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Hey dakka, so I wanted to get a large amount of 40k this weekend and realised Total Wargamer have 30% off GW RRP on all their items, I'm considering using it, I just need to know if anyone has used the site before and everything was ok? I thought it was safe to get some good reviews before I buy

Cheers

I'm guessing 'no'....

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/472563.page

If you want your stuff fast then no. If you don`t mind waiting then they can be ok. I have had no problems at all dealing with them and they have been very helpful when I have had orders in. Though like any web company they have some problems but if you have problems get on the facebook page and they will get back to you straight away

I spoke with them in the store about their delivery issues the other day. They politely declined to be interviewed, but did pass on three points I will share with you without additional comment.

1. Their weekend sakes have been wildly successful and they do have trouble keeping popular items in stock.

2. They expect this situation to continue for 3-4 more months.

3. If you have ordered goods from them, you WILL receive them, but dispatch may take up to a month, but this will improve by the Summer.

At the moment, Paul wants to concentrate on managing his stock and introducing the necessary improvements to meet the increasing demand.

I will go back to him in three months and see if Paul will re-consider that interview.

R.

Thanks for that, I've used Gifts for Geeks regularly before and had no issue with them, but the extra 5% on the large bulk I was planning would've helped even more, I guess that I will stick with Gifts for Geeks as I want my stuff relatively quickly.

Cheers

They charged me for 5 day delivery. Needless to say 2 months later my order arrived....

It was at a good discount though.

I have an order in with them at the moment, I am gonna cancel it tomorrow, I won't use them again. Basket case business in my opinion.

I have been waiting an eternity for it

They are ok if you do not mind waiting up to two months for your order.

Is anyone else having trouble contacting support? I wanted to get a refund after waiting so long and need the money anyway but I have contacted twice and no reply although I was told I could ask for a refund but yeah thats proving a bit difficult with no customer support

I wouldnt really be that bothered but its turning into the whole fiasco I had with Maelstron Games and it is making me slightly nervous.

Contact them on facebook. You'll get a response fairly quickly. They are not like maelstrom. They are slow but they would eventually get it out to you

A mate recommended I try them. So far, not impressed - they move very, very slowly. 3 days to get an e-mail reply every time.

At least they're consistent in that way.

I had an order with them, after trying to get in contact for four weeks and failing, I emailed them for a cancellation. A week later I pointed out how their obligated to give me a refund on their facebook, four days after that they finally cancelled the order. Wayland Games is working well for me currently, last order turned up a day early, which was odd...

Thanks guys, yeah I knew they were slow before ordering but the discount was too good to miss. I just felt worried because when I sent an email/ticket asking about my order taking longer than expected, they replied straight away but asking for a refund twice got no response.

I'll wait a little longer for them to get back and if not use the old facebook, thanks again guys.

Thanks for the reminder -- I should check that they actually refunded me when they said they would!

Any comment on buying warmahordes from TotalWargamer?

Am interested in purchasing some bits but may have to go to TrollTrader again

Sorry dude, I have never bought those products from them but I think the general consensus is that they deliver, but are just slow at delivering.

I'll repeat the offer I made on the last thread: these guys are my FLGS; I live about 30 minutes away and visit them as often as I can. If you've been waiting more than a month for any order, send me the details of your order and I will chase them up in person.

R.

I made several orders from them and it took a month on the 1st and got a wrong item. 2nd and 3rd time after a month I asked for my money back for both. I just tried a 4th time a few days ago not getting my hopes up though as really haven't been pleased with these at all. Each orders been a few hundred quid. Ive had a lot of bad experiences with inline sellers the one I always go back to and use and get on with well is Triple Helix Wargames. Quick delivery, great friendly service and 20% off plus free P&P, no minimum. from out of about 50 orders only 1 that was a problem and it wasn't their fault. I'd swear by THW. I'm hoping Total Wargamer will prove me wrong this time

I thought Triple Helix had just gone out of business?

R.

No I think they were just stopping selling fantasy/sci-fi stuff, and reverting to Historical only (as they used to be).

By the way if anyone gets a chance too, would thoroughly recommend visiting Total Wargamer. It's a great little store, real Aladdin's Cave!

Indeed it is! Very hard to not buy anything when I pop in.

Also, they are organizing a Summer Fete: a sort of outdoor con, open to other retailers and manufacturers with a barbecue and kids games and all sorts of traditional British fete events. I'm planning on doing a miniatures gaming bran tub lucky dip.

R.

Just got my refund put through and they were very apologetic about the slow reply and wait. Will order again the next time they do a 30% off deal, I like them even though they are a tad slow.

I hope you will begin to see significant improvement. They have re-organized internally so that they now have two people working full time just on online orders, answering emails and managing the FB page.

R.

They just put another 30% deal on, argh so tempting as I really wanna either get a small necron attachment for my marines or start on a grey knight purifier apocalypse formation. What do I doooooo?

I've had problems here, so much so I've asked for a refund (after about 6 weeks of waiting), because of their last reply to me and the fact that for a 5% difference I can order it from someone who will actually deliver.

Server migration issues, 600 outstanding emails at that point...

Imo it's highly irresponsible to be accepting loads of new orders when they have months of backlog to clear.

I don't accept their excuse about having things waiting for delivery, how can it take 6 weeks to have stock delivered!? What is the deal with Mythreal? I suspect they are diverting all incoming stock to Mythreal to get it started. Which leaves all people with Total wargamer waiting for months...

Not impressed and I would advise everyone to stay well clear for a couple of months until they (hopefully) get things sorted out.

@Precinctomega

I may well be taking you up on your offer to chase something in person, as I have another order outstanding for a Khador Colossal I'd really love to get at their price. Only been 3 weeks on that so far, so I'll leave it another couple then give you a shout.

how can it take 6 weeks to have stock delivered!?

I can answer that in general terms. This is a bit second-hand, so I'm open to correction, but I discussed the same thing with a Maelstrom employee last year and saw it again at TW.

They submit a stock order to their supplier (let's take GW for example). Their supplier then complies all the stock orders and compares it to the available stock. Frequently, the total stock orders for in-demand items in higher than the available stock, so the supplier prioritizes the stock as well as they can.

To take an example, let's look at the new Riptide battlesuit for Tau in 40k. GW has in stock 20,000 units of Riptides, of which 50% is allocated to their own stores and Mail Order, leaving a total of 10,000 stock for retailers. They receive a total supply request from all retailers for 15,000 units. So they spread out the available 10,000 units across the retailers as evenly as possible (lets suppose there are 100 retailers for the sake of ease, all ordering 150). So each retailer gets 100 units, stocks the shelves and supplies their own pre-order customers. Inevitably, 50 pre-order customers at each retailer will not receive their Riptide.

So what happened to those orders? They've been passed on to the next batch of manufacturing and will be prioritised at the next supplier dispatch... but by then, the supplier has received orders for another however many and the process repeats. In theory, demand eventually dwindles to the point where everyone catches up with all the orders. But some people are always left hanging.

If gets a little worse in that some suppliers expect retailers to stock a minimum quantity of certain "high priority" items. GW has done this. So they look at a retailer's order, see "15 Riptides", but look at the box they are going to send to the retailer. This box has been pre-packed with, let's say, ten boxes of "high priority" items that the retailer is expected to pay for and stock as part of their re-sale agreement with GW. This leaves room for only 8 Riptides in the box. Thus, seven get held over to the next dispatch date.

This happens to retailers all over the country. Some - such as Wayland Games - have a stock warehouse that allows them to maintain a reserve stock of in-demand items, but even they will struggle at times. Most shops have very limited storage space. As a delivery comes in for the online store, it's broken up and dispatched to the orders of customers who are waiting. But if a whole order hasn't been completed, the total order will invariably have to wait. If you have one in-demand item in an order, you may find yourself waiting weeks for that one item to arrive in sufficient volume that all those waiting for it receive it.

The situation can be the same for items that are the opposite of in demand. The supplier may not keep the item in stock, or may do so only in limited quantities. A retailer may therefore find that one rarely-ordered item is constantly put back from being supplied due to the requirement to continually stock items that are considered high priority by the supplier.

This is all a bit rubbish, I agree. In a stable customer environment, it wouldn't normally happen because projections of sales and distribution would be easy to manage and be relatively reliable, month on month. But, bizarrely, our community's amazing growth for the last several years (and the massive diversification of available games) has caused many of those projections and models to be thrown out, and many suppliers to find themselves essentially making it up as they go along.

R.

That's interesting.

My concern is why they are not openly dealing with the fact that people are having such issues?

If they know they are facing the same issue over and over they should for instance accept a fixed number of orders for new products.

So their 30% offers instead of saying 'offer open until sunday' they should say 'limited stock 100 in supply, after these are sold they will be out of stock until re-supplied'. etc.

Or, like on wayland "Available (Only 1 left, more on the way!)"

Total wargamer have no indication whatsoever of what is in stock or not.

I think its safe to say, whatever you want isn't in stock and you'll be waiting 3 weeks or so, but with that in mind, you do get some very large discounts.

I would reccomend them on that basis, and it is safe. Contact on facebook to get quicker reply.

 precinctomega wrote:
I'll repeat the offer I made on the last thread: these guys are my FLGS; I live about 30 minutes away and visit them as often as I can. If you've been waiting more than a month for any order, send me the details of your order and I will chase them up in person.

R.

This is ludicrous, they deserve to go out of business. The business owner should take responsibility and deal with the problem and not rely on customers to make excuses that they dont fulfill orders, dont answer the phone and basically do what they like once they have the customers hard earned.

It makes me even madder when they keep mailing out 30% off when there is so many people who haven't yet had what they ordered......its liked some wargaming ponzi scheme (and someone, one day is gonna get burnt and be left with no models)

Seriously its a nice offer you make but you are just causing a bigger problem, let this business die so that a genuine alternative can prosper.

My wife had to get her CC transaction refunded. So I'd say no.