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I'll post this case with a bit of caution. Feels like GW's secret police (aka: Inquisition) might be a little more... inquisitive about this. But anyways, I thought it was unique.

How often is it that... a kit will have extra sprues?! I once opened a box of Necron Warriors and found an extra sprue that allowed me to make a couple of extra Scarab bases (plus some extra Warrior arms). I've never seen this happening before and was rather pleasantly surprised. Quite uncharacteristic of GW I may add cautiously. If it were any other kits, it'd probably be mostly useless as it only gives extra bitz but in my case I actually got a few legit models out of it.
Has this happened to anyone else?

Are you serious about the secret police stuff? If they see this theyll either a) make sure who/whatever is packing the sprues isnt messing it up or b) do nothing.

I can't speak for the UK but in Memphis when one of the girls from the packing dept would find they had more sprues than needed when they get close to finishing the work order they would pack the extra sprues in whatever boxes were left.

That way they didn't have to waste time transferring stock back into storage. You'd wind up with half or quarter filled boxes, sometimes boxes of sprues that have only 20 or so sprues in them, but they will eventually need to be inventoried and counted by hand which is a pain.

Since it's easier to count full, closed boxes they would pack the extras to clear their table, or they would bring the extras over to the plastic grinder to get rid of them.

Never seen it happen. I'd say you're the 1 in a thousand.

Used to happen a bit with the RTB001 boxes.

The missile launcher/flamer and "sgt" bits were on one sprue, and you were supposed to get 2 in a box of 30 marines.

I bought several boxes that had 5-6 of these sprues in them - IN ADDITION to the "tac marine" sprues. Enough missile launchers and flamers to make 6 5 man squads with both, and sgts.

Happened occasionally with the 3rd ed marines, too

Haven't bought any GW since 2012 though, so don't know how it is now.

This happened relatively recently (6th Ed Necron Warrior box) so.... yeah. I guess things like this happen then?

I've never seen it, I have purchased boxes with missing sprues, once a Baneblade hull, so they sent me an entire new kit.

I've seen blisters and boxes with extra parts and missing parts. I've had extra sprues in kits from other manufacturers too. I won a kit of an aircraft in a modelling competition years ago when I was a kid. When I got home and found it was mispacked having two upper fuselage so I wrote to the company and they sent the right sprue. I sat down to start the kit and then found that it also only had he parts to build two left wings and no right. I have up at that point as contacting the company again was going to look a bit silly. Lesson learned, makes sure you check for every missing part before you ask for replacements, there make be more than one.

Never had this happen in 20 years. The boxes are usually tight for space so you'd notice if there was an extra sprue in there.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I can't speak for the UK but in Memphis when one of the girls from the packing dept would find they had more sprues than needed when they get close to finishing the work order they would pack the extra sprues in whatever boxes were left.

That way they didn't have to waste time transferring stock back into storage. You'd wind up with half or quarter filled boxes, sometimes boxes of sprues that have only 20 or so sprues in them, but they will eventually need to be inventoried and counted by hand which is a pain.

Since it's easier to count full, closed boxes they would pack the extras to clear their table, or they would bring the extras over to the plastic grinder to get rid of them.

So the closing down if the US manufacturing arm becomes less and less of a puzzler!

 notprop wrote:
Never had this happen in 20 years. The boxes are usually tight for space so you'd notice if there was an extra sprue in there.

You see that was the thing: the box was actually fatter than usual! Which made me sorta wonder when I opened it up....

Having worked for a company that manufactured and sent out a lot of parts, I can definitely safely tell you that packing errors happen. We shipped things worth a lot more than a sprue of plastic, and dear god were the bosses mad when it happened, but it happens. Manufacturing is a series of rushes and lulls, and management is never as good as transitioning between them as they should be. And then you have simple "Fudge it, it's friday" syndrome, where people are way more interested in their own lives than packing whatever the hell you're dealing with and getting it out the door. I'm sure if you complain they'll be happy to take it back, even though the plastic isn't even worth the shipping cost to begin with.

 Zaki66 wrote:
I'll post this case with a bit of caution. Feels like GW's secret police (aka: Inquisition) might be a little more... inquisitive about this. But anyways, I thought it was unique.

How often is it that... a kit will have extra sprues?! I once opened a box of Necron Warriors and found an extra sprue that allowed me to make a couple of extra Scarab bases (plus some extra Warrior arms). I've never seen this happening before and was rather pleasantly surprised. Quite uncharacteristic of GW I may add cautiously. If it were any other kits, it'd probably be mostly useless as it only gives extra bitz but in my case I actually got a few legit models out of it.
Has this happened to anyone else?

I think that regularly happens with any plastic's production houses.

I once bought some Hasegawa Waterline WWII ships in the 1980's (Like '81/'82)... And in three of the kits, there were three ships each, instead of the two that were supposed to be in the kits (They were Japanese Fubuki Destroyers, I think).

I was REALLY Psyched, because I essentially got a 1.5 free model kits, and it allowed me to fill out a Fleet I built around the Kongou.

We played 1/600 WWII Navals at 1/600 ground scale in the gymnasium at the Junior College in Dallas (There was a History professor who was a Reserve Admiral in the USNR, who was HUGE into WWII naval - he was also my first introduction to a WWII Veteran). The gym was about 50yds on a side.... It made for some exciting gaming to be able to see the game at 1:1 scale for the ground:miniature scale.

It made me forever a fan of small scales and realistic ground:miniature scales.

I sure wish that this would happen to me with a few Tau Kits (They are the only 40k models I have, and then it is just a few Broadside, and Farsight suits, and some Fire Warriors and a sniper drone).

I wish they would do a plastic Orca, then I would buy an entire company mounted on Orcas (and hope for extra Sprues).

MB

Back in the day our GW stores would do a spot on the box sale. You get a box with a colored spot, you'd either get something from the grab bag box, or it was already in the boxes.

Back when GW stores would do in house events.....

I got an extra fine cast Eldar ranger however, it was one of two horribly miscast figures. I also purchased a brother Cronos that had an extra half torso and backpack bits. Three for the price of two! The last Ralpartha mini I purchased was a crimson skies Vampire which was missing parts of the tail. I called customer support and the person I talked too seemed kind of cranky. I asked him how things were going and he said "We just got out of a meeting where we were all fired. We are shutting down."


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Doh! I forgot, got a chaos dwarf command squad from Forgeworld tossed into an order. I have never ordered any fantasy from them so I called FW to let them know the evil plot to hook me on fantasy didn't work.

Way back when, I brought a blister of Uruk-hai Beserkers. They were 3 to a blister but I saw one had 4 in it.

Funnily enough I've lost of all but one of those beserkers.

I once bought a venom that had no plastic canopy sprue, then later bought another one that had two.

It happens. Got two Defilers in a single box when they first came out.

@ HBMC: That is what I call really fething lucky! Nice one! My only gripe with that kit is that the pins for the pincers aren't quite long enough so you have to mess about to make it snip properly.

Bought 2 Ork Bommas when they were released. Take the shrinkwrap off of the first one and inventory the parts to find there is an extra clear flight stand. Remove the shrinkwrap from the second lay the parts out and guess what? This box was short a clear flight stand. There was no way I could have mixed them up as the second box was still sealed when I notd the extra from the first.

Munga wrote:
I'm sure if you complain they'll be happy to take it back, even though the plastic isn't even worth the shipping cost to begin with.

Anytime anyone has posted about calling GW to report a packing error in their favor, GW has aways told them to just keep it. Usually the same case when missing a relatively small part of a kit, and then getting an entire replacement sent out.

I bought an Epic 40k Great Gargant.

It was missing the side body piece.

Called GW, and they sent a whole new Epic 40k Great Gargant.

It was also missing the side body piece.

I called them again and they sent another Epic 40k Great Gargant.

It was also missing the side body piece.

I am guessing the mold they were using was damaged or something, I don't know. I didn't even bother with calling them again; I went online and someone was selling the Great Gargant bits, so I ordered a side body piece and wound up basically getting three Gargants for the price of one in the end.

 Bookwrack wrote:

Munga wrote:
I'm sure if you complain they'll be happy to take it back, even though the plastic isn't even worth the shipping cost to begin with.

Anytime anyone has posted about calling GW to report a packing error in their favor, GW has aways told them to just keep it. Usually the same case when missing a relatively small part of a kit, and then getting an entire replacement sent out.

That's because it's not worth their time to take it back.

It's cheaper for them to have you keep it than have you mail it back, send it to packing, repackage it into a new kit, and pay for all the man hours that entails as well.

Plus could you imagine the PR nightmare it would be if GW started calling up customers saying "hey, we accidentally sold you an extra sprue of marines, you need to give that back."

Plus it's not like they'd even have legal recourse to do so. They sold you the box, if they didn't want you to get extra stuff they should've tightened up quality control.

it's not that supprising, be it packed by hand or machine, errors happen in the packing process both ways. it just tends to happen to all businesses.

One of my Imperial Sector boxes was missing the Manufactorum sprues but had double the Sanctum sprues.

As they usually do they sent me a Manufactorum set right away.

I once got an extra pair of wings in a Bloodthirster kit. Called up GW because I wasn't sure what to do in the situation, and they said to keep them and use it for a conversion. This was only a year or so ago.

GW isn't going to go after you because of something like this. Don't be silly.

I've had the extra sprue/ missing sprue thing happen quite a bit. When I first started 40k back in 2001 I was making a rather large Catachan army. ALL three boxes of Catachans I purchased were missing a sprue of guardsmen.

I've also purchased a Rhino only to discover the parts to a Predator in it. (I'm guessing a boxing mistake).

Blisters of Metal miniatures seemed to be the worst for this. I've had several with missing parts or extra parts.