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Made an order from them on Friday afternoon. I received my notification of dispatch today (Monday, next working day after order). I ordered from them based upon the number of positive testimonials I've seen on Dakka.

I'll let you know when my order arrives.

I've never used Maelstrom before and I never plan to..
I've always used Wayland games! (www.waylandgames.co.uk) I Live in Melbourne (Australia) and the postage always comes within 7 days (it took 5 days once!) This is pretty impressive seeing as they are coming from the other side of the globe!

The prices are fantastic and the shipment is very good.. It's around $10 AUD per kilo (plastic doesn't weigh much )

My last purchase was two tau battle forces for the price of one (including postage!)
I love wayland games and I'll never change to another store
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So legit.

H.M.B.C., Cheese Elemental, and others have highly recommend it constantly, and they seem to have a high customer satisfaction.

They seem OK depending upon where you live, but if you're in the USA (as has already been noted!), you're better off going with the Warstore (for all the reasons already noted! Namely, VAT, conversion rate, conversion charges, etc.)...

Cane wrote:I ordered them once to capitalize on a 17% off sale they had; but I am not ordering from them again unless there is a better sale.

For USA customers you'd get better service, delivery time, and even prices if you use Ebay stores like macpac51, thewarstore.com, or bitkingdom.com. Also had good experiences with superherogameland.com and rattleheadgames.com.

Unfortunately, for those of us living in NY, the warstore savings are eaten away by NY sales tax. Making, with shipping, not really worth it.

carmachu wrote:

Cane wrote:I ordered them once to capitalize on a 17% off sale they had; but I am not ordering from them again unless there is a better sale.

For USA customers you'd get better service, delivery time, and even prices if you use Ebay stores like macpac51, thewarstore.com, or bitkingdom.com. Also had good experiences with superherogameland.com and rattleheadgames.com.

Unfortunately, for those of us living in NY, the warstore savings are eaten away by NY sales tax. Making, with shipping, not really worth it.

Just a fun drive to the tip of long island to avoid that shipping fee.

Uhm no, gas and tolls kill it even worse.

carmachu wrote:Uhm no, gas and tolls kill it even worse.

bah

(Drove from FL to the war store)

I've never ordered from them before but I'm considering it with the new Skaven Battalion up there for what converts to $80 USD, that's $25 off retail or 76%. DO they give a greater discount for pre-ordering?

Just a fun drive to the tip of long island to avoid that shipping fee.

Would that really cost less than $5.95? It costs more than that to operate a motor vehicle for more than the shortest of distances. There's a reason why employers reimburse their employees in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 cents per mile now when they use their private vehicles for work purposes. Gasoline is only one factor in the per mile cost of operating a motor vehicle. Of course, it's fun to go to the store, see and meet other hobbyists, etc., but if the only reason to go is to avoid the shipping cost it's probably cheaper to have them ship it to your door.

I put 'not ligit' because I'm a non-conformist and don't know what ligit means

legitimate adj
1 lawful.
...
3 said of an argument or conclusion, etc: reasonable or logical.
...
5 genuine.
6 conforming to an accepted standard.
...

I can't speak for Maelstrom Games (I'm in the US) but someone mentioned Macpac51 on ebay - I would not vouch for them. I ordered a sealed box from them of assault marines, left good feedback 0(this was my mistake, but I had ordered before and it went well) and then opened the box. Turned out the box looked fine on the outside, but the sprues inside were crushed. I messaged him and the responses were that's my problem. Sorry to threadjack, but that seemed worth mentioning to me. *

*also worth mentioning - on Dakka's advice, I called GWS and told them about this, and they sent me a replacement box for free. Awesome.

I've spent a couple thousand dollars at Maelstrom. And only ever had one issue, which was an incorrect item sent.

They've resolved it and I'm continuing to shop with them.

I have used Maelsrom a few times, and have always been 100% happy with their service.

I think HBMC runs Maelstrom from his basement. But he's doing a good gob, so whatever. I just got my latest order from them yesterday.

someone mentioned Macpac51 on ebay - I would not vouch for them

Most sellers on eBay have the disclaimer "not responsible for items damaged or lost in shipping" and we all take our chances because of that when we buy from eBay under those conditions.

That said I have bought numerous items from Macpac on eBay without any problems and saved a lot of money off of list prices doing so. Their packaging for shipping is generally pretty good at protecting the merchandise, but because it is minimized to reduce shipping costs, which are free to the winning bidders, occasionally things do get damaged.

I have experienced this with other free shippiing eBay vendors as well. I would not hold the occasional damaged item against the sellers in these cases since shipping is free and they've made it quite clear up front with the aforementioned disclaimer that it is at the buyer's risk.

I ordered from Malestrom, Imperial Sector set. IIRC, the items arrived in about a week from when I placed the order. At the time, due to the exchange rate, I was seeing a 30% discount off of GW US prices (this was over the summer).

Just note that the shipping is by Royal Post, and there is no tracking on it, so if you've got a sufficiently large order, you may want to spring for that. Also, the box was thin, and the sprues took some minor damage in shipping (no parts were actually damaged, but some of the sprues had snapped.)

The only other thing that was screwy was the customs form, or so my wife said (she's a shipping specialist for FedEx). Looks like they under-declared the amount the contents were worth.

I'd order from them again, if the prices are right and I'm looking for a big buy. The biggest value on my end came from the exchange rate.

BlueGiant wrote:Looks like they under-declared the amount the contents were worth.

That's common practice with friendlier online stores. It's so you pay less duties and import tax.

I've placed a few orders with maelstrom, mainly larger purchases to save the extra bucks through exchange rates. My most recent order arrived a couple days ago, and though the shipping box was slightly damaged (to be expected, it traveled roughly 4,000 miles) nothing inside was damaged. They even tossed in a free sprue from Mantic games, two elven archers from their new Kings of War line. Thumbs up from me.

A story I've told before:

I once had an Imperial City (yes, the big CoD box) that I ordered from Maelstrom go missing. It was an order that also had two of those double-Monolith boxes, plus half a dozen other boxed items. It was the only part of the order to go missing. This was also just before Christmas and during a UK postal worker's strike.

So that's a huge order, during the busiest period of the year, during a massive bit of industrial action, and only one item went missing. It was replaced, for free, in January with only a single E-mail sent to Maelstrom.

So we've established its good service but is it the best out of the discount wargaming sites?

I didnt vote as i havent used it but from reading this thread that might change.

BrassScorpion wrote:

someone mentioned Macpac51 on ebay - I would not vouch for them

Most sellers on eBay have the disclaimer "not responsible for items damaged or lost in shipping" and we all take our chances because of that when we buy from eBay under those conditions.

That said I have bought numerous items from Macpac on eBay without any problems and saved a lot of money off of list prices doing so. Their packaging for shipping is generally pretty good at protecting the merchandise, but because it is minimized to reduce shipping costs, which are free to the winning bidders, occasionally things do get damaged.

I have experienced this with other free shippiing eBay vendors as well. I would not hold the occasional damaged item against the sellers in these cases since shipping is free and they've made it quite clear up front with the aforementioned disclaimer that it is at the buyer's risk.

Yes, perhaps most sellers do have such a disclaimer, and obviously, I'd be a fool to hold it against them, if that had been the situation. But we're not talking about "most ebay sellers" - we're talking specifically about Macpac51. A quick check of his auctions a few seconds ago shows no such disclaimer. Quite the opposite: there is a refund policy. Unfortunately, as I said I had already left positive feedback because I had not yet opened the box, so Macpac didn't do anything for me regarding that policy (or anything else), and I was no longer in any position to force the issue. I had gotten quite a few things from this seller before and was previously quite happy, and I'm sad to no longer spend any of the large sums I spend on plastic army men with him anymore.

I apologize for the now sort of extended threadjack about the veracity of another ligit seller, as it were.

Just a quick note on "insurance" and replacement of missing items. UK retailers have a legal obligation to get your goods to you. A loss is transit is not the customers reponsibilty so do not fall for any paying for extra insurance scams.. you are not paying to reduce your risk but that of the seller.

So.. dont pay for insurance..

And all that should be needed to help the seller out from a loss is a letter or email clearly stating the facts and the seller should resend. and the letter should allow them to make a claim agaist their postal/courier service.

Ouze wrote:Yes, perhaps most sellers do have such a disclaimer, and obviously, I'd be a fool to hold it against them, if that had been the situation. But we're not talking about "most ebay sellers" - we're talking specifically about Macpac51. A quick check of his auctions a few seconds ago shows no such disclaimer. Quite the opposite: there is a refund policy. Unfortunately, as I said I had already left positive feedback because I had not yet opened the box, so Macpac didn't do anything for me regarding that policy (or anything else), and I was no longer in any position to force the issue. I had gotten quite a few things from this seller before and was previously quite happy, and I'm sad to no longer spend any of the large sums I spend on plastic army men with him anymore.

You are correct. I hadn't looked at the full text of their auctions for a while. In fact, they seem to make all the same guarantees that most full-fledged stores make. Here's the text from a Macpac51 auction below.

I promise to promptly return all messages and to ship items within 1-2 business days after payment.
If you have a problem with the item, please ship it back to me unused within 7 days of receiving it and I will refund your money and shipping costs within 10 business days.

Please help me keep my prices low! If a component or a major part of your order is missing or miscast I may refer you to the manufacturer to obtain a replacement. I have lost over $1000 this year do to manufacturer mispacks. It doesn't happen very often to customers as I catch most mistakes, but I just cant keep eating their screw ups.

Please do not leave a negative feedback without contacting me first. Everyone of my negatives could have been easily fixed had I been given the opportunity to do so!

Hey guys,
This is my first post - but this is a topic that has affected me personally, so I thought I should say something instead of lurking.

I live in Australia and I have had one experience with Maelstrom and it has not been good at all.

A while back (4 months or so I think) I was in the process of expanding my Orks and saw that Maelstrom had a sale going on. I put down my order for a couple of boxes of lootas and stormboyz and also included Boss Snikrot because his model is just so great.

The prices seemed really good and everything was dispatched in short order. When I received the order, however, I found that my Boss Snikrot blister had ALREADY BEEN OPENED. What's more, Snikrot's head was no longer in the blister. In short I had been sent a defective product.

So I email these guys - on 4 separate occasions - through MULTIPLE email addresses (their orders, contact addresses etc...). I get ZERO response - not even a "Sorry, sucks to be you".

To me, this is just unacceptable. From a customer service perspective AND from an integrity perspective. What type of operation sends their customers faulty goods, then buries their head in the sand about it?

Their prices and lack of shipping are definitely competitive. However, the way they completely disregarded all my emails on a legitimate complaint is just unacceptable. I guess they feel that because I live half a world away it means they can send me defective goods and get away with it.

Live and learn. Feel free to roll the dice with these guys if you feel so inclined - but I certainly won't be.

They're a very busy store. Try calling them instead of spamming e-mail.

I've never had a problem getting in contact with them.

For Europeans especially Maelstrom is great because of the low exchange rate between pounds and euros.

I payed 100 euros for two battleboxes, the price in shop would have been 160 euros. Delivery took about 8 days, can't complain there. Most of my friends order at Maelstrom too and never had any problems.

My 2cents anyway.

My order turned up today.