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Be Warned:

If you get into the business of making stuff for the TTG hobby, expect Dreadful Personal Experiences. This is the excuse I've seen for every single delayed/complained about scheme.

And this...

Your responses may be as follows: Who cares! I ordered my stuff 10 months ago and I still don't have it. You took my money 10 months ago and I still have nothing! My son's birthday is tomorrow—I ordered this two weeks ago and I expect this on my son”s birthday table! My store ordered seventy mats from you two weeks ago and my customers want their mats! I am spamming your email every two minutes until you answer why my mat is not sitting on my front door! I ordered a month ago it's not here and I expect your answer immediately! All of these complaints are valid.

...really grinds my gears.

I haven't ordered anything from these clowns, nor would I, but who, really, has been expecting their order in two days? Who, really, would have ordered 70 mats and expected delivery in 14 days? Just further highlights the contempt they seem to have for their clients.

I'll keep Rule Number 1 in mind and just finish with: What a cretinous pair.

Just how long can those mats take to make? I'd been wanting to order a couple for a while, but then the monster delays started to I held off. I get when a labor of love becomes a chore though, it's why I'd never take painting commissions. Maybe they should raise their prices a bit and hire some help? There's clearly a huge demand.

I see Zuzzy is not at the passive-agressive apology stage in their existence. Seriously guys, at this point, just give a simpler apology and stop taking orders until you're caught up.

In the early days, we had a surplus of every item. But as time went on, our surplus was depleted. And today, there is no vast warehouse where our mats and resin pieces reside, waiting to be hand-picked off the shelves for our faithful customers. Like many small businesses, we have become a product on demand operation. This is due to four factors: demand, space, time, and human labor. And this has been our crime—our inability to immediately meet demand. (And today, being unable to answer all of your inquiries.)

Demand has outstripped their production capacity. That's simple to understand.

However, no where in this rambling, pointless letter did they make ANY commitments to improve. None. No action plan. No mention of hring more people. No mention of HOW they are going to step up production. In fact, they never mentioned increasing production capacity at all.

TLDR for this "Letter to our Customers": Shut up. You'll fething get your gak when we fething make it.


I wouldn't order a fething thing from these tossers. Which is a real shame as the product looks good.

 kronk wrote:
I wouldn't order a fething thing from these tossers. Which is a real shame as the product looks good.

You pointed to the same glaring things missing from their open letter that I did.
I agree with your conclusion because as far as they are concerned: they have committed to doing nothing different.
This whole matter just makes no sense as a business.

What i took from it:

"We have no fething idea how to improve things and we probably won't, so if you order from us suck it up and expect to wait…"


Not the greatest sales pitch in this day and age...

After a 5-month wait (ordered in November), I got my refund thru the Paypal claims process (in April). It was actually quite painless; after I sent Zuzzy a few inquiring emails via the Paypal dispute center that were ignored, Paypal sent Zuzzy a few inquiring emails that were also ignored. Bingo-presto, I got a full refund.

There is a time limit on the Paypal claim resolution aspect (6 months, I think), but it went well for me.

 kronk wrote:

In the early days, we had a surplus of every item. But as time went on, our surplus was depleted. And today, there is no vast warehouse where our mats and resin pieces reside, waiting to be hand-picked off the shelves for our faithful customers. Like many small businesses, we have become a product on demand operation. This is due to four factors: demand, space, time, and human labor. And this has been our crime—our inability to immediately meet demand. (And today, being unable to answer all of your inquiries.)

Demand has outstripped their production capacity. That's simple to understand.

However, no where in this rambling, pointless letter did they make ANY commitments to improve. None. No action plan. No mention of hring more people. No mention of HOW they are going to step up production. In fact, they never mentioned increasing production capacity at all.

What also bugs me is that they gave no real details as to why they failed to deliver. Before coming up with a plan to improve, you also have to identify where you went wrong. Even if the reasons for their problems are personal (death of a family member, longterm illness, divorce, etc.), if you want to start rebuilding the customers' trust you've lost, you have to, above all, be honest. When you've taken people's money, saying "whoopsie, my bad" doesn't cut it.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
When you've taken people's money, saying "whoopsie, my bad" doesn't cut it.

Getting closer to the fewest number of words to describe what is wrong with Zuzzy and what they are doing.
"Got money, give no product yet, no damns given."

They won't even respond to my Paypal claim... Amazing decision to buy from these clowns...

 mrshl9898 wrote:
They won't even respond to my Paypal claim... Amazing decision to buy from these clowns...

If your within the six month dispute window you have no problem getting your money back. Zuzzy has recently stated they will give people their money back either way but I suspect if after six months from purchasing the refund would happen when they are ready to ship your order they contact you. They say they are working on last June's order at the moment.

This sucks, I realllllly want one of these mats but definitely don't feel like waiting that long. Im happy I asked about these mats on this forum before I ordered. If anyone has one and is looking to get rid of theres PM me. Looking for a 4x6

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
This sucks, I realllllly want one of these mats but definitely don't feel like waiting that long. Im happy I asked about these mats on this forum before I ordered. If anyone has one and is looking to get rid of theres PM me. Looking for a 4x6

DItto. About a week before i stumbled on this thread (and started contributing), I was on their site and was like "Yup, gonna get one of those."

Glad i saw this trainwreck before i plunked down cash, because patience is not one of my virtues. I get cranky if i don't get my gak at the max end of lead times and i'm not told up front that the lead is extended, why, and what's being done to correct it (which is my construction management professional experience shining through...)

I suspect they have bad cash flow. They are spending the money as it comes in, and need it to keep going, so they keep taking orders.

This can have a few bad effects:

-No raw materials to make things.
-Need to make money some other way to live on, and filling orders takes a back seat.
-Cant pay the part time guy helping me.
-Cant afford postage to ship.
-"I'm broke and depressed,and don't feel like working".

Not taking additional orders would be a good thing..unless that's their only money coming in.

 mikhaila wrote:
I suspect they have bad cash flow. They are spending the money as it comes in, and need it to keep going, so they keep taking orders.

This can have a few bad effects:

-No raw materials to make things.
-Need to make money some other way to live on, and filling orders takes a back seat.
-Cant pay the part time guy helping me.
-Cant afford postage to ship.
-"I'm broke and depressed,and don't feel like working".

Not taking additional orders would be a good thing..unless that's their only money coming in.

Bad cash flow is what I got from zuzzy's letter.

Just received my The Zuzzy mat my wife ordered for me for my birthday last June 7.

LymanAlpha wrote:
Just received my The Zuzzy mat my wife ordered for me for my birthday last June 7.

I guess if you want something for your birthday from zuzzy next year you better order it now

LymanAlpha wrote:
Just received my The Zuzzy mat my wife ordered for me for my birthday last June 7.

Yes a number of people just received June orders and they are working on July and August now. Apparently orders really dropped off last fall so they will probably get those done sooner. It's good they started producing again it's just unfortunate that it had to take this long for them to wake up. After getting my money back I am going with a FAT matt instead.

Too bad. I was looking to order through them. I had no idea
that their process was so borked.

What's crazy is that it's a testament to how GODDAMN GOOD the product is that if they could get back down to legit 4-8 weeks for delivery. I would buy a 4 x 6 or 4 x 8 tomorrow.

But until that's confirmed, there is no way i'm waiting 12 months lead time for anything other than a kidney.

Waiting 6 months for an order would be ok under the communist regime, but what i read in the letter is, send us you money and we will get to it when we feel like it.

Are they still taking orders? That seems crazy. If it's a one man
operation he needs to stop and catch up.

 malfred wrote:
Are they still taking orders? That seems crazy. If it's a one man
operation he needs to stop and catch up.

He needs the cash flow.

 CptJake wrote:

 malfred wrote:
Are they still taking orders? That seems crazy. If it's a one man
operation he needs to stop and catch up.

He needs the cash flow.

So, if nothing changed, his spending is faster than his production.
So when people are not happy waiting a year and a half is when the 17 months or less group lose their money and get no product?
If they commit to no change, they will fail.

Yeah, at some point, the cash will stop flowing and people will
be sitting outside their credit card cancellation windows. No thanks.

 malfred wrote:
Yeah, at some point, the cash will stop flowing and people will
be sitting outside their credit card cancellation windows. No thanks.

I'm already there. :(

Sorry to hear it, dude. I'm sure we all, potential customers,
appreciate you sharing your story.

Well, their website is pretty up-front on their issues and "delays".
The cold nights and heaters being too expensive and hot days and air-conditioning being too expensive is rather scary.

Rather sad, here is the BBB link with their various complaints against them:
http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new-york/business-reviews/miniatures-collectors/zuzzy-miniatures-in-chittenango-ny-235969068/complaints/

What I find interesting of having "very little time to respond to emails", if the targets for temperature are so narrow and they are "down" during that time, you would think that would allow more free time to address customer fears or even develop a tracking / queue system to at least to let people understand progress?

Reading everything there does seem bad but somehow the ratio of expense and overhead vs. gross income of product seems to be in error so when you are looking at running out of the raw material to make product with no more money in the bank: this is a catastrophic failure that they should have seen coming.

They will see a huge reduction in sales I am sure so without the incoming money, having spent the prior money, I just do not see them surviving this.

Heaters are expensive? Unless this is a huge warehouse we are talking a couple hundred dollars. A double car garage needs a 30 buck electric heater.
I doubt he is working out of a huge warehouse if it's a one man opperation.
Cooling is more expensive, but a couple window air conditioners go a long way, and only a couple hundred each.

If your entire production line is shut down most of the time for lack of a few hundred dollars in heating/ac, then the business model has a hell of a lot of problems.

 monders wrote:
Be Warned:

If you get into the business of making stuff for the TTG hobby, expect Dreadful Personal Experiences. This is the excuse I've seen for every single delayed/complained about scheme.

That part annoyed me too. Personal tragedy is a legitimate excuse for taking a bit of time off work, but it's not some magic catch-all phrase that allows you to shirk your responsibilities for months on end. Everyone has tragedies, deaths, sickness, people to care for... it happens all the time, but you'd need to be in a pretty bad shape (read: coma, imprisoned in Iran) to not be able to make any kind of arrangements. Yet apparently this happened to both of them!