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 Col.Gravis wrote:
Yup, can't really lay the blame on GW. The trade terms are fairly simple, you place an order per week (more if you participate in their stockist program) and they deliver within 5 working days (generally speaking), how an order can take upto a month to reach a customer is a mystery only total wargamer can answer

I'll just go ahead and assume it's because they've got more customers ordering those items (such as in the case of new releases) than GW allow them to ask for in their weekly order.

Fairly simple.

I've ordered from them a couple of times - on the first occasion, ordering Mantic and PP stuff and more recently (e.g. back in January) I placed a pretty big Infinity order.

The first time, they shipped the Mantic stuff almost immediately but it took almost 2 months to get the PP stuff. The second time, it took a little over 3 weeks to get my Infinity order.

On both occasions, the items were listed as 'in stock' but I strongly suspect that really means 'in stock at our distributor' and TW have to wait to place an order of a particular size in order to be able to pass on the kind of discount you can get on the weekends. Also on both occasions, I had to open a support ticket to find out what was happening with my orders so they aren't very proactive on that front - but I was fortunate enough to always get a reply to my tickets within 48 hours. All subsequent status updates had to be initiated by me although I always got a response from them within 48 hours.

One thing to bear in mind is that I have never seen anyone report a bad experience with TW who was able to do so in a calm and objective manner. This could mean that a bad experience with TW is totally guaranteed to make even the most laid back person lose their s**t but since I am that kind of person and I didn't, I suspect that isn't the case. So if you do order something from TW and after a week your stuff hasn't been shipped and you haven't been contacted to tell you why, for the love of god, don't start frothing at the mouth and go after them with ALL CAPS or lots of these !!11!! because it certainly seems to be the case that as soon as you do that, they put you on the ignore list. Or at the very least, it puts you on the bottom of the 'to do' pile which of course exacerbates their existing communication problems and an order that was going to take a month to resolve is probably now going to take three.

So, keep it civil and only order from them if:

A) You can handle periodically (probably no more than once a week) pinging them for an order update.
B) You are prepared to wait at least a month for your order.
C) Both of the above is an acceptable trade-off for the discount.

If A and/or B are a no-no, then there of course many fine retailers in the UK that you can order from (Troll Trader, Firestorm and so on) who will likely dispatch the same day and contact you if there's any kind of problem.

While I understand what you're saying seems perfectly logical to you, it is utterly indefensible to put a customer 'on ignore' for any reason than perhaps some sort of criminal act (and even then, you should be thinking about what you've done to provoke such a reaction)

Speaking personally, I've had people shout, swear, threaten and throw themselves about (never as a result of my own actions, but sometimes being in charge means cleaning up other people's mess) and would consider it a professional failure if I wasn't able to provide some sort of resolution in those circumstances.

For sure it's not a good way to run a business, but that is their choice to make. Having served my time* it is rather tiresome dealing with customers who treat you like dirt and expect you take it because they consider it part of the service. Heck, if I ran my own business I would also be sorely tempted to ignore the customer's who couldn't act with civility although I suspect I wouldn't stay in business very long


* ..in a call center.

Edit: To clarify, I should say "They seem to put you on their ignore list" since I have no proof of them literally doing that. It's just based on the other comments I've seen with regard to TW.