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Ok, I feel nearly two months is more than reasonable for a parcel, so I today sent this message...

Hi

I had notice that the above order shipped on 10/03/2014, with the information that it had in actual fact been posted the week previously.

As I write, it will be approaching two months and there is still no sign of the parcel. I order products from the China/Hong Kong region fairly often, and while previous orders from yourselves have always appeared to be at the slow end of posting times, this is excessive.

I also notice from the ongoing thread on dakkadakka.com I am not the only customer who has been waiting an excessively long time for their parcel.

Could I please ask you to firstly confirm the address the parcel was sent to, as I have previously contacted you to change delivery address due to my moving house between order and dispatch (which you confirmed had been done on 24/02/2014) and also either provide me with tracking information, or a timescale as to when a replacement parcel or refund will be issued.

Many thanks

Azreal13

I will update if/when I get a response.

I sent them an email 6 days ago, and got this reply 3 days ago:

Hi.

We phone the delivery company they tell told us .This will be take another week to arrive .Coz the process customs check more .

And it will arrive another week .

Thanks

Tony

So... we'll see...

China have certainly had bouts of customs almost shutting down outgoing goods, so it's beliveable

fingers crossed they show up soon for you guys

I really wish these guys would get their stuff picked up by a distributor outside of China. I like their stuff, just hate ordering things direct from China.

Every time I order stuff from China it seems like a crapshoot as to when it will ever turn up. It does get here, eventually, and as impatient as I am that does not work well for me.

Hope for the best for you guys.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
China have certainly had bouts of customs almost shutting down outgoing goods, so it's beliveable

fingers crossed they show up soon for you guys

That's fair, but I've placed two orders from HK/China since this was apparently dispatched, one took barely two weeks, and the other notably less. It seems a little coincidental that they proceeded without a hitch, yet all these DH boxes have "randomly" got snagged in some sort of customs issue.

Anybody receive word yet? I sent them one email a week ago and one yesterday - still no response.

Nope, still waiting on a reply, mild concern developing..

Are you expecting just one mini, or several? Seems like most of the people who have not received anything were New Year's Special buyers. Could just be my impression though...

 RiTides wrote:
The preorder was supposed to ship in February, I got an email on March 10th saying they had shipped the orders "last week". It is now April 25th. So yeah we're at 40 days from when the email was sent, so presumably 45 or so from when they were actually shipped (assuming the email was correct that they had gone out the previous week).

I'm in the same boat.

I ordered back in January.

E-mailed them 6 times and they keep responding that they've confirmed it's been shipped.

I sent this note 12 days ago

"Hello,

I'd like to request a full refund to XXXXXXX@gmail.com

The item was originally promised to ship at the end of February, then in March and then I was told it was shipped 3 weeks ago.

The items have not been received.

I had intended on writing up a review and entering into a miniature painting competition for the crystal brush but the event has now passed.

Thank you,

David"

Their reply 8 days ago

"Hi.

We phone the delivery company they tell told us .This will be take another week to arrive .Coz the process customs check more .

And it will arrive another week .

Thanks

Tony"

So I'm at an impasse, do i give it more time or start going through the headache of getting a refund?

In haunting ghost voice "Get the refund"

(Why the haunting ghost voice?) no clue, just didn't want to yell . Seriously though, start the refund process, if the stuff shows up you can cancel the process or ship it back. If on the other hand h don have the bag coming to you then this will just drag on longer.

We see this hundreds of times here on dakkadakka in the trade section, don't wait too long

Maybe if people start holding these companies and kickstarters accountable the scams will decrease.

Edit: also just checked the web page from page1, it states that tracking available on package upon request. Has anyone checked their tracking/requested it to see if they are lying. Sorry I this has been asked/answered already, I wasn't going to go back multiple pages.

It's a shame really as I liked the samurai cavalry guy, but the size was just too off for me to order.

Dave_Fay, that's the exact same email (even with mis-spellings) that they sent me about "phoning the delivery company".

Theophony, it's not quite so simple here because for most of us the 45-day window for a standard Paypal refund has passed. Maryland has special instructions on what to do in this case (see spoilered text below), and if you paid by credit card you may be able to force a refund through your CC. I believe I used my Paypal balance, though, and so will have to go through this route if nothing shows up:

For what it's worth, I actually think the packages are in transit. There are some reports of packages received by others (on facebook and here, although mostly small) and my previous interactions with Dark Hammer have been positive (with shipping time taking about 1 month).

However, I do not think tracking is available (as advertised). This puts them in a bind - so their customer service has gone to crap. This is clearly something they have to address. Otherwise, they will fail again if they try to launch crowdfunding and purchases from their website will decrease dramatically.

Yes, I am hoping they are in transit... going to wait just a little while longer here.

I've opened a dispute, not with any malice, but they've been a little too leisurely responding to my email.

45 days has passed, but will still have a go at escalating if things aren't replied to within the next few days..

Still no show.

anyone else get theirs?

Unfortunately not :-/ looking like a dispute will be necessary after all...

Any suggestions on how to get PayPal not to hide behind the 45 Day shield if you're not in Maryland?

Still awaiting a response to either my original email or one that PayPal allegedly sent on my behalf.

Not gotten anything either...

Not yet, although I'll be looking into it... usually public pressure helps resolve things as this would absolutely ruin their reputation, but obviously they don't really seem to be responding to it so far.

In these kinds of circumstances, always open up a disbute before the window closes, and make sure you do not cancel it until you receive your payment as once you cancel it you cannot re-open it.

However, in defence of thse guys. The transit from China usually takes 4-6 weeks, and I believe these guys do not ship their order as soon as they've taken the payment, but they have delievery on certain dates. So that means, if you are unlucky with the timing, it could take another 2-3 weeks before it even has been shipped.

I ordered from these guys, once, a while ago. And that was the explination I got from them. But I didn't want to risk the paypal window closing, so I demanded a refund instead, which they gave me.

So I don't think there are any intentional foul play here, but nevertheless, if you are still able to open a dispute you should always do it if you haven't recevied your items you've paid for.

That's good advice, grefven. Unfortunately, this was a preorder- most folks paid in early January for a February ship date. The company says they shipped in early March. Meaning it has been 9-10 weeks now since they said they shipped, but of course much longer since most folks paid. It is still under 180 days so I will be challenging it as I laid out before, but I think the best thing at this point (if over 45 days) is to challenge the charge on your credit card if you paid through PayPal that way.

But yeah, opening a preemptive case within 45 days and not closing it until you receive the item would've been a really good idea.

Hmmmm....

Let's not forget that a company that, IME, was pretty good at comms, has apparently gone dark for several weeks too, that is what has concerned me more than the delay.

RiTides, (or anyone else in this boat)

if you CALL PayPal and talk to a live person, you might get a pass on the 45 day rule for disputing. There have been several instances of people doing so over on another site I frequent..

Give em a call.. it might be your lucky day...

RiTides, are you certain the 180-day window does not apply to the dispute process within PayPal?

I am also in Maryland.*
I also ordered something from China back in November.
When the delivery got suspiciously long, I called PayPal around the 40-day mark and discussed my situation.
They confirmed I had 180 days to open a dispute with them due to the international status.

I did not get to test this though, as the PayPal agent more-or-less insisted that the best thing to do was to open a dispute immediately, on the 40-day mark.

Side note: it all worked out. With the shipment tracking showing the package was still sitting in Shanghai ( as it had for approximately the previous 50+ days), the dispute ready to end in my favor in 2, and the merchant insisting over and over I'd be getting it any day, my order arrived intact and lovingly packed.

I closed the dispute with a fraction left on the clock - like a hero in the movie stopping the detonator with seconds left on the timer.




* Why haven't you come over yet to look at my budding ork army, dude?

porkuslime- What a coincidence, I just got off the phone with Paypal... an hour-long phone call, in fact!

I insisted that when I made the payment, I had received notice that I had 180 days to file a dispute. I had emailed the information I posted earlier in this thread to myself on January 10th. For some reason, their system did not show that it was that type of payment... but they were unable to explain the difference between it and a payment I sent on April 16th which did qualify.

I got transferred a few times and put on hold for a long time... but the end result is that I was refunded.

I don't think it's the seller that necessarily paid for my refund, though- it included this note: "As a one-time goodwill gesture, we have issued a credit to your account."

Regardless, you can be sure I'll be filing within 45 days in the future, regardless of whether or not the fine print on the email tells me that I have 180 days in which to do so . Good luck to everyone else that is in this situation... in the end, I think they basically made an exception for me because I was on hold so long / have been a good customer / they couldn't explain why the 180-day limit applied to one payment and not the other. But I asked about others calling regarding this same seller, and they immediately gave me the caveat that they may not refund people who have waited more than 45 days... so it seems you just have to be really persistent...

What really helped was that I wrote down the fine print about having 180 days to file a claim on January 10th, and was able to repeatedly reference that, as well as compare it to my payment to another seller on April 16th that gives that same note at the bottom... and they could not explain what the difference between the two was.

Next time, I'll file a preemptive dispute at the 40-day mark, just to be safe!

Edit: @hurtmypony- I don't know, maybe it's your username scaring me off

I'm surprised and delighted to confirm the arrival of my miniatures!

Having received no further communication from DH either directly or via PayPal, I don't think we can let them off the book entirely, but it does look like if you've received dispatch notification, then product is on the way, simply via the slowest postal method conceived by man!

Did you order a Dark Hammer bag, though, or something else? I thought yours was more recent / from the website.

Still great that you got something... I'm not holding out hope, but since Paypal refunded me that's just fine in my case. There are a lot of folks waiting on these "New Year deal" bags, though.

Yes, it was a DH New Year Bag, at least, it's a massive box of minis, literally a cardboard box full of little plastic ziplocks, none of the slightly fancy packaging from my previous order.

I haven't been through and verified everything is there, but it certainly looks that way from first glance.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have now been through the box, and everything is there and in good order, casting quality is top notch as it has been historically.

This just makes the radio silence even weirder, although my parcel did arrive as tracked HK airmail, which isn't the service they used with my last order, and arrived, according to the tracking ref, 24 hours after it landed in the UK. That doesn't really tally with a two month shipping time, so I am wondering if they're still receiving and dealing with people's messages, but for some reason aren't engaging?

@Azreal: Can you perhaps try to check the history of the tracked number to see when it actually shipped? I have asked for a tracking number twice and only received cut'n'paste answers.

I also urged Tony to come here and relieve some of the concerns raised here as silence is definitely not helping. Amongst the questions I raised was "what happens if the figures don't show"?

I got the reply that he knows, he is sorry and he thinks they'll arrive next week...

While I am glad I got a reply, none of my questions were answered... It's a bit disheartening as the quality of the luxury pack was fantastic...

Already tried, and I'm afraid the HK Mail tracking site only shows the last entry (arrived in UK xx.xx.xx in this case) and there's nothing on the customs declaration or any franking stamp with a date.

I wouldn't be surprised of this were a second parcel though, as there's no way HK tracked airmail takes this long, I've had stuff sent over frequently (used to work in cellphone sales, and it would often be cheaper and quicker to buy a case or similar for a new handset from HK via eBay than wait for UK wholesalers to start stocking them, so when I say frequently, I mean weekly at one point) and it seldom takes more than a fortnight.