HellFire Sin wrote:
Hi again people. Thanks for all the replies. Ive taken ur advice and contacted the bank they've sent me forms to fill out and have to get as much evidence together so they can claim it back from maelstrom. Hopefully it gets sorted soon. The order was over £100 on my debit card so im hoping it should be covered. Its disgusting how many people have had there money stolen by a company. I feel for you all because im in that situation with maelstrom and now with rocket hobbies too. Companies shouldn't be in business if that how they practice it.
Thanks to all who replied its much appreciated

We dont steal money, sounds like a customer talking from their backside !

Richard
Rocket Hobbies

And that is a really nice way to make me think twice before ordering from you.

while i'm all for defending your business you might of replied in a more mature and professional manner

 helium42 wrote:
I wouldn't mind paying to be a member of a gaming club that provided a nice place to play with plenty of tables and terrain. I would just have an issue with supporting this company.

Exactly, we all contribute a few pounds a week to our club which allows us to rent a venue with loads of tables and so much space we could run Apoc tourneys if we wanted.

But the money we pay goes to resources for the club not to line the pockets of a man with suspect morals.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
How did Maunsfeld Gaming afford to buy all these facilities? Was it that they were sold from one company to the other for pennies or was it that Maunsfeld bought them using the very money put into them from Maelstrom? In which case it's just the same money going around in circles?

It would be interesting to see what assets were actually sold. The more people complain to trading standards as well as getting payment refunds the better chance there is of seeing how far the rabbit hole goes.

pitboy2710 wrote:
And that is a really nice way to make me think twice before ordering from you.

while i'm all for defending your business you might of replied in a more mature and professional manner

If a person puts up genuine criticisms, I would always discuss them in a fair and professional answer, but when someone posts something that is complete nonsense, an outright lie and a potentially liabelous remark, then they get the answer I gave.

did you read his whole post. or did you just see "stolen" and "Rocket hobbies" in the same post and over react?

The guy has been burned once by Maelstrom and is understandably weary of other online retailers.

Your communication can be poor at times ( going on what my relatives haves pointed out to me not used you myself yet. )

Maybe in light of the recent events surrounding the industry at the moment a little understanding maybe in order, don't you think?

Well from my purchase with Rocket Hobbies i thought it was a bit of a farce to tell you the truth, I ordered an in-stock item and it took 11 days to arrive... 1st class apparently. after a week i asked where said item was and i got this response.

"Hi Ben

Post goes out up to 7pm, so give us a chance to finish the day ! Your parcel has already been done and in the post bags."

Which is fine, but this was 2 days AFTER i was told it would be sent AT THE LATEST. Was made to feel a bit of a fool for asking where my item is. I get that they were busy but don['t fob me off.

That wasnt so bad, but reading that childish comment on here has certainly put a stop to ANY purchase ill have on on the RH site. Makes me wonder why the FB page has about 3 posts from recent times and the rest from July... Hmmm

I'd avoid, seems rude and condescending when emailing, I stated i thought i had the right to ask and how was i supposed to know that they have their pickups at 7pm?

Eugh. ..... Oh yeah, what makes it worse? My names not BEN! thanks for taking the time to read my email lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rocketboy wrote:

pitboy2710 wrote:
And that is a really nice way to make me think twice before ordering from you.

while i'm all for defending your business you might of replied in a more mature and professional manner

If a person puts up genuine criticisms, I would always discuss them in a fair and professional answer, but when someone posts something that is complete nonsense, an outright lie and a potentially liabelous remark, then they get the answer I gave.

Eh? No no no..... Sorry. Thats not at all professional at all. You are dealing with customers. You can't go showing yourself up like this! Seriously!
If a customer wound me up and i acted like that, id not have a job and a lot of people would think twice about coming back! Don't reply in a childish manner!

You could of come on here and appologised about the way that customer feels, but no! you pretty much called him i liar!
If you were in a shop and had a complaint, even a small one, and was called a liar, Would you be happy? I really think you need to rethink your customer service.

Without having to read 51 pages, can someone tell me what exactly happen with Rob and Maelstorm?

Did he sell product he never had in stock? How did he get in such large debt? What is the issue I have seen with flames of war and wyrd miniatures?

Maybe a mod could add a compilation of this whole ordeal to the first post.

Neo_trixxx wrote:
Well from my purchase with Rocket Hobbies i thought it was a bit of a farce to tell you the truth, I ordered an in-stock item and it took 11 days to arrive... 1st class apparently. after a week i asked where said item was and i got this response.

"Hi Ben

Post goes out up to 7pm, so give us a chance to finish the day ! Your parcel has already been done and in the post bags."

Which is fine, but this was 2 days AFTER i was told it would be sent AT THE LATEST. Was made to feel a bit of a fool for asking where my item is. I get that they were busy but don['t fob me off.

That wasnt so bad, but reading that childish comment on here has certainly put a stop to ANY purchase ill have on on the RH site. Makes me wonder why the FB page has about 3 posts from recent times and the rest from July... Hmmm

I'd avoid, seems rude and condescending when emailing, I stated i thought i had the right to ask and how was i supposed to know that they have their pickups at 7pm?

Eugh. ..... Oh yeah, what makes it worse? My names not BEN! thanks for taking the time to read my email lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rocketboy wrote:

pitboy2710 wrote:
And that is a really nice way to make me think twice before ordering from you.

while i'm all for defending your business you might of replied in a more mature and professional manner

If a person puts up genuine criticisms, I would always discuss them in a fair and professional answer, but when someone posts something that is complete nonsense, an outright lie and a potentially liabelous remark, then they get the answer I gave.

Eh? No no no..... Sorry. Thats not at all professional at all. You are dealing with customers. You can't go showing yourself up like this! Seriously!
If a customer wound me up and i acted like that, id not have a job and a lot of people would think twice about coming back! Don't reply in a childish manner!

You could of come on here and appologised about the way that customer feels, but no! you pretty much called him i liar!
If you were in a shop and had a complaint, even a small one, and was called a liar, Would you be happy? I really think you need to rethink your customer service.

Sorry your experience wasnt up to scratch with us. Estimating when orders are going to be dispatched is always a tricky thing, a lot of the time all we can do is look at the picking queue and make a guess in conjunction with.other info, but it is just a guess. A lot of companies will refuse to guess but we try and give the best estimate we can, but it isnt always right.

That's funny element games make it abundantly clear when in stock items will be shipped, it's all over there web page and they always stick to it.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
That's funny element games make it abundantly clear when in stock items will be shipped, it's all over there web page and they always stick to it.

Looking at the Element Games website it is a residential address, so I am guessing he is at the size where it is possible to send the orders out same day when the stock comes in. Operating from home with very low overheads and modest discounts will allow him to do that I guess, that is great but for most companies offerring good discounts and a substantial order load, it is very difficult to promise a specific dispatch day and always be correct. I am not saying it is impossible, just beyond the realms of a small company, even big companies like Amazon dont always do it.

So your saying your business model is unsustainable?

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
So your saying your business model is unsustainable?

I didnt say that.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
So your saying your business model is unsustainable?

There's a world of difference between an unsustainable business model and the challenges of scaling a business.

Plus how's about giving a retailer that takes the time to interact with their customers and answer their critics a little more respect? Have you forgotten what and who this thread is really about?

@azrael REDACTED mate I challenged rocket boy to clarify what he said after I challenged the veracity of his statement which he then replied to. There was no disrespect from either party.

Surely though if you're posting in stock items by the end of a working day, and you use first class post, you're looking at 2 to 3 working days before it arrives?

I've done online sales for myself, via eBay, and from a local independent store and could tell you roughly when to expect an item. Obviously there are some delays using Royal Mail/any courier occasionally that hold things up.

I think people are being too harsh on Rocketboy and Rocket Hobbies, sure saying a customer is talking out their arse is a big no no, you're an online retailer insulting a customer on a forum full of potential customers. That's just stupid, you can't afford to lose custom because of someone saying something idiotic. You've had a couple of people saying they won't shop at your store because of your unprofessionalism.

Unfortunately you're working in an industry where complaints are numerous and praise is lacking, people who have a good experience with a store seldom rush to the internet to talk about their experience, unlike people who love to complain do. Be careful, I'd hate to see another online retailer disappear offline. I had absolutely zero problems with Maelstrom so I'm sad to see them go

This is the first I've heard of rocket Hobbies, shame it's under these circumstances...

As of yesterday Warlord Games have a new Fantasy range.

http://www.warlordgames.com/store/non-historical/darklands.html?limit=all&utm_campaign=94e5ca0646-Warlord_Games_Newsletter_23_November_2012&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Warlord+Games+Newsletter

Looks familiar i.e. Bane legions. There's no mention of Mierce Miniatures in their description that I can see. It looks to me like a debt got paid.

Dark lands was the name for the game mierce miniatures was going to produce. So are warlord acting as distributors or are they the new owners of the range?

 George Spiggott wrote:
As of yesterday Warlord Games have a new Fantasy range.

http://www.warlordgames.com/store/non-historical/darklands.html?limit=all&utm_campaign=94e5ca0646-Warlord_Games_Newsletter_23_November_2012&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Warlord+Games+Newsletter

Looks familiar i.e. Bane legions. There's no mention of Mierce Miniatures in their description that I can see. It looks to me like a debt got paid.

Somthing smells funny but at least it explains why warlord deleted all mention of maelstroms issues off there forums.

SeanDrake wrote:
Somthing smells funny but at least it explains why warlord deleted all mention of maelstroms issues off there forums.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Also andrew chesney ex director of malestorm now works for warlord. .......um!

Interesting. That's a big change for six weeks.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/481333.page

Have Warlord made any kind of announcement other than that they are selling the miniatures?

Looked at the prices, some of them seem cheaper than i remember

I hope this doen't derail any shipments of the mierce stuff that folk were promised......

If they have been sold to warlord (as opposed to warlord acting as a distributor) that could put a stop to the fullfilment of outstanding maelstrom orders by meirce

Its possible rob lane decided he didn't want to make things right by dipping into his own pockets so flogged the company to avoid that.

I'll give warlord an email and see what they say

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:@azrael pull your head out your arse mate I challenged rocket boy to clarify what he said after I challenged the veracity of his statement which he then replied to. There was no disrespect from either party.

Implying someone's business model, which is identical to almost any other mail order company, is unsustainable comes across as pretty disrespectful and believe me I'm a long way from touchy or easily offended, so if I can read it that way others can.

ted1138 wrote:This is the first I've heard of rocket Hobbies, shame it's under these circumstances...

Ive used them on several occasions, never had a problem and one of the few GW retailers who offer 25% off in the UK. Alongside Dark Sphere they get nearly all my business as I'm not a fan of the local GW and go to a privately run club.

 George Spiggott wrote:
Interesting. That's a big change for six weeks.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/481333.page

Have Warlord made any kind of announcement other than that they are selling the miniatures?

Warlord are stocking Soda Pop as well. Looks like they have expanded their ranges? heres hoping.

Here's hoping it won't hurt Warlord in the long run, they're just about to get interesting with their increase in plastics for Bolt Action.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Its possible rob lane decided he didn't want to make things right by dipping into his own pockets so flogged the company to avoid that.

Interestingly, I've now heard that some of the Maelstrom sales were to clear Rob's personal debt.

 scipio.au wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Its possible rob lane decided he didn't want to make things right by dipping into his own pockets so flogged the company to avoid that.

Interestingly, I've now heard that some of the Maelstrom sales were to clear Rob's personal debt.

That could be...interesting.

As a ltd company, any money he takes obviously needs accounting for. While he remains protected from the firms liabilities, if it could be shown that he was drawing an irresponsible amount of cash from the firm, either as salary or dividend, then that can remove the protection and make his personal assets liable to seizure.

Something tells me than Rob could survive a nuclear holocaust....

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Dark lands was the name for the game mierce miniatures was going to produce. So are warlord acting as distributors or are they the new owners of the range?

If they are the new owners then I think I'll be buying some of them, especially if the price has dropped a bit

Having spoken to a gentleman in the know it looks like warlord is only distributing on behalf of mierce miniatures and have not bought out the range. I am still waiting for a response to the email I sent to warlord for official confirmation but for now err on the side of caution an do not buy anything from the darklands range or mierce miniatures.

Herzlos wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Dark lands was the name for the game mierce miniatures was going to produce. So are warlord acting as distributors or are they the new owners of the range?

If they are the new owners then I think I'll be buying some of them, especially if the price has dropped a bit

The not-bloodthirster has jumped by 10 quid. To 110 quid.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Just got an email my orders have been transferred to mierce.
One, for the big ent, is listed as 'completed' while an other order with five or six human-sized 28mm models is listed weirdly; it appears as an empty order. I'll email mierce for confirmation of the order tomorrow, I guess.

Turns out waiting out the weekend was a good idea; both orders look 'fine' now.
If anything looks weird, maybe give it a few days. I think they're having to do rather more by hand than intended

Just thought I'd get my 2 pennies worth in..

Yes maelstrom games are by far the worst company I have ever dealt with and still have a £52 order missing from 6 weeks ago.. In defence of hellfire sin who posted earlier about rocket hobbies.. I had an order with them (which all showed as in stock) half arrived.. I got in touch and was told some was missed off and would be sent out asap and 2 items needed to be ordered in. I challenged about it all showing as in stock and was told that they had been sent to someone else who also ordered the same thing. (Live updates need to be fixed then)
After waiting another week still no news on either of the missing items baring in mind that I was told the other items were in and would be sent asap I was told that they weren't in and that they had to be ordered in and I'd just have to wait longer.
It seems the more you pester the more you get made to feel a t@@t for doing so. 2 and a half weeks now and still no order. I'm at the end of my tether and have actually started buying from my local GW store I'm losing that much faith in online retailers.
I'm not trying to be slanderous just voicing my opinions and experiences. Also if you check the Facebook page daily its full of people asking for missing orders yet you check the next day they've all been deleted... Hmmmm

Warlord games have replied and they are indeed only acting as distributors and have not bought the licence

Sorry ignore the Facebook comment.. That was Wayland games that were removing comments

the leman russ wrote:
Sorry ignore the Facebook comment.. That was Wayland games that were removing comments

Sorry, are you saying our facebook page is "full" of people wondering where missing orders are? And then we delete them? Just not true at all. We direct everyone with order questions to our helpdesk.

Sorry you are just wrong. We only delete facebook comments for 2 reasons, rude language and subjects we think are inappropriate. We have been getting customers of Maelstrom's getting confused asking us for the status of their orders and we do explain that they should be contacting Maelstrom for information.

rich1231 wrote:

the leman russ wrote:
Sorry ignore the Facebook comment.. That was Wayland games that were removing comments

Sorry, are you saying our facebook page is "full" of people wondering where missing orders are? And then we delete them? Just not true at all. We direct everyone with order questions to our helpdesk.

Sorry you are just wrong. We only delete facebook comments for 2 reasons, rude language and subjects we think are inappropriate. We have been getting customers of Maelstrom's getting confused asking us for the status of their orders and we do explain that they should be contacting Maelstrom for information.

Well Rich I decided to give Wayland a chance and ordered 2 boxes of Perry war of the Roses + Vallejo thinner. Everything was in stock and I saw that the stock indicator number changed after my order been placed. So far so good, lets see how that will end up.
I must say that till MG fethed up my shopping mood, I never had any problem with eshoping. Things were going so smooth that i though that it was more probable to be scummed by a real store than an eshop. This whole deal with MG shocked me abit and made me think twice if the online discount worth the trouble and the wait.

this is the position i find myself in atm,

For paints and materials yes i am still ordering online. Mainly because in my area i can't get hold of lot of stuff in the shops.

Models is another matter. As i paint and don't play i tend to pick up my GW stuff up from the local store now. Not having a go at anyone's stores but for the quantity i get the savings are minimal and don't justify the long wait times.

With MG going down the tubes i am also reluctant to place orders for things not in stock for fear of a repeat of MG.

Fortunatly i have some friends with trade accounts for non GW stuff who let me piggy back on there orders

Wayland Games are alright

I mentioned I had an order with Wayland, and the stuff came in right when I expected it to. Wayland has done well by me, as has Mini Wargaming and Miniature Market. All three are good or great in my eyes.

Sorry people I didn't realize that talking about my experiences with online stores for 40k would have caused this. I havent played for years and got addicted quickly to the game as did several friends. Ive ordered from 7 stores total with 16 orders so far and I always give all stores more than one chance usually 2 or 3. Maelstrom I got burnt twice had to make a claim with the bank. wayland made 3 orders had several problems with all of them especially the last order. I also posted about the service and was not rude or offensive an the comments I posted were removed to within 10 mins. Finally rocket. Every order I had problems with, was really rudely messaged several times and was not happy at all. Now Im being called a liar. I have no reason to slate your company other than the experiences Ive had. I have made several orders with Triple Helix and Firestorm and every time order sent out on time, great customer service and keep you informed of whats happening. Which I have to say is all the customer wants is to be informed of whats happening I know that as do friends as do several people who have replied in the post. Ive learnt the hard way by trying different stores to save money but have found the stores I will stick with and recommend to anyone because they're gamers and their service is second to none. If I had read any of the things about companies like maelstrom I wouldn't have put nearly 2 grand total to these companies. But thats just my experiences

 stubacca wrote:
Wayland Games are alright

I've had 2 good experiences with them so far, and in a week we'll find out if I had a 3rd

I was hoping Warlord games bought out darklands. Shucks.

Would have been great to see what they did with the line and see if they could bring back some of the no longer being printed "bane beasts" such as the Ghorgan. Big bastard is impossible to find.

IT all seems to have gone very quiet on the western front, nothing has burnt down in Mansfield, the border agencies haven't reported anyone attempting to flee the country and I'm guessing no one is getting any refunds........??????

Are they just burying their head in sand up at "whatever they are called this week" by any chance? Or have the courts finally gone in? I haven't seen anything yet but maybe there is stuff in the background making it all go so quiet.
Anyone know how this works? When does it all go to court, can they get our money back when it does for the thousands of customers like me waiting, how are Eye of the Storm paying for the transferred customers orders, are they all still using our money at a guess?

Is this the "quiet before the storm" (that could be there new name next week!!! )

the leman russ wrote:
Sorry ignore the Facebook comment.. That was Wayland games that were removing comments

Everything I have seen come from Rich, every opinion, every post, every experience I have had with Waylands has been classy. I would be very disinclined to believe Wayland games were doing that, and very inclined to believe his post below yours.

I am very angry right now. Actually I would like to be be able to shout ''feth you!!!!'' loud enough to hear me in UK.
As I said, after reading Rich's posts I decided to give WG a chance and make them my wargamming supplier. Recently I got through ebay a set of Perrys Mounted Men at Arms. Fantastic set and I got it really fast (within 4 working days). I decided that I wanted another one plus a set of those cool mercenaries. I would order from the same ebay seller but then I noticed that he didnt combine shipping (3pounds per item) plus he increased the price by 1,5 pound. Then I took a stroll through WG eshop and saw that not only they offered a cheaper price by one pound per box, but their combined postage was 4 pounds (instead of 6 of the ebay seller). After all the reassurences Rich offered here, I decided to have a go with WG and use the saved money to buy me some thinner. I placed the order at Friday. At Monday it was still ''processing'' and I must say that this word strikes some fear in my soul every time i see it after the MG fiasko. But I would be unreasonable to complain about that since I made the order on Friday evening. Tuesday the order is still being processed and I tried to help myself stop projecting the MG experience to other dealers. Today Wednesday morning I got a notice that my order has been completed and dispatched. I was relieved and called myself idiot for doubting WG. Everything was fine. NOT!!!
A couple hours later I got a Paypal refund notice of 16.20 from WG. That means that one box is not included in the shipped order, but I dont know which since nobody of WG cared to tell me about it!! Both sets have the same price. I assume that it must be the Mounted MAA who are MIA since there was only one item in the stock indicator. I must say at this point that alla items I ordered were labeled as ''in stock'' with specific quantity number, which changed right after the order was made. I understand that its possible somebody to have ordered simultaneously with me the men at arms (if this is the one missing). What I dont understand is why nobody notified me that they dont have this set anymore and give me the chance to order something else. For example the infantry set! After all the reason I ordered from them was to save shipping cost! Now I must wait to see what is missing and order it from that trusty ebay seller who ships immediatelly, not after 2 days, thus costing me more.
Im really tired with the practices of big eshops. I think that I will stick to my local game stores for the stuff that are reasonably priced and with trusted ebay sellers for the rest. I spend some hobby time painting minis in order to escape from life problems, which are increasing day after day here. I dont want MORE problems, I dont want problems even with my hobby past time. I guess this is my punishment for wanting to save afew pounds...

I made a ticket just to see what explanation Im going to be offered (and when)....

Tickets are almost always answered on the same day you create them.

 BrookM wrote:
Tickets are almost always answered on the same day you create them.

Ok but that is the least of my concerns. You see I wouldnt normally order just one box for 4 pounds shipping, when I could have 2 for the same...

Agreed, that is rather fishy.

I have placed several orders with wayland before. Their service is ok but not great. Real stock levels are an improvement but the estimates for stuff out of stock still needs to be improved. Another problem is what you mentioned they tend to take decisions that effect you without asking first. A simple option to change what you want to do when items are out of stock would help. I had an order placed that wasn't shipped after more than a week because of items being out of stock. I contacted them saying I needed the items for the tournament and so wanted to know if it was possible to give me a better estimate when the order would be in. But I wouldn't mind waiting for the items out of stock because I really needed them.
I got a reply saying the order was going to be split and the stock items would be sent to me while the others ones would be pending until stock arrive. Perfect solution I though, problems was two days later I got another email saying my order has been dispatched (at this time only two items were still pending) but that the items out of stock were refunded, which was the all order Plus when I queried about it they replied saying they hadn't refund the items and had no idea what I was talking about
So yes it can a very good experience or a bit hit or miss.

I do notice that some of the items advertised in the newsletters as being in stock, are not, like the super-heavies and the Open Fire! starter for FoW.

 Bacms wrote:
I have placed several orders with wayland before. Their service is ok but not great. Real stock levels are an improvement but the estimates for stuff out of stock still needs to be improved. Another problem is what you mentioned they tend to take decisions that effect you without asking first. A simple option to change what you want to do when items are out of stock would help. I had an order placed that wasn't shipped after more than a week because of items being out of stock. I contacted them saying I needed the items for the tournament and so wanted to know if it was possible to give me a better estimate when the order would be in. But I wouldn't mind waiting for the items out of stock because I really needed them.
I got a reply saying the order was going to be split and the stock items would be sent to me while the others ones would be pending until stock arrive. Perfect solution I though, problems was two days later I got another email saying my order has been dispatched (at this time only two items were still pending) but that the items out of stock were refunded, which was the all order Plus when I queried about it they replied saying they hadn't refund the items and had no idea what I was talking about
So yes it can a very good experience or a bit hit or miss.

The thing is that if they send me just one box they are obliterating the main reason to shop from them instead of ebay. Combined and better priced postage. I have to emphasise that the only clue I got of my screwed up order, was via Paypal (refund). In my order history in WG it looks as the complete order has been shipped. Im really tired of this gak. If a major eshop cant offer basic services that a home based ebay seller can, then they should reconsider their place in this market.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I must admit that they answered the ticket very fast.

Here is their answer to my question about partial refund.

Hello

Your order has been sent today, however the Mounted Men at Arms are currently out of stock with ourselves as well as our supplier im afraid.

These have been refunded back to you and the money along with the figures should be with you soon.

Regards
Craig

and here is mine

Well Graig Im not happy at all to hear this for two reasons
1 The item was listed as in stock when I made the order, although it was just 1 left.
2 The reason I ordered from you was because I wanted the combined shipping for 2 boxes. If anyone of you made the effort to contact me I would order something else. Perhaps the infantry set that I was leaving for later. Not contacting me resulted for me to pay more shipping than an ebay seller would charge me and you losing 16.20 pounds. Guess what, after some time I would return to you to buy the mounted men at arms and because I would like to use the chance to save some shipping fee, I would probably order some paints, tools and various stuff as well. That means that you lost alot more than 16.20 in the long run.
Fine marketing choices mate!
Kind Regards
Yannis

Bye bye Wayland Games.....

I had a free shipping and they explicit said to me that the second order was going to be shiped free of charge as well

 The Stranger wrote:

 Bacms wrote:
I have placed several orders with wayland before. Their service is ok but not great. Real stock levels are an improvement but the estimates for stuff out of stock still needs to be improved. Another problem is what you mentioned they tend to take decisions that effect you without asking first. A simple option to change what you want to do when items are out of stock would help. I had an order placed that wasn't shipped after more than a week because of items being out of stock. I contacted them saying I needed the items for the tournament and so wanted to know if it was possible to give me a better estimate when the order would be in. But I wouldn't mind waiting for the items out of stock because I really needed them.
I got a reply saying the order was going to be split and the stock items would be sent to me while the others ones would be pending until stock arrive. Perfect solution I though, problems was two days later I got another email saying my order has been dispatched (at this time only two items were still pending) but that the items out of stock were refunded, which was the all order Plus when I queried about it they replied saying they hadn't refund the items and had no idea what I was talking about
So yes it can a very good experience or a bit hit or miss.

The thing is that if they send me just one box they are obliterating the main reason to shop from them instead of ebay. Combined and better priced postage. I have to emphasise that the only clue I got of my screwed up order, was via Paypal (refund). In my order history in WG it looks as the complete order has been shipped. Im really tired of this gak. If a major eshop cant offer basic services that a home based ebay seller can, then they should reconsider their place in this market.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I must admit that they answered the ticket very fast.

Here is their answer to my question about partial refund.

Hello

Your order has been sent today, however the Mounted Men at Arms are currently out of stock with ourselves as well as our supplier im afraid.

These have been refunded back to you and the money along with the figures should be with you soon.

Regards
Craig

and here is mine

Well Graig Im not happy at all to hear this for two reasons
1 The item was listed as in stock when I made the order, although it was just 1 left.
2 The reason I ordered from you was because I wanted the combined shipping for 2 boxes. If anyone of you made the effort to contact me I would order something else. Perhaps the infantry set that I was leaving for later. Not contacting me resulted for me to pay more shipping than an ebay seller would charge me and you losing 16.20 pounds. Guess what, after some time I would return to you to buy the mounted men at arms and because I would like to use the chance to save some shipping fee, I would probably order some paints, tools and various stuff as well. That means that you lost alot more than 16.20 in the long run.
Fine marketing choices mate!
Kind Regards
Yannis

Bye bye Wayland Games.....

Yannis

Your dispatch email should have had a pdf attached. Can you please look for it please as we want to make sure that the emails get to where they are supposed to be and are as informative as possible. I can see it left our systems. Which detailed exactly what had been out of stock rather than having you have to raise a ticket, which is frustrating for you and also uses up resources of ours better used elsewhere. We have 14,000 odd lines we list. Since our stock check at the beginning of October we have found 58 discrepancies or miscounts (that's accurate as i see the data as its updated). I am certain there are more but we are human and really do spend an awful lot of effort trying to make sure that the stock levels and due dates are as accurate as possible. However this isnt the issue with your order.

I have investigated your order though, and the issue is actually my fault. I saw your post about your order and thought I'd make sure I put it into a priority queue. It turns out that the queue I thought was priority in fact isn't and meant "payment waiting to clear". I can't blame my staff or stock levels, this is me simply not realizing that the queue meanings were different to what I had understood. Whilst it was in that queue, another order was allocated the stock. I know isn't a consolation for you but it was my error that caused your frustration. I have had the queues renamed now to text rather than numbers so that it doesn't happen again.

Again sincere apologies for my mistake.

While I'm glad this looks like it can be settled on good terms, why is this discussion happening in the Maelstrom Games thread?

Please keep this thread on topic to Maelstrom. You can start a different thread to discuss Wayland. (There may be a Wayland thread already.)

There is: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/488577.page

rich1231 wrote:


Yannis

Your dispatch email should have had a pdf attached. Can you please look for it please as we want to make sure that the emails get to where they are supposed to be and are as informative as possible. I can see it left our systems. Which detailed exactly what had been out of stock rather than having you have to raise a ticket, which is frustrating for you and also uses up resources of ours better used elsewhere. We have 14,000 odd lines we list. Since our stock check at the beginning of October we have found 58 discrepancies or miscounts (that's accurate as i see the data as its updated). I am certain there are more but we are human and really do spend an awful lot of effort trying to make sure that the stock levels and due dates are as accurate as possible. However this isnt the issue with your order.

I have investigated your order though, and the issue is actually my fault. I saw your post about your order and thought I'd make sure I put it into a priority queue. It turns out that the queue I thought was priority in fact isn't and meant "payment waiting to clear". I can't blame my staff or stock levels, this is me simply not realizing that the queue meanings were different to what I had understood. Whilst it was in that queue, another order was allocated the stock. I know isn't a consolation for you but it was my error that caused your frustration. I have had the queues renamed now to text rather than numbers so that it doesn't happen again.

Again sincere apologies for my mistake.

Hi Rich
I must admit that I missed completely the pdf thing. That happened cause I first got the dispatch emai on my phone, then visited my order status on your page, saw that it was completed and I relaxed. After I got the Paypal refund notice I opened my email again but never occured to me to check the invoice cause I thought that it would say the same as the online order form. So in all honesty I admit that the information I needed (which item is missing) was provided by you and I missed to see it.
BUT.. this doesnt change the most vital subject.

Why nobody notified me thus giving me the chance to order something else? I mean if I was a shop I would like to give some options and hopefully get the original sum if not more.

I really appreciate that you intended to give priority to my order, even if this didnt finally happened. What matters is the good intention. I didnt mind waiting 2 days for the order to clear. What I mind is that I had to order the item I wanted through ebay, thus costing me extra shipping and offcourse double going into the post office cause lately they dont deliver medium to big parcels if they are not signed for (has to do with cutting down expenses). As I said per unit the ebay seller offers cheaper shipping, but cannot do that for bulk and thats where you enter. Messaging me before the refund would result in ordering a box of infantry or another box of mercenaries, I was saving for later buys and returning soon for the mounted men at arms. Which I think would be better for you. Aint I right?

Yannis, can we take this over to our thread please.

rich1231 wrote:
Yannis, can we take this over to our thread please.

Sure, I hope a mod can help in transporting the conversation

Sorry Mods

So does anyone know what the next step is with Maelstrom? Are we just waiting for Wayland to wind them up and we have to wait and see what happens? (sorry to mention Wayland again! )

Wayland has nothing further to do with this.

Wayland are the one's who bought the big debt so in theory they should be able to let us have a timescale for any court dates / appointment of administrators. I'm just wondering how long we have to wait before anything real happens.......

Man, reading through this thread makes me thank my lucky stars that I have Miniature Market here in the States. Sorry for everyone affected by this fiasco though.

 SoulDrinker wrote:
Wayland are the one's who bought the big debt so in theory they should be able to let us have a timescale for any court dates / appointment of administrators. I'm just wondering how long we have to wait before anything real happens.......

So you guys didn't get your miniatures?

 SoulDrinker wrote:
Wayland are the one's who bought the big debt so in theory they should be able to let us have a timescale for any court dates / appointment of administrators. I'm just wondering how long we have to wait before anything real happens.......

You have a year or so to wait before an administration is fully resolved, though there might be so correspondence between now and then to creditors and debtors.

When that time is up you will find that the administrator will take their not inconsiderable fee followed by the HMRC then the big debts (Simple/WG @ £100k out of £500k so there are other biggies - GW?) finally the customers will get their turn to divvy up the last pot. The last pot will probably be £0. Also looking at the way the assets have been transferred out there probably wont be much/anything for the bigger debts.

The best and most sensible recourse is through a credit card provider (it's why we pay the fees!) and/or PayPal.

However it's worth remembering that mierce miniatures may well be pulled back in and sold as an asset of maelstrom by the administrators which would help increase the pot to be divvied up.

That seems a fairly large assumption to make at this point, UBT.

 Dysartes wrote:
That seems a fairly large assumption to make at this point, UBT.

Given Mierce's heritage it's not that big a leap. It's difficult to look at Mierce's and EotS's creation as anything other than asset stripping of Maelstrom before the gak hit the fan.

 George Spiggott wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
That seems a fairly large assumption to make at this point, UBT.

Given Mierce's heritage it's not that big a leap. It's difficult to look at Mierce's and EotS's creation as anything other than asset stripping of Maelstrom before the gak hit the fan.

At this point, George, we don't have access to any actual knowledge of how the transaction was handled, so we have no knowledge of whether it was above board or not.

To make the assumption, and therefore possibly raise people's hopes of compensation if they lost out, seems irresponsible at best.

EotS seems more likely that Mierce to get pulled back in, but that's just a guess.

I just got a mail from Mierce Miniatures saying that they've shipped my order (albeit to the wrong address...), so I guess that's some positive things in all this mess.

Yup, I got similar emails on the 27th; I'll believe it when I see it, though

I love seeing the comments on here
I'm sorry for the people that got stung by maelstroms demise
But I don't see anyone thinking about the people that worked for mg
Since wayland games brought the debt that caused all this
Adam lad in shop gone
Warehouse down to two staff
Bar staff down by two
Events team of 1
By my reasoning that's about between 8 and 12 out of work this side of Xmas

You may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore
Who had to leave. Maelstrom because of been a sex pest to the young female members of staff
And been a bully to the young lads who worked there .

This is the main reason in my opinion most of you have suffered
1 whilst Gary ran events at mg they never made a profit
Which slowly began to build a debt

2 Gary advice was the cause of the battlefront And gw

3 strange Gary left mg then appeared at wayland and somehow they get wind of robs debt
I wonder
4 then wayland buy the debt. Before rob could pay it off and put boot in Hoping to get eye of the storm

I can understand people been unhappy about losing there money hopefully you can get it back from bank or paypal

But the long term effect of this has on the uk gaming scene could be more than just a e stores demise
especially as wayland games haven't made there intentioned clear
Are they planning to take over or close

Worst possible effect
Possibly the best events location in uk will close or get took over by wayland
If this happens
Back to the days of holding events in sports halls or similar places
Competition for places at other gaming centers will become higher
If wg get it prices may rise

Best hope is some of us take a chance on eots buy tickets for events
Try a order or two using safe method of payment

Some info from either rob at maelstrom or a spokesmen for wayland would be nice

Troll1 wrote:
I love seeing the comments on here
I'm sorry for the people that got stung by maelstroms demise
But I don't see anyone thinking about the people that worked for mg
Since wayland games brought the debt that caused all this
Adam lad in shop gone
Warehouse down to two staff
Bar staff down by two
Events team of 1
By my reasoning that's about between 8 and 12 out of work this side of Xmas

You may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore
Who had to leave. Maelstrom because of been a sex pest to the young female members of staff
And been a bully to the young lads who worked there .

This is the main reason in my opinion most of you have suffered
1 whilst Gary ran events at mg they never made a profit
Which slowly began to build a debt

2 Gary advice was the cause of the battlefront And gw

3 strange Gary left mg then appeared at wayland and somehow they get wind of robs debt
I wonder
4 then wayland buy the debt. Before rob could pay it off and put boot in Hoping to get eye of the storm

I can understand people been unhappy about losing there money hopefully you can get it back from bank or paypal

But the long term effect of this has on the uk gaming scene could be more than just a e stores demise
especially as wayland games haven't made there intentioned clear
Are they planning to take over or close

Worst possible effect
Possibly the best events location in uk will close or get took over by wayland
If this happens
Back to the days of holding events in sports halls or similar places
Competition for places at other gaming centers will become higher
If wg get it prices may rise

Best hope is some of us take a chance on eots buy tickets for events
Try a order or two using safe method of payment

Some info from either rob at maelstrom or a spokesmen for wayland would be nice

I'm guessing no-one actually cares about that though? I don't live anywhere near Maelstrom, and I don't play in events, so I don't care about that either, and I'm guessing neither did a lot of their customers. All people wanted was what they ordered, not to have their money, for all intents and purposes, stolen. I never had any problems with Maelstrom, I had a few orders with them and they arrived within 10 days/2 weeks.

I noticed you didn't mention the people who have lost there jobs through other peoples bad management
Or there families who are looking at a bleak Xmas

But then from your post you sound a bit of a self centered xxxx like many of the other people who post on this site

What can be said to that sort of opinion
I know

Self self self self self !!!!!!!!

Troll1 wrote:
I noticed you didn't mention the people who have lost there jobs through other peoples bad management
Or there families who are looking at a bleak Xmas

But then from your post you sound a bit of a self centered xxxx like many of the other people who post on this site

What can be said to that sort of opinion
I know

Self self self self self !!!!!!!!

Again, not my problem. When you order something online all you want is what you paid for, within a reasonable amount of time. Is it my fault it was badly run? no. Is it my fault someone gets sexually harassed, or bullied? no.

I understand that people will be affected by them closing but, again, how's that my problem? We're all going through tough times

Troll1 wrote:
I love seeing the comments on here
I'm sorry for the people that got stung by maelstroms demise
But I don't see anyone thinking about the people that worked for mg
Since wayland games brought the debt that caused all this
Adam lad in shop gone
Warehouse down to two staff
Bar staff down by two
Events team of 1
By my reasoning that's about between 8 and 12 out of work this side of Xmas

You may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore
Who had to leave. Maelstrom because of been a sex pest to the young female members of staff
And been a bully to the young lads who worked there .

This is the main reason in my opinion most of you have suffered
1 whilst Gary ran events at mg they never made a profit
Which slowly began to build a debt

2 Gary advice was the cause of the battlefront And gw

3 strange Gary left mg then appeared at wayland and somehow they get wind of robs debt
I wonder
4 then wayland buy the debt. Before rob could pay it off and put boot in Hoping to get eye of the storm

I can understand people been unhappy about losing there money hopefully you can get it back from bank or paypal

But the long term effect of this has on the uk gaming scene could be more than just a e stores demise
especially as wayland games haven't made there intentioned clear
Are they planning to take over or close

Worst possible effect
Possibly the best events location in uk will close or get took over by wayland
If this happens
Back to the days of holding events in sports halls or similar places
Competition for places at other gaming centers will become higher
If wg get it prices may rise

Best hope is some of us take a chance on eots buy tickets for events
Try a order or two using safe method of payment

Some info from either rob at maelstrom or a spokesmen for wayland would be nice

Someone has an axe to grind.

Staff losing their jobs is Maelstrom, and its owners, fault. The buck stops with Rob Lane.

ou may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore

A non entity as far as maelstrom not fulfilling customer orders and maelstroms failure to communicate with customers. You would haev been right not to mention him at all.

Why should the people who have caused this mess escape without any comment
The axe I want to grind is this mess created by a few people has affected more people than the ones on these pages who have lost money

If i wanted to grind more I could but all I wanted was for some of you to look at the bigger picture
And the future effects this mess will have

If not been a self centered xxxx is a crime I'm guilty as charged

Troll1 wrote:
Why should the people who have caused this mess escape without any comment
The axe I want to grind is this mess created by a few people has affected more people than the ones on these pages who have lost money

If i wanted to grind more I could but all I wanted was for some of you to look at the bigger picture
And the future effects this mess will have

If not been a self centered xxxx is a crime I'm guilty as charged

You're a pretty poor troll, you seem to be winding yourself up.

Businesses close, they get taken over by bigger rivals, that's life.

And self centred? Why's that a bad thing? We're in a recession and have to look after ourselves because no-one else will

So you think been self centered isnt a bad thing your perents should be so proud

As for bigger rivals taking over smaller ones true that's life
My point is 53 pages of seeing people winging over a few lost pounds
where I've not seen one post of how this effects the people that relied on them for a income

And yes the fault lies with the people in charge both at maelstrom and wayland to who this hobby is nothing but money
As for bad troll whatever

I'm sorry but trolls post sound very much like a smear attempt against wayland and the greater community. This could even be rob lane himself posting for all we know.

The important thing is we all just put him on ignore and make sure no ones pays any money into any of the businesses rob lane has started up in place of his failed ventures. There is still the administration to take place and it is entirely possible that any money placed with these companies will be lost.

Troll1 wrote:
So you thing been self centered isnt a bad thing your perents should be so proud

As for bigger rivals taking over smaller ones true that's life
My point is 53 pages of seeing people winging over a few lost pounds
where I've not seen one post of how this effects the people that relied on them for a income

And yes the fault lies with the people in charge both at maelstrom and wayland to who this hobby is nothing but money
As for bad troll whatever

They are actually, but that's besides the point.

This thread isn't anything other than bad experiences with Maelstrom, that's it. There are probably tons of other things not mentioned on this, doesn't mean people don't care, like you specifically mentioned tournaments and stuff not being as widespread because of Maelstrom closing. That's why I said not many people probably don't give a crap.

I'm curious to know why you're so fervently against Wayland?

From: Troll1
To: UNCLEBADTOUCH
Date: 2012/12/09 20:25:57
Subject: Your post
I'm not rob lane although I know him
And believe me rob and myself haven't spoken in two years because of some of his actions and decisions
As maelstrom grew rob changed he had people telling him he was so good and couldnt do anything wrong unfortunately he believed Them
Then again who are you
Do you work for wayland or are you Gary Moore

Just thought I would leave this here ;-)

I understand your reluctance to support the eye but it's a shame to see it close which it surly will if it dosnt get support
If it came in the shape of wayland so be it better that than it close as for been rob lane no thanks !

Troll1
To: UNCLEBADTOUCH
Date: 2012/12/09 20:38:04
Subject: Pm
The idea of a pm speaks for it's self
I see you didn't answer my question who are you


Well you put someone on ignore and this is the thanks you get. Well I guess this speaks to the individual in questions character, needless to say this is now a matter for the mods as I don't see the need to post any further communication from this individual.

Troll1 wrote:
I understand your reluctance to support the eye but it's a shame to see it close which it surly will if it dosnt get support

They should have thought of that when they were not answering the phone and trying to sell me stuff they didn't have.

If EotS goes down it will be because they have lost the trust of the wargaming public.

I will not support any Maelstrom spinoff until I get the money I spent back (or the models I ordered). Even if I do (it's subject to a claim as we speak), I'd still not order anything from EotS themselves until something is done for the many, many people Maelstrom screwed in their final days.

Never would I support maelstrom or their new company again. To many burnt bridges. They were great a few years back, but recent events have left a sour taste in my mouth. I didnt lose much money (only a few paints were purchased and never received) - but that is enough generally in my book to never shop again.

But reading through this thread, it is amazing to see the terrible experiences most had. This is all the customer review most people need.

Troll1 wrote:
So you think been self centered isnt a bad thing your perents should be so proud

As for bigger rivals taking over smaller ones true that's life
My point is 53 pages of seeing people winging over a few lost pounds
where I've not seen one post of how this effects the people that relied on them for a income

And yes the fault lies with the people in charge both at maelstrom and wayland to who this hobby is nothing but money
As for bad troll whatever

Some people lost hundreds of pounds. That's more than I'd be willing to spend on the hobby over a couple months. Please go back to your cave, troll.

Troll1 wrote:
I love seeing the comments on here
I'm sorry for the people that got stung by maelstroms demise
But I don't see anyone thinking about the people that worked for mg
Since wayland games brought the debt that caused all this
Adam lad in shop gone
Warehouse down to two staff
Bar staff down by two
Events team of 1
By my reasoning that's about between 8 and 12 out of work this side of Xmas

You may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore
Who had to leave. Maelstrom because of been a sex pest to the young female members of staff
And been a bully to the young lads who worked there .

This is the main reason in my opinion most of you have suffered
1 whilst Gary ran events at mg they never made a profit
Which slowly began to build a debt

2 Gary advice was the cause of the battlefront And gw

3 strange Gary left mg then appeared at wayland and somehow they get wind of robs debt
I wonder
4 then wayland buy the debt. Before rob could pay it off and put boot in Hoping to get eye of the storm

I can understand people been unhappy about losing there money hopefully you can get it back from bank or paypal

But the long term effect of this has on the uk gaming scene could be more than just a e stores demise
especially as wayland games haven't made there intentioned clear
Are they planning to take over or close

Worst possible effect
Possibly the best events location in uk will close or get took over by wayland
If this happens
Back to the days of holding events in sports halls or similar places
Competition for places at other gaming centers will become higher
If wg get it prices may rise

Best hope is some of us take a chance on eots buy tickets for events
Try a order or two using safe method of payment

Some info from either rob at maelstrom or a spokesmen for wayland would be nice

Did anyone else read this in beat poet spoken verse style?

Bossk_Hogg wrote:Did anyone else read this in beat poet spoken verse style?

I did! I dunno, it just kinda lends itself to that.

I'm surprised by the number of people responding to a new user posting solely inflammatory comments on this thread who goes by the name of 'Troll1.' Is this a hiding in plain sight type of thing?

 htj wrote:


I'm surprised by the number of people responding to a new user posting solely inflammatory comments on this thread who goes by the name of 'Troll1.' Is this a hiding in plain sight type of thing?

I was going to post "Obvious Troll is Obvious" after his first post, but I thought 'nahh, surely people we figure it out.' Guess not.

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 htj wrote:


I'm surprised by the number of people responding to a new user posting solely inflammatory comments on this thread who goes by the name of 'Troll1.' Is this a hiding in plain sight type of thing?

I was going to post "Obvious Troll is Obvious" after his first post, but I thought 'nahh, surely people we figure it out.' Guess not.

I already said that haha

I just figured it was somebody who worked for Maelstrom at some point in the past, and hates Wayland. It's either that, or he's definitely a troll. I'm sure the MODs will get sick of him eventually and sack him.

Well if it came over that I hate wayland I sorry I've never had any dealings with them
I know a lot of the staff who work/ worked at mg Ive seen what they've gone though these last few months many have lost a lot more then any one customer
It would be nice if at some point all the dirty little secrets came out
I would of liked to see rob lane explain himself and his action and why he's done the things he's done

Also I would of liked to hear something from wayland to explain there plans for the eots

Yeah sucks for the staff, also sucks for the people out over £100K because of someone's shadiness.

 notprop wrote:

 SoulDrinker wrote:
Wayland are the one's who bought the big debt so in theory they should be able to let us have a timescale for any court dates / appointment of administrators. I'm just wondering how long we have to wait before anything real happens.......

You have a year or so to wait before an administration is fully resolved, though there might be so correspondence between now and then to creditors and debtors.

When that time is up you will find that the administrator will take their not inconsiderable fee followed by the HMRC then the big debts (Simple/WG @ £100k out of £500k so there are other biggies - GW?) finally the customers will get their turn to divvy up the last pot. The last pot will probably be £0. Also looking at the way the assets have been transferred out there probably wont be much/anything for the bigger debts.

The best and most sensible recourse is through a credit card provider (it's why we pay the fees!) and/or PayPal.

HMRC are no longer preferential creditors they will get the same pennies in the pound as everyone else. Every other debt will be settled at the same rate as well, except for of course the administrators.

Why are HRMC no longer potential creditors? Have they decided no tax was owed?

Herzlos wrote:
Why are HRMC no longer potential creditors? Have they decided no tax was owed?

They are potential, but they are not preferential. They get no special treatment and will get the same pennies on the dollar as all other creditors.

My bad. I thought HRMC always came first though?

Herzlos wrote:
My bad. I thought HRMC always came first though?

You're right but out of date....They were automatically a prefered creditor up to 2003 when the law changed

now they are (usually) in the same position as other unsecured creditors

(which is a good thing as there is less insentive for them to trigger insolvency in a company that might trade their way out of trouble, but has a large outstanding tax bill)

Tim Fisher (Mierce Minatures) ex- MG gave an insight on the view within Maelstrom over at the Beatmen Forum, The Herdstone - in response to a comment from one of our locals.

I've reproduced his response over on my blog (url in sig) if you want to read the whole thing - very long.

Upshot is/was that Mierce and Rob Lane have acted with no malice.

Not sure I'm drinking that kool-aid but it is interesting to get a counter-viewpoint.

plc

PLC

all well and good repeating and posting an interview with someone but no one has asked them any hard questions.

Obviously I am an interested party. But claiming the transaction was all above board I think is something we will leave for the Administrators to investigate especially as oh a day before it went through the assets for the miniatures range were specifically valued at over £130k. So either the value was underplayed in the transaction or the accounts were false.

We have so much negative information and evidence of odd activities that we will demand are investigated that when the administrators report is issued it will be very interesting.

As discussed in N&R earlier today I'd be quite interested to read what the administrators have to say on that sale as well.
However, if they had that line valued at £130k they were using it as a trick to make the company look more solvent. Sorry, but the BL/BL line was not anywhere near that valuable and anyone buying it at anywhere near that price would have been deeply out of pocket on it even years later, with all the luck in the world on sales and development. it's a nice line, but £130k is just way too much.

This is a worrying bit.

"GW will soon be bringing in a new addition to their T&Cs. Retailers will be limited to selling £75k of GW product a year. By comparison that's roughly the amount MG would order from GW in two weeks. Yup, two weeks and GW was roughly 50-55% of MGs turnover."

It sounds like just the right amount of pants on head stupidity from GW to sound true.

 Compel wrote:
This is a worrying bit.

"GW will soon be bringing in a new addition to their T&Cs. Retailers will be limited to selling £75k of GW product a year. By comparison that's roughly the amount MG would order from GW in two weeks. Yup, two weeks and GW was roughly 50-55% of MGs turnover."

It sounds like just the right amount of pants on head stupidity from GW to sound true.

I wouldn't worry. I think this came from an ill informed misunderstanding of GW's current terms to claim that processing orders over £75,000 can take longer to deliver than smaller orders to an indy.

It is very difficult to limit sales volumes in the EU, by difficult I mean not going to happen whilst GW are also competing with those they supply.

They would be within their rights to do so if they chose to only sell into retail, not distribution from now on, I believe. Otherwise, they'd be having a ball with the EC indeed
The US might be a different story - but there they basically depend on 3rd party distributors for the majority of sales, I believe.
In short: EU: not bloody likely, US: not bloody likely

 Compel wrote:
This is a worrying bit.

"GW will soon be bringing in a new addition to their T&Cs. Retailers will be limited to selling £75k of GW product a year. By comparison that's roughly the amount MG would order from GW in two weeks. Yup, two weeks and GW was roughly 50-55% of MGs turnover."

It sounds like just the right amount of pants on head stupidity from GW to sound true.

As others have said I don’t buy this – sounds to me like someone has misunderstood something GW have said. Besides anything else I’m reasonably sure that it would be against EU freedom of trade laws, though not being a legal expert I’m prepared to admit I may be wrong on that.

What I think may be more likely is that they have said something like for a year we can only garantee £75k of product a week/month, which could well just be a desire to ensure even small retailers get stock and may be an attempt to increase the quality of finecast – afterall less stock selling means they can take more time over quality production. No idea if that is true, but sounds much more likely than GW simply deciding to stop selling things to their biggest customers.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
A couple of other points that I find interesting in the article.

I don’t know the company structure of either MG or Mierce but from what is said it sounds like, even though they are separate entities, Rob Lane is still the chief of both. Obviously if no money was invested from MG into Mierce then there is nothing wrong with that, but if cash was funnelled from MG to Mierce in the build up to the problems then that is underhand, I’m not saying it was but I’ve seen it happen before.

GW cutting off international sales will have hit MG hard – this was a given, it reads like the guy is saying Rob Lane is a victim of GW in this, but that just isn’t the case. Any business is just that, a business, if Rob Lane wasn’t prepared to cut costs to fit in with his lost business then he shouldn’t have been in business in the first place. It’s unfortunate, but if he was still paying 20 staff but only processing half the orders then he was a bad business manager – what did the staff do all day?

Mierce have been shipping orders out of their own pocket, something they do not have to do. I’m not aware of anyone complaining directly about Mierce but if they are then this is unfair. The only possible thing that could be complained about here is the possibility of cash being transferred to the company from MG, and again at the moment there is no evidence that that happened.

However the biggest thing he is wrong about is his defence of Rob Lane, he claims he didn’t rip anyone off and was just trying to get his business back in order – that the debt was being repaid. What he fails to mention is that he was taking orders he knew he could not fulfil, that the debt was being repaid from the money customers gave him that should have been being used to purchase the goods they ordered from the suppliers. Maybe Rob Lane didn’t do this maliciously, maybe it was an honest attempt to get himself out of some serious trouble that went badly wrong – but the fact is, whether it was malicious or not, he did rip a lot of people off as he charged them for items and didn't even bother to order the items from the supplier.

Is it proven that a former Maelstrom employee is a sex pest / bully? If not is it wise to leave those posts up?

Stranger83 wrote:

What I think may be more likely is that they have said something like for a year we can only garantee £75k of product a week/month, which could well just be a desire to ensure even small retailers get stock and may be an attempt to increase the quality of finecast – afterall less stock selling means they can take more time over quality production. No idea if that is true, but sounds much more likely than GW simply deciding to stop selling things to their biggest customers.

More likely I would guess that large orders are sloower because the constraints of the warehouse meen that they neet to be handled in a diffrent way. Possibly moving from boxing to palatisation, which given that GWs mostly set up to serve there own shops who all have box diliverys, may take time to do.

That statement is very interesting the first half is more convincing than anything malestrom has out. The second half however smacks of skewed perspective presenting a MG that was eating itself from the inside as compassionate rather than mismanaged, MG didn't die due to a short term liquidity problem it died due to massive debt.

We Mierce guys always wanted to be separate from MG as we wanted to be independent of any retailer

Finally, many months before MG went belly up we paid an amount to MG for the range that was valued by an independent, professional valuer.

Mierce's future remains very much under Rob's stewardship

And Rob struggles to pay his mortgage every month and feed his missus and kids like the rest of us. There's no throne of gold that he's cackling atop

Something doesn't sound right in here but I have no more lunch time to pick something out. Rob bought or was part of a group that bought Mierce despite having a large staff massivley lowered income (200k debt on Mg at years end) and no "throne of gold". Whoever gave him credit must have balls of steel if not tungsten.

That is an interesting perspective from one side of the coin, shame it doesn't cover how they (MG) were never going to clear their debts, why they were taking people's cash even though they know they couldn't get stock anymore, why it was necessary to split off the two profitable companies from the debtor company (MG) and why a greater amount (from the 10's of thousands allegedly paid for Mierce) was never used to clear some of the debts.

To me it all sounds like there may be a bit of cut and pasting going on on the old accounts! It's obviously a shameless attempt to wriggle out from under the collapse of Maelstrom. Makes sense if the new companies are to survive but it's quite offensive to those of us who have lost out.

And it doesn't cover at all the lies about the warehouse move... how many months was that supposedly going on?

rigeld2 wrote:
And it doesn't cover at all the lies about the warehouse move... how many months was that supposedly going on?

It has been going on for to long.

Anyway, my bank and Paypal can't help me anymore.
Let's hope we get our miniatures or money sometime :(

I received parts of my order I made with Maelstrom during the warehouse-move sales (I only ordered Darklands items). So they appear to honour some part at least. Now I am hoping that I will get the rest of the order, too.

rich1231 wrote:
PLC

But claiming the transaction was all above board I think is something we will leave for the Administrators to investigate especially as oh a day before it went through the assets for the miniatures range were specifically valued at over £130k. So either the value was underplayed in the transaction or the accounts were false.

We have so much negative information and evidence of odd activities that we will demand are investigated that when the administrators report is issued it will be very interesting.

It's interesting seeing the statment of Mierce - " And Rob struggles to pay his mortgage every month and feed his missus and kids like the rest of us. There's no throne of gold that he's cackling atop."

If this is the case, while struggling to house his family and with 200-500K of debt in his copmpany where did Rob (Mierce) get 130K to pay Rob (maelstrom) to buy the miniatures line?

 Compel wrote:
This is a worrying bit.

"GW will soon be bringing in a new addition to their T&Cs. Retailers will be limited to selling £75k of GW product a year. By comparison that's roughly the amount MG would order from GW in two weeks. Yup, two weeks and GW was roughly 50-55% of MGs turnover."

It sounds like just the right amount of pants on head stupidity from GW to sound true.

Will not happen unless GW, for some reason know they can't keep porduction up. GW would limit retailers to a min. of 75K a year, by the way they work.

Now as for not being able to support his family, means.... get a part time job, NOT lie and steal people money to feed them. I guess he figured if we could spend money on models with must have money to waste, so why not take there money with no plans to do anything for them. Rob must be a good guy.

Troll1 wrote:

You may of noticed I've not mentioned Gary Moore
Who had to leave. Maelstrom because of been a sex pest to the young female members of staff

Do you have a court docket or other public record to back this up? If not, this is libel.

Reported.

Ah, I don't think we have to worry to much about the 75k a year to be honest. As long as Gw is a retailer and manufacturer they're not allowed to impose these limits (at least in the EU) unless they are valid for all retail outlets which would include GW's own stores, and even their direct website store.

Ofcourse unless they know more about an impending Brixit than we do that is

 Gertjan wrote:
Ofcourse unless they know more about an impending Brixit than we do that is

Well, they seem to know things about IP law that baffles every professional

If anyone is interested, I've received my entire order I placed with Maelstrom Games from Mierce Miniatures (I only ordered Darklands items). It was quite a large order of £250. So we know that MM is trying to take care of their customers to the best of their abilities.

I was logging into Mainsfield Miniatures site and although my account details seemed to work, every time I went to check my orders I got kicked out ot of login. Today I was finally able to check my transferred orderd and was quite surprised to see that both of them have been canceled. I have no idea when did this happen and reasons for this.

I'll transfer a bit of a post from the Kingdom Death :Monster KS thread over here, from Adam Poots the owner and brains behind Kingdom Death

"I also worked for a short while with Maelstrom games and I regret not doing more research in regards to the operation before I agreed. If there are any KD fans out there that orders my product from Maelstorm please contact me and I will personally make amends."

so if any of you didn't get kingdom death minis from maelstrom (and have not had a refund from your CC/Paypal) contact Adam via PM,

you can find him participating in this thread as kingdomdeath

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/930/490911.page

Little update
Up to press mg rant actually in receivership
No receiver appointed
Told Rob lane needs to pay for this this and strangely he won't
The longer meirce miniatures are separate the less chance of them still been linked to mg
As for them paying for mg to become a separate enterty where would the money of come from as they where part of mg at that time
So was this a transaction on paper only or was it a promise of goods in lieu

Troll1 wrote:
Little update
Up to press mg rant actually in receivership
No receiver appointed
Told Rob lane needs to pay for this this and strangely he won't
The longer meirce miniatures are separate the less chance of them still been linked to mg
As for them paying for mg to become a separate enterty where would the money of come from as they where part of mg at that time
So was this a transaction on paper only or was it a promise of goods in lieu

I can honestly say that I didn't understand a single thing in your post...

Agreed.

Finally rung my bank (at the bank) to try and settle this, first try was un-successful, I was told it was actually my fault because once I enter my card details on the site, they have the right to do what they want, it was my fault I got scammed so yeah, was about to leave it and my father told me to ask someone at the desk and thank god he did, the lady rung back up stating I wasnt helped at all and put me back on to im pretty sure, the same advisor and gave the same story, never received items, requested refund twice with no reply bla bla and this time they said it would be settled.

So heres hoping its ok

Troll1 wrote:
Little update
Up to press mg rant actually in receivership
No receiver appointed
Told Rob lane needs to pay for this this and strangely he won't
The longer meirce miniatures are separate the less chance of them still been linked to mg
As for them paying for mg to become a separate enterty where would the money of come from as they where part of mg at that time
So was this a transaction on paper only or was it a promise of goods in lieu

You know, main issue still is that I accidentally a Maelstrom Games.

Troll1 wrote:
Little update
Up to press mg rant actually in receivership
No receiver appointed
Told Rob lane needs to pay for this this and strangely he won't
The longer meirce miniatures are separate the less chance of them still been linked to mg
As for them paying for mg to become a separate enterty where would the money of come from as they where part of mg at that time
So was this a transaction on paper only or was it a promise of goods in lieu

At the present time Maelstrom games are not technically in receivership as a receiver has not been apointed yet.
I have been informed that it is Rob Lane's responsibility to do this and as of present he has not.
The more time elapses the less likely meirce are to be considered an asset of MG.
I am dubious of "them" purchasing the Meirce component of MG as a spinoff company as I cannot envision where the funds would come from if not from MG.
So was this a transaction an accounting sleight of hand only or was it a promise of goods in lieu?

That's my interpretation of it anyway other translators may have variations.

Is there any way to confirm the first part?

So...is troll1 now trolling the other way and saying MG is to blame? I thought he was defending them previously

The thing with receivers is they, understandably, ask for payment up front.

If neither Rob or MG are liquid, as appears to be the case, this produces a Mexican standoff.

If MG has no assets left to sell, then the only option is to petition Companies House to have the company struck off. The issue is any creditor can object if they feel there is a chance of recovering some of their debt.

It's a situation I narrowly avoided myself when I'll health forced me to give up work, it's no fun. But then I didn't leave my creditors or customers in the lurch, so head the benefit of some goodwill.

Sining wrote:
So...is troll1 now trolling the other way and saying MG is to blame? I thought he was defending them previously

Obvious troll is obvious

Looks like the statement that BF customers will be receiving their orders has turned out to be as false as all their other statements. My order transferred over to this new MG website but has been packing for over 18 days now. Just looks as though thy are stalling for time for some reason ..

BF are also refusing to respond to questions on their forum

There's little reason for anyone not related to the mess to send out MGs orders

cdb812 wrote:
Looks like the statement that BF customers will be receiving their orders has turned out to be as false as all their other statements. My order transferred over to this new MG website but has been packing for over 18 days now. Just looks as though thy are stalling for time for some reason ..

BF are also refusing to respond to questions on their forum

There's little reason for them to. You purchased it from Maelstrom, and it's up to Maelstrom to send you the products. That's the danger of ordering through a third party - the third party might not actually use your money to order your product and send it to you.

Otoh, there are some things I would prefer to order through a third party, mostly because I don't trust the first party not to go and screw me over

Sining wrote:
Otoh, there are some things I would prefer to order through a third party, mostly because I don't trust the first party not to go and screw me over

If you don't trust the first party not to screw you over, why do you trust they won't screw over the third party?

Probably cause the third party would have a lot more legal clout than single consumers.

There are somethings I would only buy from online retailers who have it in stock than the manufacturers who would produce it only when I order it for instance

I am sort of glad that I did not cancel the credit card charge-back after I received notification about my order transfer... I had that gut feeling that an order being transferred to third party =/ the order being instantly sent. They were processing it in the true spirit of MG (i.e. for one month) and then suddenly I was no longer able to log into Mainsfeld website for a week. Now, when I log in, all orders are marked as being cancelled.

 -Loki- wrote:

cdb812 wrote:
Looks like the statement that BF customers will be receiving their orders has turned out to be as false as all their other statements. My order transferred over to this new MG website but has been packing for over 18 days now. Just looks as though thy are stalling for time for some reason ..

BF are also refusing to respond to questions on their forum

There's little reason for them to. You purchased it from Maelstrom, and it's up to Maelstrom to send you the products. That's the danger of ordering through a third party - the third party might not actually use your money to order your product and send it to you.

Agreed, but they did say they were actively working with Rob to ensure all orders were fulfilled. That's what people have been asking questions about. Sorry, should have been more specific

I'd guess that was just meant they were still prepared to sell BF stock to Rob's companies if he paid for it up front so he could fullfill his orders

rather than them paying his debts out of their own pockets

But I could be wrong, try approaching BF direct and see what they say, at least that will tell you where you stand

@ sining
I have never tried to defend rob lane or what he has done

I asked people to give the eye of the storm a chance as there was a lot of people working there who relied on it for work
( but now that rob lane has made all but two redundant that's not important )
Now it's more important that people know what games rob lane is playing
He hasn't made any attempt to liquidate maelstrom games
Which leaves everybody in limbo
Customers and staff

Re the receivership, as far as I can remember, no it's not RL responsibility to do so. If WG have taken them to court and proven a debt that is due payment, then it's up to them to proceed to a receviership and thence to liquidation.

No matter how badly RL has behaved, the lack of action lies with WG/Court.

Cheers

Andrew

Just read Tim fishers comments on headstone forum about how it's a totally separate entity from maelstrom

A few things puzzled me

1 he and other staff payed there own wages by selling figures on eBay sold to maelstrom

2 with the best will in the world how did they as a separate entity sell enough of maelstroms second hand on eBay to raise the 120 k to buy the range rent the unit set it up and move to it

3 so if I'm right
They sold maelstroms second hand to raise the money
Paid maelstrom for the range with it's own money
Set up the unit and moved with maelstroms money

Not bad for a totally independent entity

As for rob struggling for money and taking care of his staff
Half of my posts have been about how poorly his staff have fared in the last few months
Have any of them received there redundancy money
I don't think so
Perhaps if he sold his £16000 land rover he brought six months ago he could pay back some of the people he owes

Or even better get Tim fisher back selling second hand for a few months and they could clear all the debts off

What a load of total bxxxxcks that statement was
Then again it's Christmas and we all love a good fairy tale at Christmas

Troll1 wrote:
Just read Tim fishers comments on headstone forum about how it's a totally separate entity from maelstrom

A few things puzzled me

1 he and other staff payed there own wages by selling figures on eBay sold to maelstrom

2 with the best will in the world how did they as a separate entity sell enough of maelstroms second hand on eBay to raise the 120 k to buy the range rent the unit set it up and move to it

3 so if I'm right
They sold maelstroms second hand to raise the money
Paid maelstrom for the range with it's own money
Set up the unit and moved with maelstroms money

Not bad for a totally independent entity

As for rob struggling for money and taking care of his staff
Half of my posts have been about how poorly his staff have fared in the last few months
Have any of them received there redundancy money
I don't think so
Perhaps if he sold his £16000 land rover he brought six months ago he could pay back some of the people he owes

Or even better get Tim fisher back selling second hand for a few months and they could clear all the debts off

What a load of total bxxxxcks that statement was
Then again it's Christmas and we all love a good fairy tale at Christmas

You chose the wrong name if you want people to read your posts and take you seriously i think.

Forgive the odd posting format, I can't get multiquote to work for love nor money.


alphaecho (regarding my first post):

I wouldn't say pointless. It just adds to a point others have made that how many people who are not regular posters have also been ...how can I put it?...ill-served by Maelstrom? Forum posters are the tip of an iceberg.

I'm aware of at least 4 other local gamers that were stung, and I'm not even part of 'the scene'.


grefven:

If MG had gone out and told us, the customers, "Hey, we are in heavy debts, and we will most likely fold our business shortly," how would you react to that? Would you continue buying or would you rather not?

I personally would have been fine with this, assuming they were honest about what was actually in-stock. I have no trouble buying from struggling businesses, but I take exception to being lied to (as was the case here).

Realistically, there's a middle ground between shouting your failure from the rooftops and diddling your customers. Sure, you don't advertise your financial problems, but knowingly taking money for orders you know you can't fulfill... that's unforgivable.

Maelstrom Games Mass email wrote:
Hi there,

You are receiving this e-mail because you have ordered BaneLegions or Templar's Forge products from ourselves in the past. As Maelstrom Games is currently undergoing liquidation and will cease to exist in 2013, you cannot buy those products from us any more, but of course you can get them from the company we sold the BaneLegions and Templar's Forge ranges to back in May - Mierce Miniatures!

As well as that, those nice guys at Mierce (www.mierce-miniatures.com) are currently running a 20% off UK RRP festive sale until the 2nd of January on their Darklands and BaneLegions ranges, so if you'd like to grab some of those amazing miniatures such as such as Krull or The Terror of Fortriu or Kraan or Euryalia or tons of others, including their superb new releases Clundwr, Uuthüll, Hirakoth and Arthyen of Carn Maen, now's the time!


THE MIERCE MINIATURES VOUCHER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Their 20% off UK RRP discount voucher ends on Wednesday the 2nd of January 2013 at midnight (GMT), and it will work on all of the items in the Mierce Miniatures webstore from the BaneLegions and Darklands ranges but not on any Templar's Forge products or Components.

Your voucher code is: CHRISTMAS-SALE

To use this voucher simply register on their webstore, www.mierce-miniatures.com (if you haven't already), copy and paste the code into the Voucher field in your basket when you have selected the items you want, press 'REDEEM', and the webstore will do the rest. You are not limited to one purchase and, indeed, Mierce asks you to recommend them to your friends with this voucher!

Happy Ordering!


UNSUBSCRIBE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you feel you have received this e-mail in error or do not wish to be a part of our mailing list, simply visit the Mailing List page at http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/index.php?act=mai and unsubscribe from there by entering your e-mail address. You will not be mailed again and we would like to apologise for any annoyance we have caused to you by sending this e-mail.


MAELSTROM GAMES LTD
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Registered in England and Wales as a Company
Company No.: 4724863
VAT Reg No.: 804 3874 30
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Registered Office: 106 Carter Lane, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. NG18 3DH

Wow. Just wow.

They've got brass. Not a lot of brains, but a lot of brass -_-

Surely the format of that mail and the like actually helps the argument that may have hypothetically been put forward as 'the two companies are not really particularly separate entities and so should be considered as 1 in the liquidation.'

 Compel wrote:
Surely the format of that mail and the like actually helps the argument that may have hypothetically been put forward as 'the two companies are not really particularly separate entities and so should be considered as 1 in the liquidation.'

Unfortunately, nope. They can be run from the same office and by the same people, if they have two seperate registration numbers from companies house, they are two seperate companies. The best that can be done is that a director loses his 'right' to be a director and as such the other company goes down due to that, but highly unlikely.

Dammit! I am really mad now. First, MG submitted that Templar's Forge will be closed and thus 75% discount was in force. After I picked up some of the TF stuff, the whole thing happened and then later I received an e-mail that some of my orders could be transferred, and some not - the latter included TF products. Now, Maunsfeld Games had cancelled my transferred Battlefront and Forged in Battle orders without any explanations and any feedback in that respect, whereas at the same time Merce Miniatures still offers TF products... I really hope that I will get the money back via VISA chargeback and I am happy that I did not cancel the chargeback proceedings, when Maunsfeld Games contacted me with their "generous proposal"... I had that gut feeling that this offer did not meant that I will eventually get those miniatures...

As discussed in the Mierce thread, you can't unsubscribe from that email list. And you got that email even if you unsubscribed months ago.

OK, just to let everybody know - today I received full chargeback from VISA so I went out of this with zero losses - except of certain degree of anguish and distress...

 AndrewC wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Surely the format of that mail and the like actually helps the argument that may have hypothetically been put forward as 'the two companies are not really particularly separate entities and so should be considered as 1 in the liquidation.'

Unfortunately, nope. They can be run from the same office and by the same people, if they have two seperate registration numbers from companies house, they are two seperate companies. The best that can be done is that a director loses his 'right' to be a director and as such the other company goes down due to that, but highly unlikely.

Actualy it dose cause problems for them, as according to that email it has come from Maelstrom, and Maelstrom are still trading. It is probably an error but they are digging themselfs a hole there. If any of there big debtors pick up on this there would be trouble. Anyone how got that email want to pass it on to some of the wholesalers or GW? (Try tradeinternetenquires@games-workshop.co.uk )

I also managed to get my money back on my VISA, took 7 days but it got there.

Say a lot of things about Maelstrom/Mierce, but no denying that they have balls of solid brass!

I see that Mierce mini's now have a Kickstarter running, asking for funds to help expand their mini's range. I think I'll pass and keep my cash this time.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Say a lot of things about Maelstrom/Mierce, but no denying that they have balls of solid brass!

People in the military have balls of brass, as do members of the Emergency services as does anyone else who protects and put their life on the line to protect society.

You are confused, he is simply an unscrupulous *******.

The term is unscrupulous.

Adjective
Having or showing no moral principles; not honest or fair.
Synonyms
unprincipled - unconscionable - conscienceless

This thread is awesome. It took me two days of reading on my spare time to get through the whole 56 pages.

So who is everybody going to be purchasing from now?

I'll probably be buying my stuff from ebay now. I'd really like to know if there's a site that offers free shipping just like Maelstrom did.

 Far Seer wrote:
I'll probably be buying my stuff from ebay now. I'd really like to know if there's a site that offers free shipping just like Maelstrom did.

There are many online store that offer free shipping - take a look at the "retailers giving the biscuit" thread in discussions.

Wayland ship free over a certain order, hell even GW will ship for free!

 notprop wrote:

 Far Seer wrote:
I'll probably be buying my stuff from ebay now. I'd really like to know if there's a site that offers free shipping just like Maelstrom did.

There are many online store that offer free shipping - take a look at the "retailers giving the biscuit" thread in discussions.

Wayland ship free over a certain order, hell even GW will ship for free!

Neither ship GW stuff to the Antipodes, however. The rest of your Australasian counterparts order from US based websites - I don't know their shipping costs but I would be surprised if neither offered some form of free or discounted shipping. The usual suspects that crop up in these discussions are the Warstore and Dicebucket.

Oh yeah. I noticed that thread a while back, gotta go check it. As for the US based webstores...

Shipping is mostly atrocious for Australia. And it's going to get even worse because of USPS raising its prices.

This might be slightly off-topic, but I wanted to follow this discussion, how do I subscribe to topics without replying, if I have nothing to add to it myself?

Bottom left corner of the web page there's a subscribe link.

 Far Seer wrote:
Oh yeah. I noticed that thread a while back, gotta go check it. As for the US based webstores...

Shipping is mostly atrocious for Australia. And it's going to get even worse because of USPS raising its prices.

The Warstore is worse than most for shipping. I've been getting some GW stuff from Discount Games Store. There's also a guy called Abaddon (with some slight spelling variation) on ebay who is in the US and is ok for postage..

Looks like the motion to formerly wind up Maelstrom has now gone into the courts and we might actually find out how bad things really were soon........might even get 10p back for very £ I've lost too! (if we're lucky)

That's progress, at least

Is there a source for further reading on this, or is there nothing much to know beyond the fact it's starting the court system, with future updates in the next year or so?

Im told the court date is tuesday 9th april In manchester or leeds but with anything you hear about mg you never can be sure

I'm just going to leave this here http://www.maunsfeld-gaming.com/

"Fool me once"

Oh and apparently it's everybody who he robbed fault.

Hi there
I'm sorry to have to say this, but Maunsfeld Gaming is now closed for the foreseeable future, including tonight.
Maunsfeld Gaming is going into liquidation shortly; the company is not insolvent - there's enough assets to cover any debts - but the longer it carries on, the more debts will accumulate and it will achieve critical mass at some point. With the attendance falling, organisers cancelling events, terrain being stolen, staff leaving, not being able to stock Games Workshop products in the store and the quite breathtaking and totally unjustified vitriol on the internet from some quarters, it seems the venue is no longer wanted by most.
I know this is a major disappointment for those of you that still attend but I have no alternative but to call an end to it.
Someone may take the assets over and start it up again as a new business, or perhaps one of you wishes to do so, or maybe a consortium of you; if that is the case, please speak to the Insolvency Practitioner involved - Chris Brown of Hart Shaw at chris.brown@hartshaw.co.uk - and you can discuss that with him.
Note that I've been trying to sell it - even give it away - since January, as I realised fairly quickly that the venue was going nowhere with me in charge, but nobody's particularly bothered about taking it on and I'm just throwing money away by keeping it going.
I hope you all understand why this has happened and that it's not what I or our staff wanted. I wanted to sell the company, perhaps even the assets alone, so that someone can keep it going, but nobody seems to want to take it on, so that's that.
May I take this opportunity to thank all of you that have attended the club nights at the mill over the past few years; you have been superb and I hope you have all enjoyed the facilities we put so much effort and time (and money) in to provide.
Thank you.
Pre-Paid Attendance
If any of you believe you are owed monies for the pre-payment of club night attendance, please reply to this message and you will be refunded in due course.
Cheers
Rob Lane
Managing Director
Maunsfeld Gaming Ltd

It will be interesting to see what gets liquidated first, Maunsfield, or Maelstrom

Can't they pump that sweet, sweet Kickstarter money into this? I see that it's the same owner, so why not?

Unjustified vitriol?

You effectively STOLE PEOPLE'S MONEY!

I can't say I'm surprised, either that it's folded or that no-one wants to take the company off his hands after the reputation hit.

What I don't follow is the claims that it's still solvent; if the company is still solvent but closing down, why is it with a liquidation agent? Surely he'd just have a clearout sale and close down whilst trying to sell off whatever he can?

As has been mentioned, I wonder how this will affect the 'totally-a-separate-company-honest' miniatures company and the kickstarter. Presumably it was started whilst he was trying to get money to prop up the store...?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
Unjustified vitriol?

You effectively STOLE PEOPLE'S MONEY!

I did get a chuckle from that, as if he genuinely thinks that changing the company name will make everyone happy, when it was a blatant attempt to dodge responsibility.

 azreal13 wrote:
Unjustified vitriol?

You effectively STOLE PEOPLE'S MONEY!

No no no... Maelstrom Games, owned by Rob Lane, was the company that had the issues. Maunsfield Gaming is owned by Rob Lane... totally different

A new game shop can't profit in it's first year? Who would have thought such a thing was possible.
Sarcasm aside He was out of line with the "unjustified vitrol" line. There is a certain small section of the population who are very justified in their vitrol.

I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

What's really strange is how he said he was trying to sell/give the store away and no one would take it. I'm pretty sure if he set a low enough price, people would have taken the offer if only for the assets/stocks and then just rebranded under a new name and most importantly, WITHOUT Rob Lane. That probably would have worked.

And yeah, why is it undergoing insolvency if it's just closing?

"there's enough assets to cover any debts"

But not enough to cover the people left out of pocket by Maelstrom, one would assume.

Herzlos wrote:
Surely he'd just have a clearout sale and close down whilst trying to sell off whatever he can?

Sounds familliar...

SeanDrake wrote:
I'm just going to leave this here http://www.maunsfeld-gaming.com/
Maunsfeld Gaming is going into liquidation shortly; the company is not insolvent - there's enough assets to cover any debts - but the longer it carries on, the more debts will accumulate and it will achieve critical mass at some point. With the attendance falling, organisers cancelling events, terrain being stolen, staff leaving, not being able to stock Games Workshop products in the store and the quite breathtaking and totally unjustified vitriol on the internet from some quarters, it seems the venue is no longer wanted by most.
I wanted to sell the company, perhaps even the assets alone, so that someone can keep it going, but nobody seems to want to take it on, so that's that.

No great surprise! Typical Rob Lane - blame everyone else, did he really expect to screw over thousands of customers and suppliers and still have them turn up to the venue funded by his mis-deeds or allow him to sell their stock? Staff leaving - at least they were sensible not to wait for the fall (of course it it was viable as a business he'd have replaced them). OK people should not be stealing stuff - but maybe that was them getting a refund of sorts! - Sorry can't really condone that sort of behavior (but is he really the one to be complaining about it all things considered). Did he really write "unjustified" ........really??????

As MG is about to go through the courts does anyone else see this as a a bit weird? Everyone knows that Maunsfeld was part of MG and contained saved stock from MG, plus it was all funded in the first place by MG, surely it would get pulled back into the MG hole which is why no one wanted to buy it? I think this is another dodge by the director to try and prevent whatever assets are remaining going into the main administration and get a bit more to line his pockets if he can.

Riquende wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Surely he'd just have a clearout sale and close down whilst trying to sell off whatever he can?

Sounds familliar...

Yeah but what I mean is that he could have been above board with it and run a closing down sale (not a warehouse moving sale), rather than letting administrators deal with it and get less back. Why would a business that has enough money to cover it's debts hand everything over to administrators?

Unless it's been wrapped up as part of the Maelstrom liquidation.

Herzlos wrote:
As has been mentioned, I wonder how this will affect the 'totally-a-separate-company-honest' miniatures company and the kickstarter. Presumably it was started whilst he was trying to get money to prop up the store...?

That's the precise reason I didn't put any money into the KS. I hope nobody (else) loses out because of this.

Well they say bad things come in threes so lets hope that all those people who invested in his KickStarter don't get burned as well.

Money and assets are not the same thing. Money is an asset but all assets are not money.

Suppose I owe you £100 and you demand payment. I don't have £100 (cash, an asset) but I have a car (an asset) worth £5,000. I need to sell the car to get the £100 cash to pay you. Perhaps I can't sell the car in a day.

For another example, I owe you £100 and someone owes me £120. (A debt is an asset.) You want your £100 but I can't give it to you until I get my £120 from the other guy, and I can't find him in a day.

It is nearly always lack of cashflow that sinks companies.

This has been your financial accounting lesson for the day.

I'm curious just what sort of debt MG could be owed and how significant it could be.

Maybe MG lent money to MM and MM refused to pay MG back -_-

Sining wrote:
I'm curious just what sort of debt MG could be owed and how significant it could be.

Maybe MG lent money to MM and MM refused to pay MG back -_-

What?

Well if i remember correctly there was mention of a considerable debt to at least one supplier which was bought out by.. wayland? Not entirely sure, but the information should be here earlier in the thread.

Starweaver wrote:
Well if i remember correctly there was mention of a considerable debt to at least one supplier which was bought out by.. wayland? Not entirely sure, but the information should be here earlier in the thread.

Nah, you've got it a bit arse about face, MM are owned by the same guy as MG was. The debt was with a distributor IIRC.

This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

SeanDrake wrote:

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

Pretty sure that notprop was being sarcastic.

SeanDrake wrote:

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

IMO you would have a lot more credibility in your one man crusade/vendetta if you didn't just make up hysterical rumours (like talking about Ponzi schemes on warseer) , foreign tax bills (how?), mortgages (on a rented property?) or the status of debts/grants that you have no information on

^ Seems legit.

Well from what I have heard the issue with Maelstrom very nearly sunk the UK's biggest wargame distributor when they went down as well, which would have been a big hit for any wargaming customers in the UK.

So, be thankful for small (or not so small!) mercies I guess..

 Pacific wrote:
Well from what I have heard the issue with Maelstrom very nearly sunk the UK's biggest wargame distributor when they went down

I didn't think anybody actually believed that rather fantastical claim by Wayland to justify their predatory actions

Razorback17 wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Well from what I have heard the issue with Maelstrom very nearly sunk the UK's biggest wargame distributor when they went down

I didn't think anybody actually believed that rather fantastical claim by Wayland to justify their predatory actions

Whatever you say, Rob.

Sigh because everybody who points out that a lot of internet forum claims or self-serving statements are obviously false hasto have links with or be Rob

No, but whenever you have three posts to your name on a new profile created today, and all your posts are in this thread running interference for Mr Lane, please do not be surprised if your actions seem somewhat suspect.

Well, yes, because I'm just imagining having several of my real life mates end up losing up to £200 each thanks to Maelstrom's/Maunsfield's business practices.

 AlexHolker wrote:

Razorback17 wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Well from what I have heard the issue with Maelstrom very nearly sunk the UK's biggest wargame distributor when they went down

I didn't think anybody actually believed that rather fantastical claim by Wayland to justify their predatory actions

Whatever you say, Rob.

Even the distributor himself (link buried in this thread too IIRC) said they were not in financial problem, but was more of a psychological thing, sorry but what Maelstrom did (in both incarnations) was outrageous, what Simple Miniatures did was bad for their reputation and what wayland did was a clever business move, but I cannot accept the biggest distributor of UK had grave issues with Maelstrom owning them money, financially not ideal, sure, breaking the company? no especially if a retailer could absorb it without an issue.

So yes, I condemn Rob for what he did, Applaud Rich for managing such maneuver, disapprove Simple miniatures decision but never believed that story.

Razorback17 wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

IMO you would have a lot more credibility in your one man crusade/vendetta if you didn't just make up hysterical rumours (like talking about Ponzi schemes on warseer) , foreign tax bills (how?), mortgages (on a rented property?) or the status of debts/grants that you have no information on

Normally I ignore Maelstrom trolls but the debts to suppliers and customers is pretty much known while I certainly discovered some of the issues with maelstrom by use of companies house and the accounts they filed the rest was information simply compiled from this thread finally a quick lesson in the murky world of tax and VAT .

"Payment of VAT by online retailers is a very sticky area, although the principles are simple. VAT is chargeable on goods sold within a country using e-commerce or distance selling methods (eg mail order). If you ship goods from one European country to another then VAT remains payable. Smaller businesses can simply charge their national VAT rate until a value threshold is reached, above which VAT must be charged at the national rate of the European consumer. In the UK the threshold is £70,000, €100,000 in France, Germany Netherlands, and Austria, and €35,000 in most other countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Finland. Retailers need to register in each of the countries where they have customers and pay VAT to the national authorities. So a UK e-tailer could simply charge 17.5% on sales until his foreign sales had reached £70,000 after which point he would charge 19.6% on goods to France, 25% on goods to Norway etc."

If I remember correctly there is a similar issue with Australian tax laws where monies are payable directly to them over a certain amount but I don't have that information to hand so you can do the leg work on that like a good little troll and come back if I am wrong.

Finally I have no vendetta I just like many others got screwed by maelstrom and it's management when they turned it into a zombie company to try and escape there debts and I do not like getting robbed.

 AlexHolker wrote:

Razorback17 wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Well from what I have heard the issue with Maelstrom very nearly sunk the UK's biggest wargame distributor when they went down

I didn't think anybody actually believed that rather fantastical claim by Wayland to justify their predatory actions

Whatever you say, Rob.

I admit, I laughed.

SeanDrake wrote:


Normally I ignore Maelstrom trolls but the debts to suppliers and customers is pretty much known while I certainly discovered some of the issues with maelstrom by use of companies house and the accounts they filed the rest was information simply compiled from this thread finally a quick lesson in the murky world of tax and VAT .

"Payment of VAT by online retailers is a very sticky area, although the principles are simple. VAT is chargeable on goods sold within a country using e-commerce or distance selling methods (eg mail order). If you ship goods from one European country to another then VAT remains payable. Smaller businesses can simply charge their national VAT rate until a value threshold is reached, above which VAT must be charged at the national rate of the European consumer. In the UK the threshold is £70,000, €100,000 in France, Germany Netherlands, and Austria, and €35,000 in most other countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Finland. Retailers need to register in each of the countries where they have customers and pay VAT to the national authorities. So a UK e-tailer could simply charge 17.5% on sales until his foreign sales had reached £70,000 after which point he would charge 19.6% on goods to France, 25% on goods to Norway etc."

If I remember correctly there is a similar issue with Australian tax laws where monies are payable directly to them over a certain amount but I don't have that information to hand so you can do the leg work on that like a good little troll and come back if I am wrong.

Finally I have no vendetta I just like many others got screwed by maelstrom and it's management when they turned it into a zombie company to try and escape there debts and I do not like getting robbed.

Australian Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a whole different kettle of fish because the main issue is current imports rather than exports (with goods below $1,000AUD not being subject to the 10% tax [in order to simplify this I'm speaking entirely in terms of miniatures/other online purchases rather than all the exceptions and additions]). This is a general 10% tax on all products except pretty much produce (and for some reason canned Irish stew - go figure) payable on purchase and owing to the government as a tax (in AUS prices are pretty much always shown after GST rather than before). The government is wanted to lower the threshold for GST payable on overseas/online purchases in a protectionist move to keep money in AUS rather than it going overseas (political discourse and not representative of us as people, only its elected members).

Funnily enough the threshold also includes postage for the product being bought, so AUS buyers beware.

Regardless, I like to think of these happenings with Maunsfield Gaming as some kind of narrative justice and a lesson in humility. Not quite schadenfreude, more like seeing some kind of intangible, indefinable balance returning.

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

SeanDrake wrote:

Razorback17 wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

IMO you would have a lot more credibility in your one man crusade/vendetta if you didn't just make up hysterical rumours (like talking about Ponzi schemes on warseer) , foreign tax bills (how?), mortgages (on a rented property?) or the status of debts/grants that you have no information on

Normally I ignore Maelstrom trolls but the debts to suppliers and customers is pretty much known while I certainly discovered some of the issues with maelstrom by use of companies house and the accounts they filed the rest was information simply compiled from this thread finally a quick lesson in the murky world of tax and VAT .

"Payment of VAT by online retailers is a very sticky area, although the principles are simple. VAT is chargeable on goods sold within a country using e-commerce or distance selling methods (eg mail order). If you ship goods from one European country to another then VAT remains payable. Smaller businesses can simply charge their national VAT rate until a value threshold is reached, above which VAT must be charged at the national rate of the European consumer. In the UK the threshold is £70,000, €100,000 in France, Germany Netherlands, and Austria, and €35,000 in most other countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Finland. Retailers need to register in each of the countries where they have customers and pay VAT to the national authorities. So a UK e-tailer could simply charge 17.5% on sales until his foreign sales had reached £70,000 after which point he would charge 19.6% on goods to France, 25% on goods to Norway etc."

If I remember correctly there is a similar issue with Australian tax laws where monies are payable directly to them over a certain amount but I don't have that information to hand so you can do the leg work on that like a good little troll and come back if I am wrong.

Finally I have no vendetta I just like many others got screwed by maelstrom and it's management when they turned it into a zombie company to try and escape there debts and I do not like getting robbed.

The only person trolling here is you - throwing out insults in an attempt to provoke a reaction and making ridiculous allegations. There is enough wrong with the situation - gamers losing their money, creditors losing out, tournament organisers being screwed over and the UK losing its best venue without making stuff up. Making up ridiculous rumours isn't needed, necessary and is counterproductive in an already bad situstion.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

Its in Mansfield, not Nottingham. Close, but still a bit of a distance away.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

Its in Mansfield, not Nottingham. Close, but still a bit of a distance away.

A distance by your standards, I think H.B.M.C. thinks like an Australian in that driving from top to the bottom of Ireland (well top of Northern Ireland to the bottom of the Republic) isn't really too far (it's what, 3 and a bit hours?)

edit: google maps says 36 minutes. Not too bad

Off topic: It takes more like 5 hours due to dodgey roads, depending on the route you take. The Ireland comparison.

There are other places to game in that area though AFAIK.

Razorback17 wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

Razorback17 wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 notprop wrote:
This make me soooooo MAD!

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

Poor Rob, maybe he'll be more lucky with his third attempt Maunstorm Games - Eye of the Maunstorm opening soon.

[SADFACE]

His 3rd attempt would be Mercie Miniatures and I guess he could be considered lucky after a successful Kickstarter, offloading all debts to his suppliers, avoiding a number of tax bills both foreign and domestic, dogging having to repay a grant from english heritage, paying off his mortgage and still retaining the rights to banelegions or whatever it's called now.

All above information gathered from earlier in this thread and other threads regarding his companies.

IMO you would have a lot more credibility in your one man crusade/vendetta if you didn't just make up hysterical rumours (like talking about Ponzi schemes on warseer) , foreign tax bills (how?), mortgages (on a rented property?) or the status of debts/grants that you have no information on

Normally I ignore Maelstrom trolls but the debts to suppliers and customers is pretty much known while I certainly discovered some of the issues with maelstrom by use of companies house and the accounts they filed the rest was information simply compiled from this thread finally a quick lesson in the murky world of tax and VAT .

"Payment of VAT by online retailers is a very sticky area, although the principles are simple. VAT is chargeable on goods sold within a country using e-commerce or distance selling methods (eg mail order). If you ship goods from one European country to another then VAT remains payable. Smaller businesses can simply charge their national VAT rate until a value threshold is reached, above which VAT must be charged at the national rate of the European consumer. In the UK the threshold is £70,000, €100,000 in France, Germany Netherlands, and Austria, and €35,000 in most other countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Finland. Retailers need to register in each of the countries where they have customers and pay VAT to the national authorities. So a UK e-tailer could simply charge 17.5% on sales until his foreign sales had reached £70,000 after which point he would charge 19.6% on goods to France, 25% on goods to Norway etc."

If I remember correctly there is a similar issue with Australian tax laws where monies are payable directly to them over a certain amount but I don't have that information to hand so you can do the leg work on that like a good little troll and come back if I am wrong.

Finally I have no vendetta I just like many others got screwed by maelstrom and it's management when they turned it into a zombie company to try and escape there debts and I do not like getting robbed.

The only person trolling here is you - throwing out insults in an attempt to provoke a reaction and making ridiculous allegations. There is enough wrong with the situation - gamers losing their money, creditors losing out, tournament organisers being screwed over and the UK losing its best venue without making stuff up. Making up ridiculous rumours isn't needed, necessary and is counterproductive in an already bad situstion.

I feel bad you fellers are falling out and keep quoting my little jape.

Why do bad things happen to nice people!!

This make me soooooo MAD!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

It was in Mansfield, not Nottingham. While the 18 miles between them is almost nothing to those residing in Australia or the US in the UK where distances seem to compress differently this is "a long way" and take "a long time" to get to. Remember our roads have roughly 30,000,000 vehicles on them in an area roughly the size of Wyoming and most of those are in England which is about the size of Louisiana.

Theres also the question of people playing non GW games, which GWHQ isn't likely to welcome with open arms.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:


Even the distributor himself (link buried in this thread too IIRC) said they were not in financial problem, but was more of a psychological thing, sorry but what Maelstrom did (in both incarnations) was outrageous, what Simple Miniatures did was bad for their reputation and what wayland did was a clever business move, but I cannot accept the biggest distributor of UK had grave issues with Maelstrom owning them money, financially not ideal, sure, breaking the company? no especially if a retailer could absorb it without an issue.

So yes, I condemn Rob for what he did, Applaud Rich for managing such maneuver, disapprove Simple miniatures decision but never believed that story.

What??????? Malestrom owed Simple vast sums of money and wasn't paying up so they sold the debt, Wayland bought the debt (as one of a few companies that made offers), Can't see how Maelstrom and Wayland are OK but Simple are the bad guys for calling in the debt collectors when they are one's who lost out the most, just because it wasn't going to damage Simple or bring them down - doesn't mean it's they would, or should allow Maelstrom to get away with it - it's not a EU bail-out fund for Maelstrom, (they are only a small family company not GW) If they'd have let him keep going more people would have lost out. I've read all the statements and had a look at the financials and it's pretty clear Maelstom were dead and buried but busily trying to salt assets and cash away before flat-lining. The fact that Wayland got to put the final nail into the coffin was a good move on their part but if it wasn't them it would just have been some nameless third party so what's the difference???

We'll now just have to wait for the courts (it's on it's way though the system now) to get this sorted out and see where all the money actually went? The customers paid MG, he didn't pay his supplies and and yet there was £300K of debt - how the hell did he manage to lose £200K on top of what was owing to Simple?

 SoulDrinker wrote:
how the hell did he manage to lose £200K on top of what was owing to Simple?

Probably went into starting / maintaining Mierce?

Just speculation here, I don't have any proof one way or the other.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

Its in Mansfield, not Nottingham. Close, but still a bit of a distance away.

Ah... Probably not much cross traffic between the two locations with all the crime around the latter and alot of incompetence on the part of law enforcement... but my info may be a bit olde.

So that's where my money went

I'll think I'll stick with driving the 40 minutes over to Simple to pick my stuff up! At least I can just take it off the shelves and see all the shiny goodness first hand. (or wait until they dig it out from the ridiculous amount of boxes that seem to come in and go out of their warehouse every day)

 SoulDrinker wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:


Even the distributor himself (link buried in this thread too IIRC) said they were not in financial problem, but was more of a psychological thing, sorry but what Maelstrom did (in both incarnations) was outrageous, what Simple Miniatures did was bad for their reputation and what wayland did was a clever business move, but I cannot accept the biggest distributor of UK had grave issues with Maelstrom owning them money, financially not ideal, sure, breaking the company? no especially if a retailer could absorb it without an issue.

So yes, I condemn Rob for what he did, Applaud Rich for managing such maneuver, disapprove Simple miniatures decision but never believed that story.

What??????? Malestrom owed Simple vast sums of money and wasn't paying up so they sold the debt, Wayland bought the debt (as one of a few companies that made offers), Can't see how Maelstrom and Wayland are OK but Simple are the bad guys for calling in the debt collectors when they are one's who lost out the most, just because it wasn't going to damage Simple or bring them down - doesn't mean it's they would, or should allow Maelstrom to get away with it - it's not a EU bail-out fund for Maelstrom, (they are only a small family company not GW) If they'd have let him keep going more people would have lost out. I've read all the statements and had a look at the financials and it's pretty clear Maelstom were dead and buried but busily trying to salt assets and cash away before flat-lining. The fact that Wayland got to put the final nail into the coffin was a good move on their part but if it wasn't them it would just have been some nameless third party so what's the difference???

We'll now just have to wait for the courts (it's on it's way though the system now) to get this sorted out and see where all the money actually went? The customers paid MG, he didn't pay his supplies and and yet there was £300K of debt - how the hell did he manage to lose £200K on top of what was owing to Simple?

From the information released from all parties Simple sold the debt to Wayland and he called in the debt collectors, if Simple had called in the debt collectors I would not mind, their money after all, but selling a debt to a competitor, that is a really bad precedent.

Koppo wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Dais wrote:
I feel bad for the locals who are losing their only shop though.

Only shop? It's in Nottinham, not far from GWHQ! People can play there.

It was in Mansfield, not Nottingham. While the 18 miles between them is almost nothing to those residing in Australia or the US in the UK where distances seem to compress differently this is "a long way" and take "a long time" to get to. Remember our roads have roughly 30,000,000 vehicles on them in an area roughly the size of Wyoming and most of those are in England which is about the size of Louisiana.

You also have to think that many of these roads were built in the 16th century for use by horse and carriage, and are practically unchanged since then despite the population of the country going up by about 50 million

Besides, Maelstrom was welcoming of all game systems and otherwise 'geeky' enterprises. Games Workshop HQ really wouldn't be chuffed if I rolled out SAGA or a game of Warlord's Pike & Shotte on one of their tables.

I live in Mansfield. It was a shame to see Maelstrom go the way it did. I regularly popped down for a chat with the staff and to purchase supplies that would otherwise require an internet order to fulfil.

 motyak wrote:
A distance by your standards, I think H.B.M.C. thinks like an Australian in that driving from top to the bottom of Ireland (well top of Northern Ireland to the bottom of the Republic) isn't really too far (it's what, 3 and a bit hours?)

edit: google maps says 36 minutes. Not too bad

This perception is universal. When my father first came to Australia (from England) he drove from where he was to the suburb I happen to live in. He checked to make sure there were motels in the area in case he had to stay the night. It’s a 30-40 min journey. To us that’s nothing, but England is a much smaller place, so such a drive seems longer. It’s very strange.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Theres also the question of people playing non GW games, which GWHQ isn't likely to welcome with open arms.

Other games? Non-GW?

I know not of what you speak. How do these so-called "non-GW games" factor into The HHHobby?

 Eiríkr wrote:
Besides, Maelstrom was welcoming of all game systems and otherwise 'geeky' enterprises. Games Workshop HQ really wouldn't be chuffed if I rolled out SAGA or a game of Warlord's Pike & Shotte on one of their tables.

I live in Mansfield. It was a shame to see Maelstrom go the way it did. I regularly popped down for a chat with the staff and to purchase supplies that would otherwise require an internet order to fulfil.

I miss it too I must admit, all i got now is GW and I get fed up with them following me around badgering me all the time.
I never met Rob and he sounds like an **** but I cannot deny the chaps in store were friendy and welcoming no matter what you wanted to play.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 motyak wrote:
A distance by your standards, I think H.B.M.C. thinks like an Australian in that driving from top to the bottom of Ireland (well top of Northern Ireland to the bottom of the Republic) isn't really too far (it's what, 3 and a bit hours?)

edit: google maps says 36 minutes. Not too bad

This perception is universal. When my father first came to Australia (from England) he drove from where he was to the suburb I happen to live in. He checked to make sure there were motels in the area in case he had to stay the night. It’s a 30-40 min journey. To us that’s nothing, but England is a much smaller place, so such a drive seems longer. It’s very strange.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Theres also the question of people playing non GW games, which GWHQ isn't likely to welcome with open arms.

Other games? Non-GW?

I know not of what you speak. How do these so-called "non-GW games" factor into The HHHobby?

Do you know how much we pay for fuel in the UK!, riddle solved.

Well in the suburbs of brisbane 1.40 a litre is about average, it's probably more in sydney. What is it there?

edit: that is southside suburbs about 15 mins from the city centre, dunno about in the city proper

Petrol is 1.45 a liter on average really, diesel around 151 a liter so in your money petrol 215 a liter and 223 a liter

Nasty, but I guess you need to drive less distance, although your trains do get bloody expensive when heading into london and such.

Our train system is ludicrously expensive. You're told to book months in advance to save money - what planet are these people on?

Actually - after living in several different countries around the world, amongst the developed nations I can confidently state that the UK has one of the most inefficient, expensive and just generally gakky transport networks of anywhere. Now with added pot holes, because the councils have run out of money to fix them.

Kind of on-topic, this place has gone now? A shame as I was hoping to attend the Flames of War event that they were going to run later in the year..

The cost of trains in the UK is completely ludicrous. It should be used as the poster child for "why you shouldn't privatise everything."

 Da Boss wrote:
The cost of trains in the UK is completely ludicrous. It should be used as the poster child for "why you shouldn't privatise everything."

Lets not get into a political debate, but living in York and visiting the National Rail museum has taught me that the reason the trains were privatised was because they were hemorrhaging money and were in crazy amounts of debt.

Thatcher didn't flog them because she was an absolute moron, they made loads of cash and she just decided to sell them for a laugh.

For it to be the poster child, they would have to be running at a profit surely?

Well, I don't want to get into a debate either, but I'm okay with public transport breaking even or losing money if it provides a good service. I dunno if britain's public rail was managing that, but the private service is hugely over priced and unreliable as hell.
For comparison, when I lived in Southend, I took the train 10 minutes to work every day in a nearby village. It cost me around £80 sterling a month for that ticket, which was only to/from those two stops and didn't include any other transport.

Here in Germany I am paying 65 euro a month (so, about fifty quid). I commute 30 minutes to work, but get access to every form of public transport within my zone, which takes me well outside the area of my commute, to different towns and cities entirely. I also get to take someone for free with me in the evenings or on weekends, and the system has a train every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes they get delayed, but it's nothing like what used to happen in Essex.

And Essex has a huge commuting population, considering London is a major metropolis. Dusseldorf is tiny by comparison. I reckon you guys are getting ripped off by privatisations all over the place, but that's another debate.

TL, DR, English gamers are reluctant to commute because their transport costs are utterly out of whack.

 Da Boss wrote:
Well, I don't want to get into a debate either, but I'm okay with public transport breaking even or losing money if it provides a good service. I dunno if britain's public rail was managing that, but the private service is hugely over priced and unreliable as hell.
For comparison, when I lived in Southend, I took the train 10 minutes to work every day in a nearby village. It cost me around £80 sterling a month for that ticket, which was only to/from those two stops and didn't include any other transport.

Here in Germany I am paying 65 euro a month (so, about fifty quid). I commute 30 minutes to work, but get access to every form of public transport within my zone, which takes me well outside the area of my commute, to different towns and cities entirely. I also get to take someone for free with me in the evenings or on weekends, and the system has a train every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes they get delayed, but it's nothing like what used to happen in Essex.

And Essex has a huge commuting population, considering London is a major metropolis. Dusseldorf is tiny by comparison. I reckon you guys are getting ripped off by privatisations all over the place, but that's another debate.

TL, DR, English gamers are reluctant to commute because their transport costs are utterly out of whack.

Oh yeah, fully agreed. Our trains fully take the slash.

I dont think its a good excuse for not going anywhere though... the bus service is good, I went to London with the missus on Tuesday and came back today, It was an entirely painless experience and it only cost us 30 quid.

The buses are fairly good, but I've met loads of people in the UK who won't take them. I used to use them whenever I'd visit friends in Oxford or Sheffield, they were fine.

 mattyrm wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Well, I don't want to get into a debate either, but I'm okay with public transport breaking even or losing money if it provides a good service. I dunno if britain's public rail was managing that, but the private service is hugely over priced and unreliable as hell.
For comparison, when I lived in Southend, I took the train 10 minutes to work every day in a nearby village. It cost me around £80 sterling a month for that ticket, which was only to/from those two stops and didn't include any other transport.

Here in Germany I am paying 65 euro a month (so, about fifty quid). I commute 30 minutes to work, but get access to every form of public transport within my zone, which takes me well outside the area of my commute, to different towns and cities entirely. I also get to take someone for free with me in the evenings or on weekends, and the system has a train every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes they get delayed, but it's nothing like what used to happen in Essex.

And Essex has a huge commuting population, considering London is a major metropolis. Dusseldorf is tiny by comparison. I reckon you guys are getting ripped off by privatisations all over the place, but that's another debate.

TL, DR, English gamers are reluctant to commute because their transport costs are utterly out of whack.

Oh yeah, fully agreed. Our trains fully take the slash.

I dont think its a good excuse for not going anywhere though... the bus service is good, I went to London with the missus on Tuesday and came back today, It was an entirely painless experience and it only cost us 30 quid.

Painless? Trying being 6'5"!

I travelled to London on the bus once, near 6 hours each way, incredibly cramped and while cheap, it doesn't compare to 2 hours on the train, with more space and a loo if I want it. I can do the nearest main station to Paddington return for 40 quid ish, booked a few weeks ahead. I don't call that bad value.

 Da Boss wrote:
Well, I don't want to get into a debate either, but I'm okay with public transport breaking even or losing money if it provides a good service. I dunno if britain's public rail was managing that, but the private service is hugely over priced and unreliable as hell.
For comparison, when I lived in Southend, I took the train 10 minutes to work every day in a nearby village. It cost me around £80 sterling a month for that ticket, which was only to/from those two stops and didn't include any other transport.

Here in Germany I am paying 65 euro a month (so, about fifty quid). I commute 30 minutes to work, but get access to every form of public transport within my zone, which takes me well outside the area of my commute, to different towns and cities entirely. I also get to take someone for free with me in the evenings or on weekends, and the system has a train every 10 minutes or so. Sometimes they get delayed, but it's nothing like what used to happen in Essex.

And Essex has a huge commuting population, considering London is a major metropolis. Dusseldorf is tiny by comparison. I reckon you guys are getting ripped off by privatisations all over the place, but that's another debate.

TL, DR, English gamers are reluctant to commute because their transport costs are utterly out of whack.

Yep essex has a huge amount of communitors I was one for 9 years and that was enough!. Where I live now it would cost around 120 a week to get into London (no travelcard either) before when I lived in another part of essex it cost 100 a month for being within the travelcard network. Massive difference.

Back on topic, I did attend a few events at malestrom/mansfield gaming, one in September one in October and one in Jan which I had paid for in October IIRC all where very well run and all was a good time. Never ordered anything from Malestrom as I had a closer option who offered very good service and good prices.

Did Maelstrom close the store and buy a railroad or something? I keep seeing this thread pop up in my unread pile but haven't seen anything related to Maelstrom nor biscuits for a while.

Back off topic, it will cost me £4800 this year to travel on the 25 minute fast train to the city of London! It's bloomin' extortion where as maelstrom was straight out theft!