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I cannot acces their store right now. Please tell me I'm the only one:

http://totalwargamer.co.uk/

I'm getting an error message, but it could just be maintenance or similar.

I'm getting an error message too but their server/domain is still active

I suspect it's probably just a computer glitch at the moment (it's Sunday so they're unlikely to know there is a problem)

(although with all the problems reported on the discussions thread they're not a company i'd buy from at the moment anyway)

Yeah, looks to be an issue with the site software rather than anything else. Their hosting provider's site is still up, though a quick search didn't find a service status page to say if there were any general issue.

I'd have expected either the site to be up with a message if they were going out of business or the page to redirect to a page saying that they'd not paid their hosting bill.

I think it's just maintanance.

Good for the rest of us if they have to be honest. How many more people do they need to fail for before people give up on them.

Was in the store recently, and the LifeInvader page is still up - and they're hosting the (world's?) biggest Kings of War battle ever today so all in all probably unlikely.

Not my place to defend them, but I've never had any problem with their orders and received everything I requested within days.

They do fantastic discount - from what I've read, looking at the other thread, the problem seems to be specifically when ordering GW stuff. Again, not going to go into the difficulties of shops dealing with GW, which have been well documented (if you want a parallel, watch the 'living dead' movie where they are trying to farm zombies ), but they could obviously do with being more communicative in any case as a lot of the stuff you read about is pretty unforgivable..

 Pacific wrote:

Not my place to defend them, but I've never had any problem with their orders and received everything I requested within days.

This has been my experience too.

Anyway, this isn't really news or rumours about a wargames company.

EDIT: The site is back up now.

 Pacific wrote:
Was in the store recently, and the LifeInvader page is still up - and they're hosting the (world's?) biggest Kings of War battle ever today so all in all probably unlikely.

Not my place to defend them, but I've never had any problem with their orders and received everything I requested within days.

They do fantastic discount - from what I've read, looking at the other thread, the problem seems to be specifically when ordering GW stuff. Again, not going to go into the difficulties of shops dealing with GW, which have been well documented (if you want a parallel, watch the 'living dead' movie where they are trying to farm zombies ), but they could obviously do with being more communicative in any case as a lot of the stuff you read about is pretty unforgivable..

Whatever difficulties shops have with GW, GW are not responsible for shops which fail to keep items in stock, instead only ordering them from the supplier when they get an order from a customer; nor are GW responsible for 3rd party retailers failing to have a modern auto-updating stock management system that's linked to their website, to prevent people ordering things they don't have in stock. If the complaint is about issues getting stock of new releases or onerous trade terms, fine, have at GW, but as much as I dislike the corporate culture that infests GWHQ at the moment, it really isn't on to keep insinuating that the dishonesty and failures of some web stores(and it is just some, there are a fair few out there who are up-front about stock levels, who are communicative, and who deliver on-time) is somehow actually the fault of GW.

I believe my post was trying to say that there are two elements at play, at no point have I said that it's entirely GW's fault. As we have both said, not having an accurate ordering system is clearly a big problem.

But Total Wargamer aren't the only company where people have had issue with buying GW stuff - it's well documented (or at least, independent shop owners have stated) that GWs supply of items is pretty unreliable. If you say that 'x' amount of an item is going to arrive on release day, and then it doesn't (and the store has taken pre-orders correspondingly) then you are immediately going to have unhappy customers who are looking to go elsewhere.

It's also something that I have personal experience of - working in a small independent, and this was one without a webstore at the time, GW were fine and dandy until the official GW store opened across town. Suddenly orders started coming in weeks late (so you missed the initial hit of new releases), in reduced quantity or not at all. Sales dropped completely, as much as your regular customers want to stay loyal, ultimately if they can't buy what they want they will go elsewhere. In the end the owner just gave up, told the rep where to go, and stopped selling GW. Fortunately it was only a minor part of the business, and he could afford to fall back on other product lines. Although, other stores aren't that lucky.

So... you are right, it is a lot to do with the store in question, and obviously some stores can reduce the GW stock issues - personally I think TW have the cross hairs on them for offering such a low discount, and then when they stopped offering 30% changed to '25% + an extra 5% if you use this voucher'. Looking in their store where they have such a low quantity of GW product these days, going from stacked shelves in the past, you have to wonder whether they will continue to sell it. They're doing a lot to help foster other systems there - obviously Magic and other card games are massive for them, they've had numerous X-wing and Dystopian wars events, with a big on the shelf stock of those items, and had an absolutely huge Mantic Kings of War events there - their KoW tournaments are also sell outs as well.

So yes - the store is completely at fault in some regards, but it's also GW's draconian trade policies where they seem to be doing everything possible to move their trade back to direct sales.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to put up a 'maintenance' page, and direct all traffic to that while they work on their main site.
But, every couple of weeks someone posts about Total Wargamer.

 Skinnereal wrote:
I'm not sure how difficult it would be to put up a 'maintenance' page, and direct all traffic to that while they work on their main site.
But, every couple of weeks someone posts about Total Wargamer.

I believe the answer is "trivially easy"

 Bull0 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
I'm not sure how difficult it would be to put up a 'maintenance' page, and direct all traffic to that while they work on their main site.
But, every couple of weeks someone posts about Total Wargamer.

I believe the answer is "trivially easy"

Thought so. Can someone mention it then next time they speak to TW?

Oh, and http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/150/472563.page

Yeah I've posted in that thread. Sorry I made this one, but panic mode was engaged yesterday when the store had gone offline. I'm glad theyre back, I'll keep my fingers crossed and wait some more - got a backlog at home myself with unopened GW boxes to assemble and paint.