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 cincydooley wrote:
Yeah, they don't produce those models anymore. Very little they can do when they're no longer producing the model.

I realize that. I wasn't really expecting them to do much of anything seeing as how I'm sure the mold have been broken and lost by now I was just wondering what they would do if anything.

Depends entirely on the service rep you get. Mine gave me a new box of Genestealers (current) when my OOP box had ruined arms. Shrug. It happens. You win some and lose some on the outdated stuff.

 Phobos wrote:
Yeah I'm not sure how you got the idea I was asking them for another figure, Tappers. I asked them to send me an arm but they sent me the entire guy, probably because they don't do bits anymore. Thanks to frozenwastes for clearing it up on my behalf.

Incidentaly this past week I bought the old giant kit (the one made of metal) and it was missing a part. I called GW and was basically told to pound sand. In a nice way, of course.

Really? Not sure if it was in this thread, but I had a third edition Carnifex that was missing a leg, and GW sent me a plastic Carnifex kit

Dumb question:

what's the best vector to get in touch with GW customer service ?

Reason is i bought a Kaldor Draigo today, and the sword arm is beyond repair. :(

Do they have a central email you can use ?

I looked on the back of the blister, but i don't see anything.

 Haight wrote:
Dumb question:

what's the best vector to get in touch with GW customer service ?

Reason is i bought a Kaldor Draigo today, and the sword arm is beyond repair. :(

Do they have a central email you can use ?

I looked on the back of the blister, but i don't see anything.

They do have an email, but I generally suggest that you call them.
Here is the contact information for you. Bear in mind that they are 5 hours ahead of the East Coast when you go to call.

Just call the US customer service number that is on the website.

Lanrak wrote:
To me it seems like the customer service guys at GW are the last ones at GW trying to generate good will. And I agree that what Madison did was very laudable.

However, how much have you spent on GW stuff over the years in total?

What was the cost of the 4 plastic canopies to GW .

As GW plc is set up for high volume plastic production, it is and has always been easier to replace faulty/missing parts than refund customers the full RRP.
EG RRP £50 vs cost of manufacture and shipping COMPLETE NEW replacement to customer would be about £15.

Quite simply every £10 you spend on GW products £7.60 is gross profit to GW plc.
So it is very easy to see GW plc reducing over all manufacturing quality costs by dealing with faults simply by replacing items as 'good customer service.'

And to be fair all Madison had to say was , '..a customer bought some kits but they were missing canopies.He is happy to be sent canopies rather than full kit replacements..'
And his line manager would be fine with that.

The customer service guys at GW plc are good guys.And I do not want to detract from the great job they do.

But the quality of customer service is down to them !Not GW PLC .

And pretty much on par with most good companies.

I wonder, this type of response always begs the question, "have you ever run an international business on scale with GW?"

With the responding question 'Why does that matter?'

All it really takes a small amount of knowledge about the associated costs.

Reaper is a smaller company, with smaller production facilities - and needs to farm out much of the production for things like the Bones line.

Nevertheless - Reaper charges less for their product, despite that product having a similar production cost.

All it takes is being able to compare - not owning and running a multinational. Just being able to compare similar products from multiple sources.

Folks can recognize good customer service - it does not take being a multinational corporation to recognize it.

It requires being a customer.

GW has good customer service.

I can tell this by comparing it with other companies, both those that also have good customer service and with those that do not.

In this example GW comes off looking good.

I can also compare plastic models from multiple companies - many of these also come from large multinational companies.

And here GW does not come off looking good.

GW also makes plastic buildings and terrain - models that are, in my estimation, reasonably priced, and well made.

I compare them to similar models by other companies and they still look reasonably priced and well made.

All that is required is the ability to compare.

The Auld Grump

Glad I asked, thank you.

 sgtpjbarker wrote:
Glad I asked, thank you.

You are welcome, and thanks for taking my response well.

The Auld Grump

While I agree on the reaper being cheaper, in general they do not offer a lot of what I like coming from GWs product, I feel that the modularity, the higher detail(IMO). The extra bits, moving everything into an easy to work with plastic among other things really puts the miniatures above.

In addition you have to compare an entire company to entire company to get a good comparison, otherwise you are just cherry picking parts and then asking a company to beat the best parts of 5 other companies, which is really not a fair assessment. you also have to factor in the things that you do not value personally but someone else might value.

I think part of GW's problem is that since they are currently the biggest they have to do what they can to try to please as many different people as possible. So for example the rules. A warmachine rule set might appeal to a segment of their population. However I know that I did not like it and ended up dropping the range completely. They have to try and balance a much larger player base.

In addition they have to design models that the standard gamer could have a fun time painting without getting extremely frustruated. That is why other games with their amazing detail would not work. I just look at many of those models and just think "No way in hell I could paint those and be happy". But with GW there is a range of details on minis, that I feel the standard person could paint to a good standard without too much technical knowledge and time. While at the same time Really good painters and converters could do AMAZING things with them.

Back to the warmachine comparison. They require by rules that everything is EXACTLY as presented. Leaving little room for conversions. This is a turn off for me because I like to make things interesting. I like to take left overs and make something awesome. But then again that flows back into the ability to have options. I can buy one box from GW and have a crap ton of things I can do with it. Do I want melta? PLasma? missile?, etc the list goes on.

GW also has an amazing universe that they have built, the fluff they offer to support the game, things like the Fantasy Flight RPG, most of the video games, black library. All of that is created around the universe that Warhammer 40k offers. For me that takes it to another level that the other games dont have yet.

GW has survived for over 30 years now I think. Tied into the point above this gives them a wealth of material tied into the game that other games really can't touch, or at least wont be able to touch for a long time. For someone who has been playing since around 10 and reading the books it is nice to have a constant in your life. Unfortunately these other games have not offered the consistency of 40k, is it possible that I might like another game more? Sure but what are the odds it will be around in 10 years? 20? I dont see GW going anywhere anytime soon. I think they are going through a rough patch with some of the business decisions, however I think they will hopefully turn around in the next couple of years and we will see the old GW show up again. Their customer service never went away.

Sorry I just shotgunned this out, I will come back to it later and try and get some edits in. Now a lot of this is based in my PERSONAL views/preferences so naturally I am not speaking for everyone, I am just trying to offer my opinion on the subject.

I think that this is why GW has been around for a long time.

Comparing Reaper as a whole to GW as a whole... I greatly prefer Reaper.

Equal customer service - both are very good.

Reaper has much better response to criticism - the Reaper forums are still there, for example....

Better models (purely a matter of opinion - but I have always bought more Reaper than GW, this is not just a new thing).

In general Reaper is better at communication. (At the end the communication in the Bones Kickstarter fell flat on its face.)

The best that I have seen at communication is Paizo - there is just something about asking a question, and getting a response by the CEO of the company.

Rules... I find Warlord and Warhammer 40K about equal in quality of play - but I prefer Warhammer Fantasy over Warlord or Warhammer 40K. (And prefer Kings of War over all three.) (And like Mordheim better than all four. )

Reaper does not try to sue everybody for making compatible bits. (Best in that regard is Mantic - who go out of their way to mix and match models from other companies - Warlord and Mongoose coming to mind, both with the Mantic zombies.)

Reaper prices are better, pretty much across the board. (With the Bones being much better value, even without adding in the Kickstarter.)

Reaper handled rising tin prices better - and were quite up front that tin prices are becoming unsustainable. Reaper's response was Bones - which dropped the price. GW's response was Finecast... 'nuff said.

Reaper does a better job of supporting the hobby - with WiP articles in their forums about other companies minis. (Best for that is a bit of a tie:
Paizo - who plugged a competitor's model over one of their own flip maps in the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path.
WotC for creating the OGL... too bad they decided not to support it later.)

Of late... I have not been thrilled by most GW releases - for me Reaper releases have a better ratio of interesting models, and a heck of a lot fewer really, really dumb models. (Really, really not a fan of most of the recent BIG things for Warhammer, like that stupid eagle pulled glider.)

You are allowed to like the GW models - this is mostly a matter of opinion, and opinions can and do vary.

But for me, comparing company to company, GW does not come off all that favorably against Reaper.

The Auld Grump - I do agree that comparing companies on multiple fronts is a better approach - I just think that Reaper comes off better on most of those fronts.

I give credit when credit is due. GW Customer support is overall pretty good.

I only called GW customer service once:

I had ordered some finecast bloodknights (back when finecast just came out) and the sides of 3 of the horses has some bubbles on the reins and chainmail - it would have been impossible to restore the detail unless you are a master sculptor. I called GW customers service, identified the pieces I needed replaced and they sent me the sprues.

It would have been awesome to have gotten a new box of bloodnights but the miscast didn't affect the majority of the model. The sprues did give me extra bloodknight heads though which I will use for conversions!

I've had one or two issues with fine set stuff(zoanthrope/hive guard), and hey we're always polite. They usually shipped out a replacement model the next day. They took my name down, but never asked for pictures or anything.

I've had (for the most part), good experiences with Games Workshop customer service.

The exception being, when I ordered a bit during the Finecast fiasco--and called when most of them had some pretty bad air pockets/holes/miscasts. The customer service rep tried to sell me on liquid green stuff--and finally, after explaining that while I could probably green stuff the issues with enough time but I didn't feel I should be forced to after purchasing (what I assumed was) a complete model---he gave in and sent the replacements. It wasn't a good experience though.


I imagine, like most things with Games Workshop, the employees wanted to be reasonable---but were forced to follow some inane management decree.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
I've had (for the most part), good experiences with Games Workshop customer service.

The exception being, when I ordered a bit during the Finecast fiasco--and called when most of them had some pretty bad air pockets/holes/miscasts. The customer service rep tried to sell me on liquid green stuff--and finally, after explaining that while I could probably green stuff the issues with enough time but I didn't feel I should be forced to after purchasing (what I assumed was) a complete model---he gave in and sent the replacements. It wasn't a good experience though.


I imagine, like most things with Games Workshop, the employees wanted to be reasonable---but were forced to follow some inane management decree.

Their returns also likely skyrocketed.

Then they tried pushing having to repair models as 'part of the Finecast experience'.... That would be like AT&T pushing bad reception as 'part of the iPhone experience'....

Now they have a better grip on the problems of resin casting, so hopefully their customer service folks are back to being an actual good part of the GW experience....

Suspicion - GW was pushing the limits of their machines just a little too far, and did not allot enough time for either production or QA in preparation for Finecasts Big Reveal.

So, more problems than usual, and at the worst time as far as the new material was concerned.

The result was a flooded complaints department, and an over worked Customer Service staff.

Add some daft new policies and hilarity ensues.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

did not allot enough time for either production or QA in preparation for Finecasts Big Reveal.

The Auld Grump

I think this played a large part of it. It was pretty clear that at the beginning, the QC simply wasn't there. It wasn't. Stuff was getting "okayed" that should never have been packaged.

I had to call about 1 finecast piece, and it was pretty clear that the CS rep was absolutely beleagured at that time. So I started off with something positive "I've gotten a few pieces of finecast and love how easy it is to convert it over metal" and then let him know about the problem I did have that I didn't feel like I'd be able to easily fix (a bubble on some armor text on Ludwig Schwarzhelm).

I actually didn't intend this thread to be about GW CS in general; rather, I merely meant to open this to show an examplar of CS that was above my expectation. As such, we can close the thread if ya'll want.