.
And you've had to wait 3 weeks 2 days...
Really 2 days extra and the amount of hate you're spewing.

I regret taking my time posting in this thread.

Panic...

I like my battlefoam case but I bought it from my local hobby store who keeps some in stock, not directly from them.

I also own a KR mutli-case - I like my battlefoam better. I did order my my KR multi-case directly from them and it went great. Fast shipping times and I was deployed overseas at the time.

My mini-review being stated, I would not wait that long for an order and I would cancel it. It you wait to long you lose abilities to dispute a charge with paypal or your credit card company and I would not wait for an order beyond those dates.