Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I posted this on Da-Warpath, but I wanted to share with you guys too.

I recently got a few "Fine"casts (I refuse to not include the quotes now, you'll see why) and am having some minor issues.

Azhag the Slaughterer- came with two left wings and no right wing, otherwise he looks great

Gorbad Ironclaw- The bottom half of his boar on the right side wasn't cast, his right horn is half uncast, the chain from his axe is very poorly cast, the lower half of his trophy sword is uncast.

Black Orc Big Boss- The top half of his head is missing. It looks like he took a great cannon to the face.

I would simply return the items, but I drove about 160 miles to get to the nearest GW store. I called GW customer service today, and they said to FedEx the stuff back to them, upon receiving it they will send me replacements. I am highly unimpressed by GWs response. I work for Dominos Pizza, WE have a better return policy than that. And our customers only spend 10 bucks, not 200. These will be the last GW models that I buy for the foreseeable future. Mistakes happen, but the service that I got after spending a large chunk of change, and a fair amount of my time, is inexcusable.

TL;DR- The "Fine"casts are bad, very bad. If you feel the need to buy one, for the sweet love of God do a very thorough examination of it at the store. You have to play QC, GW gave them the month off.

lol... That's funny. I noticed the same issues when I was checking them out at the FLGS.
I cast a metric ass-ton of minis with resin, and even though I am swamped, and a one man operation, I still have time to inspect every mini I sell.

Shame on GW. "Fine" cast indeed. That turd has a piece of corn sticking out.

So, from what has happened so far, sounds like "Fine" cast is more "Crap-cast"

The thing with metals, is they were making each bit in bulk by itself and then they could throw out any bad metals and reuse them. When packing blisters they could grab one of each good bit and be done packing.

The main thing I see with the resin is it is all or nothing!!!! the whole entire sprue must be good or else it is trash. They may need to consider cutting bitz off the sprue to dispose of miscast bitz if other parts of the sprue are fine.

Get in contact with GW my friend bought a few and had some issues they replaced em with no problems they just started with fine cast so I wouldnt hate yet because hey they gotta work the kinks out well they better work the kinks out.

Aha.... I have 2 right wings from Azhag. PM sent.

jgemrich wrote:Aha.... I have 2 right wings from Azhag. PM sent.

WIN!

Still it shouldn't have come to that...

I feel sorry for you OP, considering the journey you took to get there. If you were at the store they would let you keep the miscasts and give you the replacements for free. They should just post you the new ones instead of asking for the miscasts back.

I went in to Portsmouth GW on Saturday & chatted to the manager about talk hear on Dakka saying how pooh some of the casting was & he didn't seem convinced.
That was until I showed him that out of the 2 Space Wolf Logan's left, 1 had a mass of sprue leakage over his foot.
However, after seeing other examples here on Dakka, that now seems to be a good casting!
I took the other Logan and he was pretty much ok - just a few holes to fill. My Njal wasn't so good with part of an elbow missing and 2 largish holes on the crow's head.
I will be returning him at the weekend.
I could fix it but 1, I want to prove a point to the manager & 2, I paid £14.50 for him and if i wanted to spend all my time filling holes I'd either become a road pothole filler or buy FW models.

You could also become a carpenter or drywaller

Good luck jeez they have to get their act together guess this is why there was a price hike buy 1 model get the same model free.

Yay! Another finecast thread.

cowpow16 wrote:You could also become a carpenter or drywaller

lol

OP--- you should call customer service instead. You having to pay for shipping is unacceptable. They should just send you replacements.

Most businesses generally don't require mailbacks unless you have a history of returns. Hmm...

I have only had returns twice in 20 years with GW. Once, my old metal Predator came without a right side sponson top- I got 4 sponson tops in the mail within days. Two Christmas' ago my wife bought me the Imperial Sector. I am very pleased with the gift but one of the floor sections was crushed. It looked like a hot metal tube had pushed into the long floor section warping it about 1"! the light pole and light fixture were crushed as well. A call to customer service later and I got the complete Manufactorm box instead. I advised that I just wanted the floor sprue (I believe in getting what I pay for but I do not want more than what I pay for- I know I'm silly) but the phone-monkey told me that they could not ship that bit alone! This was after the changeover of their bitz program. ( I now see that the floor section can be ordered from Bitz) Anyway, both experiences were smooth and easy and I complemented the customer service gent each time. I have been collecting and painting GW since 1992 and I am very pleased with my collection. I have not seen the finecast figures yet but I think that I will be getting a lot more experience with customer service if I decide to actually buy that produce. Damn

I havent had to send anything back local GW have been really good especially for my WHFB warriors of chaos party pack where I got like 40 left side marauders so I talk to the manager and he got me what I should have been in the box so it was great no problems nothing

Perhaps this is just me, but I have not had one single problem with my Finecast Model. Nor have I seen any at my Local GW. Granted I haven't chatted with any of the lads on games night so I will see if they had any problems there.
I didn't bother checking the Big Mek before hand and I didn't need to, the only minor problem was that the cables didn't quite match up perfectly, but it's hardly noticeable and has happened on other models (Metal and Plastic) in the past.

Perhaps I'm just a lucky son of a gun...

I have been to my local GW most days since the release, and so far it has been my experience (both first- and second-hand) that they are really good about taking care of your problems if they can. There was the little incident of all four Azhags missing their torso...but they promised to fix that as soon as they got their next shipment in.

edit: woohoo 100.

I just purchased a Draigo model. I asked for it to be opened so I could see the "quality." I observed a miscast of the storm bolter arm (air bubble so big that one side of the double barrel is missing) and bubbles all over the =I= icon leading to deformed edges. Also, blowouts are common it seems ("blowout" = where the mold slightly separates causing seepage and panckaes of flash). I wasn't kinda ticked... I was told that finecast is in such limited supply that it would take another month to get a replacement. Ugh!

I bought it. It cost more than the metal version I skipped out on purchasing when it came out. What did I do?

I REALLY hope these issues get fixed quickly.

pretre wrote:Most businesses generally don't require mailbacks unless you have a history of returns. Hmm...

An understandable allusion, but no, I have never sent anything back to Games Workshop. This is the first issue that I have had with any of their products.

Killamop wrote:Perhaps this is just me, but I have not had one single problem with my Finecast Model. Nor have I seen any at my Local GW. Granted I haven't chatted with any of the lads on games night so I will see if they had any problems there.
I didn't bother checking the Big Mek before hand and I didn't need to, the only minor problem was that the cables didn't quite match up perfectly, but it's hardly noticeable and has happened on other models (Metal and Plastic) in the past.

Perhaps I'm just a lucky son of a gun...

Cable doesn't match up perfectly on the big mek, just the way it is.

Yeah, on this occasion that's not a miscast, that's a sculpt issue. Just put a little cut of styrene tube in there to fill the gap.

I already fixed it, five minute job tops
I was tempted to leave it as it is for fluff reasons

Quick little update:

The GW customer service manager called me and said that they will be shipping out replacement models to me immediately. He asked that I do send the models back at some point so he can show them to the QC guys. It sounds like they are trying to catalogue all of the known issues so that they can improve the casting process or something. I'm all for that. I'm pleased with the result of all this (provided the new models are not turds) and really do hope that they can sort these new "Fine" casts out (ill remove the quotes if I see one that is cast in a fine manner). +1 GW customer service, -1 GW quality control

DavetheGreen wrote:Quick little update:

The GW customer service manager called me and said that they will be shipping out replacement models to me immediately. He asked that I do send the models back at some point so he can show them to the QC guys. It sounds like they are trying to catalogue all of the known issues so that they can improve the casting process or something. I'm all for that. I'm pleased with the result of all this (provided the new models are not turds) and really do hope that they can sort these new "Fine" casts out (ill remove the quotes if I see one that is cast in a fine manner). +1 GW customer service, -1 GW quality control

Ah, damage control, with all the hype to have all of these issues so early on to have to fix is embarrassment. The fact remains that GW did make this a hyped product as it was the greatest thing since electricity. What is good is that they want the defective models sent back for revision and to make sure that QC stops such poor examples from going out again. This tells us that GW is embarrassed about it, and is seeking to do something about it, especially at those prices. For the amount of money their FW division charges fro vehicles, to have all that work to do to clean and fix resin bitz is crazy, for that amount one would expect the models to be cleaned and sanded down, smaller companies like Old Crow sell cheaper, and do all that clean up work for you, If I can get a tank for 35USD all cleaned and deburred and such, why can't I get such a job done from FW for the 100+ they charge a tank? these Finecasts on sprues, well, I look at that as added protection from sliding around.

BTW, if the Grotesues were plastics, they'd still charge you 20bucks! GW thinks of themselves as the Porsche of the gaming industry, I say they are more Ford/Lincoln/Mercury other companies make superior minis to what GW makes, and others make at least to lower quality but solid minis I think that if GW had some true competition out there, then they might feel the challenge to be better at what they do for the prices they charge for what they deliver.

To be perfectly honest, to me it sounds like they aren't allowing the model to A: cool enough in the mould, and B: not use the correct casting proceedures to ensure that there are no air bubbles. (things like having exhaust vents in the moulds and not using enough pressure...

Good to hear that you're getting it taken care of. I picked up the Black Orc Big Boss the other day, it has some weird surfacing in some areas and the right shoulderpad looks a little messed up, but other than that it's not bad. I'll deal with it.

Today I bought the Orc Warboss on Wyvern. I know the sculpt is pretty old itself, but I've always wanted this model so I couldn't resist. It's really, really nice. The Warboss' axe was a little bent but easily fixed. The Wyvern's left nostril is a little deformed.

I'm really happy they did so many O&G models, especially the rock lobber, it was a huge PITA to put together as pewter.

I so far pleased with the finecast, I just bought some sternguard the mold lines are in some crap area's but other than the price hike on them I'm pretty happy.

They should have done a test run either with the Dark Eldar or Grey Knights to see how the stuff held up. It was their own stupidity to rush full steam ahead with this product when they very clearly did not put much research into it.

What with reports of store display cabinets melting, 25%+ return rates, and managers encouraging their customers to open the boxes and choose the best parts.

Hell, I'm half tempted to camp out the dumpster and pick up the stuff they'll likely be throwing out.

I returned the Troll Chieftan that I bought for another the other day, and the new one was pretty much perfect. It looks great, glued together well, and I can pretty much throw it around without it falling apart. It appears that they may have learned quite a bit already.

Seems lilke they just had 1 really bad batch of finecast stuff.. with some stores getting multiple awful casts where as others get perfect minis

It is a bit disappointing they let the bad batch even get out the door tho.. I mean, since they have a replacement policy all it does is cost them money