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I ask because they don't seem to have anything in stock! Board games, card games, wargames etc. etc. are all listed as available to order.

In comparison, element games always seem to have stuff in stock.

They seem to be particularly bad when it comes to stocking Flames of War items. This could be a supply issue with Battlefront, but element don't seem to have that problem.

Anybody else frustrated at this lack of stock at Wayland Games?

I think this has always been the case for Wayland, its just now their website tells the truth regarding the stock levels. I agree about yhe flames of war stuff and now use element games.

It does appear that their halo suff is in stock so that's something lol

I didn't realise (most stores put for order) that all their stuff was on order. So I placed an order and it took 3 weeks to come.

Fast shipping but took ages to actually ship. Had to change my order because they couldn't fulfill it too.

A real pain because a lot of stuff I can't order in NZ despite the growing wargames range here.

Gotta try Element games.

Daston wrote:
I think this has always been the case for Wayland, its just now their website tells the truth regarding the stock levels.

Yeah, this.

Since the website revamp I hadn't really had a look at Wayland (the site is god awful).

I had a mooch last night and found their stock levels to be appalling. Worse than in a long time. I was looking at board and card games.

.

If you're into X-Wing then Wayland is the place to go - they're never low on X-Wing stuff.

They are opening more branches so that might be having an effect on stock levels, but it's probably because they were awful with their transparancy stock-wise previously.

They'll have more stock when they start driving out FLGS from towns though, as they won't be able to compete with the discounts offered.

Now they have been forced to show stock we actually see how little they have.
Its still a decent store.

I always use Troll Trader as they appear to have grasped the basic concept of mail order i.e. - If we have stuff that you want, you can give us money for the stuff and we will send you the stuff in the post

as a counterpoint they do stock a much wider range of stuff than many other (UK) web retailers so you might expect to see more stuff OOS

(and it is good that you can now clearly see that this is the case and decide whether to order or not based on that)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
as a counterpoint they do stock a much wider range of stuff than many other (UK) web retailers so you might expect to see more stuff OOS

(and it is good that you can now clearly see that this is the case and decide whether to order or not based on that)

II'll forgo the banal fixed that for ya!

They have a wider range of stuff showing as OOS. So I can leave their site and spend cold hard cash elsewhere.

I do use Wayland but when I am after a wider variety of goodies - and usually involving a larger spend I'll head elsewhere.

I'm just glad they fixed their site to show what was actually in stock. It means they're honest merchants now. As opposed to people who took your money and then ordered the goods they were selling to you. So hurrah for whoever made that decision!

Well I made my second purchase with them 3 weeks ago, pooling a larger order with friends.
I'm mildly annoyed that taking care to only order things shown as in stock doesn't actually mean they'd dispatch it quickly
I've chosen to consider that, since I ordered over the week-end they might have sold their last copies of those items to someone who ordered earlier during the day...

I'm still not ordering anything anymore that doesn't show at least 5 in stock.... Sigh

 Flashman wrote:
I always use Troll Trader as they appear to have grasped the basic concept of mail order i.e. - If we have stuff that you want, you can give us money for the stuff and we will send you the stuff in the post

I've had a few run ins with troll trader over the years, so I'm reluctant to go anywhere near his/her shop.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I didn't realise (most stores put for order) that all their stuff was on order. So I placed an order and it took 3 weeks to come.

Fast shipping but took ages to actually ship. Had to change my order because they couldn't fulfill it too.

A real pain because a lot of stuff I can't order in NZ despite the growing wargames range here.

Gotta try Element games.

I don't mind waiting a couple of weeks for stuff, but I can't understand why a small company like element always has FOW in stock, but a larger company like Wayland, doesn't

I often order from Element for the same reason.

Wayland has expanded quite a lot recently - might be a case of having to run stock levels down, having hundreds of thousands of £ sitting in stock has finished off a number of stores.

 Pacific wrote:
I often order from Element for the same reason.

Wayland has expanded quite a lot recently - might be a case of having to run stock levels down, having hundreds of thousands of £ sitting in stock has finished off a number of stores.

But they're not a 'normal' store. They're supposed to be Europe's biggest.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I didn't realise (most stores put for order) that all their stuff was on order. So I placed an order and it took 3 weeks to come.

Fast shipping but took ages to actually ship. Had to change my order because they couldn't fulfill it too.

A real pain because a lot of stuff I can't order in NZ despite the growing wargames range here.

Gotta try Element games.

I don't mind waiting a couple of weeks for stuff, but I can't understand why a small company like element always has FOW in stock, but a larger company like Wayland, doesn't

You almost answered your own question there.

If you're looking for something hard to get, the best place to look are places fewer people go to. Back in the day I'd frequently source stock from smaller branches that I couldn't order from head office simply because they weren't as busy and didn't turn it over as fast.

I've used Element several times, and always been very happy with the service, but growth is a very difficult thing to manage, and I doubt they, or anyone, could handle a sudden exponential increase in growth and maintain their standards.

One could argue Wayland has had enough time to accommodate their expansion, but the busier you are, the harder it is to implement change, and if you continue to grow then the problem gets tougher.

I'm no proponent of Wayland, I'm no particular detractor either, but I do sympathise with some of the challenges they face.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I didn't realise (most stores put for order) that all their stuff was on order. So I placed an order and it took 3 weeks to come.

Fast shipping but took ages to actually ship. Had to change my order because they couldn't fulfill it too.

A real pain because a lot of stuff I can't order in NZ despite the growing wargames range here.

Gotta try Element games.

I don't mind waiting a couple of weeks for stuff, but I can't understand why a small company like element always has FOW in stock, but a larger company like Wayland, doesn't

You almost answered your own question there.

If you're looking for something hard to get, the best place to look are places fewer people go to. Back in the day I'd frequently source stock from smaller branches that I couldn't order from head office simply because they weren't as busy and didn't turn it over as fast.

I've used Element several times, and always been very happy with the service, but growth is a very difficult thing to manage, and I doubt they, or anyone, could handle a sudden exponential increase in growth and maintain their standards.

One could argue Wayland has had enough time to accommodate their expansion, but the busier you are, the harder it is to implement change, and if you continue to grow then the problem gets tougher.

I'm no proponent of Wayland, I'm no particular detractor either, but I do sympathise with some of the challenges they face.

I was thinking more economies of scale. For example, if Tesco or Asda say to Coca Cola they want 1 millions cans of coke for their stores, Coca Cola will sit up and notice, and charge, say, 10 pence a can. If the local corner shop wants 50 cans of coca cola, then obviously, they're lower priority and probably have to pay 50 pence a can or something.

You would think a similar rule would be in effect for Wayland. If they want 500 copies of X-wing, and element only want 50 copies, you would think that Wayland would be the priority for whoever makes X-Wing.

If there's 1000 copies of X Wing available, then it becomes an irrelevance though, everyone gets what they ordered, but if Wayland get 700 people suddenly looking for an X Wing starter, but Element only get 34, Element are the ones who aren't going to disappoint anyone, and likely in a better position to deliver them promptly.

What is with these continual posts that call out Wayland games for perceived faults and then compare to an always amazing Element games? It reminds me of the Chewlies gum representatives in Clerks. I've never used either company since I live in the states but come on it's ridiculous to keep reading these 'why does Wayland games kill babies so often but Element Games bathes them in blessed water and wraps them in gold, I just don't get it' posts.

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
What is with these continual posts that call out Wayland games for perceived faults and then compare to an always amazing Element games? It reminds me of the Chewlies gum representatives in Clerks. I've never used either company since I live in the states but come on it's ridiculous to keep reading these 'why does Wayland games kill babies so often but Element Games bathes them in blessed water and wraps them in gold, I just don't get it' posts.

Probably because Wayland has been consistently terrible since their inception?

And Element are fairly consistently good?

One can easily substitute Element for one of several other smaller retailers who don't seem to piss people off, some of which is the percentage of dissatisfied Wayland customers is probably bigger in number than the entire customer base of some of the smaller fish, but that doesn't fully excuse it.

It really doesn't seem that hard of a concept?

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
What is with these continual posts that call out Wayland games for perceived faults and then compare to an always amazing Element games? It reminds me of the Chewlies gum representatives in Clerks. I've never used either company since I live in the states but come on it's ridiculous to keep reading these 'why does Wayland games kill babies so often but Element Games bathes them in blessed water and wraps them in gold, I just don't get it' posts.

It's because Wayland's stock control as it relates to the website borders on comical at times, most likely a side effect of continued expansion, although to be fair their customer service do try to fix issues as best they can

As for Element, you could replace that with quite a few of the medium sized UK webstores as the majority are at least acceptable

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
What is with these continual posts that call out Wayland games for perceived faults and then compare to an always amazing Element games? It reminds me of the Chewlies gum representatives in Clerks. I've never used either company since I live in the states but come on it's ridiculous to keep reading these 'why does Wayland games kill babies so often but Element Games bathes them in blessed water and wraps them in gold, I just don't get it' posts.

It's because Wayland's stock control as it relates to the website borders on comical at times, most likely a side effect of continued expansion, although to be fair their customer service do try to fix issues as best they can

As for Element, you could replace that with quite a few of the medium sized UK webstores as the majority are at least acceptable

I think my post was more calling out the guys who are making specific posts comparing Wayland to Element Games, which appears to be be the same group of people constantly doing that. It just strikes me as people trying to promote a specific company while bashing another and it gets annoying to read these same posts again and again.

I general people like to suggest an alternative mail order site that they've use themselves when somebody has had problems,

So Element Games which has a wide range (compared to many), decent discount especially from pre-order GW (which is the main game company of Dakka posters), good customer service and reliability (so far at least), UK based

and they are new enough not to have built up any significant number of dissatisfied customers (which all businesses, no matter how good will get) which also helps

Dark Sphere also gets recommended a bunch for the same reasons

Exactly, there's no conspiracy, if people are saying they were unhappy with WG and recommending Element, it probably means people were unhappy with WG and are happy with Element.

I see it as a bit of helpful advice from fellow wargamers.

I have used Wayland a few times and it has been 80% woeful. Element Games have come through for me every time, on around 20 orders, with delivery within 3 days and they throw free sweets in to boot.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
What is with these continual posts that call out Wayland games for perceived faults and then compare to an always amazing Element games? It reminds me of the Chewlies gum representatives in Clerks. I've never used either company since I live in the states but come on it's ridiculous to keep reading these 'why does Wayland games kill babies so often but Element Games bathes them in blessed water and wraps them in gold, I just don't get it' posts.

Probably because Wayland has been consistently terrible since their inception?

Yeah, but their cheap. Which always wins

I used to use Element but have mostly switched to Triple Helix Wargames as they offer a greater discount (typically 25% vs 20% for Wayland and 15% for Element). My first order took a little longer than I expected so I emailed them. The guy explained that as it was a small business they didn't keep stock of all items, they order things on a Monday and dispatch on a Wednesday (so if you order from them on a Monday evening you will be waiting longer). I'm fine with the extra wait as I'd rather save the money. I still use Element sometimes as they have a broader range but I've never found their dispatch times all that great either, but I do like the little circle next to the product telling you more detailed stock information.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I general people like to suggest an alternative mail order site that they've use themselves when somebody has had problems,

So Element Games which has a wide range (compared to many), decent discount especially from pre-order GW (which is the main game company of Dakka posters), good customer service and reliability (so far at least), UK based

and they are new enough not to have built up any significant number of dissatisfied customers (which all businesses, no matter how good will get) which also helps

Dark Sphere also gets recommended a bunch for the same reasons

Yeah, this. I've never used Element Games myself - my go-to stores are primarily Firestorm and occasionally Troll Trader since they both ship the same day. Sometimes they're out of stock of items, so I email and ask. Arcane is also good now that they've got free shipping, even if there's no discounts.