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Okay, so I feel I need to rant. I bought a copy of GW's excellent Imperial Sector and spent most of the holiday weekend working on cutting bulkheads from sprues. You can imagine my angst and horror at discovering the following screwed up sprue amongst all the lovely building sprues my hard earned dollars had purchased.



Naturally I came to the only conclusion that a forum reading member of the GW gaming community can come to. GW sucks, they obviously deliberately destroyed the one sprue that I needed out of pure spite. A company this evil cannot be allowed to live! Jervis Johnson had probably desecrated this sprue himself!

So I got in touch with that evil abomination, Games Workshop, which radiates evil from beyond the kin of mortal men. The GW staffer I spoke too after an agonizingly long 1 minute wait was deceptively polite and nice. He asked me my name and address, and what was messed up. I cheerfully informed him of the problems, and mentioned an email I had sent earlier with the picture attached above. Needless to say this minion of evil offered me a completely new building of my choice?!?!???!!!! The whole process took less that a two to three minutes?

WTF? Had the internet's lied to me? How had I been so vilely deceived by the GW sucks committee? Had all the haters drained the life of a decent company from me with their petty, banal, and short sighted rants? HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO DECEIVED!!!!!!! The internets had lied to me!!!!!

(Yes, I guess this makes me a fan boi )

which radiates evil from beyond the kin of mortal men.

Ooh, that's good.

Anyway, I don't know if I've ever heard a single person slam them for customer service. They're very good about replacing crap sprues, it's everything else though...

I've only had a problem with a GW product once* and they sent out a new part within a week.
*I think that the 5th edition rulebook sucks, but then again, I don't think they're capable fixing that.

God! What absolute ers! If I were you I'd write to my MP or something like that and file a petition of war against them. That makes my blood boil!

That's horrible.

When GW screwed up my Baneblade weapons sprue, they were apologetic and sent me an entire set of sponsons!

Bastards.

aye say what you want about the prices and everything else, the customer service is very good,

i got a box of the old chaos marines and the mutation sprue was so miscast it wasn't even funny, they sent me a new one right away

the damn bastards, the lot of them

I got a zoanthrope that was mispacked in the blister. I never called anyone and later sold the army.


Damn them!

GW Mail Order is awesome. Even I could've told you that...

BYE

I got a mispacked terminator chaplain (with a librarian's axe) once.

didn't feel the need to complain about it, seein' as it was a 'birthday present' and all. ( The store manager used to let customers go through a box of mispacks/sprues/etc on 'special days' (you say it's your birthday. He asks for proof, and you get a free rummage. I scored the chappie.). Current manager is a bit tight.

H.B.M.C. wrote:GW Mail Order is awesome. Even I could've told you that...

BYE

Fan boi.

Platuan4th wrote:Fan boi.

Tournament gamer!!!



BYE

I had a similar problem.
I opened a Razorback box and it didn't have the Razorback sprue. It was just a Rhino.
I called them and they refused to help me with it. Told me I had to take it up with the retailer I bought it from.

Such nice guys!

Eric

GW mail order is far from evil, I thought everyone knew that.

I have had a terrible experience with GW mail order. I ordered a Commander Shadowsun, which was sent to the wrong shop. It was reordered. It didn't arrive. I cancelled the order. The next week, the one I had originally ordered arrived, three weeks late, so I bought it anyway. When I got it home I found three parts missing, so I took it back for a refund. Their initial offer was to reorder it for me. Ha!

Surely this proves that GW is an evil conspiracy.

All I know is that I want to buy some of those buildings.

Yup, mail order are usually nice ladz. I didn't get any bases with a box of.. clanrats, I think. So they sent me a bag of newies! They were slottaabases, though. At least it required no more effort than telling them.

I also once got an offer for a free White Dwarf, simply because they had apparently noticed that I hadn't ordered anything for a while! I was dumbfounded, but informed them that I already had the current issue... could I please have the previous one, the Skaven release issue?

Surely enough, they sent me a back issue.

Amazing...

(Either that or their marketing ploy worked. I mean, I was going to be getting Skaven anyway, but...)

I don't know of a single "GW hater" that has ever criticised GW's post-sales service. Not one. To characterise "GW-haters" this way therefore is unfounded.

Forgeworld's post-sales service, now that's a different story...!

I've seen some people flying way off the handle about Mispacks before, but as you said, the advice was to just phone mail order and they will sort it. Most did, a few just kept on screeching.

I had some fun and games the other day. Placed an £86 order with Mail Order for 20 Savage Orcs with Command, and 5 Savage Boarboyz with Standard and Boss. When they arrive, the Boarboss was missing his head. Swiftly replaced, allowing me to keep the original. Replacement arrives, with head, but missing arm. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I now have the complete model I paid for so all is well! (I was hoping to have a more or less spare Boss to convert up to a Big Boss)

Fair enough. Haven't seen them myself, but then I haven't really been looking! I put that down to general "internet background noise"! I can add that the only time I ever needed them (I was missing a WD from my sub) they came through trumps - just told me to walk into the local store and tell the blue shirt - who then gave me one off the shelf, no questions asked! Perfick!

Osbad wrote:I don't know of a single "GW hater" that has ever criticised GW's post-sales service. Not one. To characterise "GW-haters" this way therefore is unfounded.

Exactly. Everyone knows how much I mouth off about GW, but I've got nothing but praise for GWUS Mail Order. Those guys have amazing service levels.

Osbad wrote:Forgeworld's post-sales service, now that's a different story...!

Oohhh... don't get me started!!!





BYE

I wonder if part of the reason that the prices are so high are because they're so willing to send you a completely new whatever.

In some way, yes.

The provision of spares and replacements for defective products is a serious business expense.

A well organised business uses quality assurance to reduce defects and gain a competitive advantage that lets them price their products cheaper or else keep more profits.

Given GW's margins over simple manufacturing cost are so high (due to their retail and distribution network costs) the actual cost to GW of the replacement part or sprue is only a small fraction of the wholesale price - which in turn is a fraction of the retail price - so a single plastic sprue may only cost GW themselves £1 or so while it is still in their warehouse. Making a phonecall down to packing to get them to send a replacement out to you in the post costs a quid or so more. If all that adds up to less than the cost of rejigging the production facility so that mistakes are virtually eliminated then there's no financial incentive to improve the process for them.

They do value their reputation for customer service though, so even if it was not so cost-effective as it appears to be, then it probably would be worth it to them not to have their reputation dragged through the mud. - like MFI's was for instance.