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... Or am I just extremely unlucky?

In a recent thread ( https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/758909.page ) I described how two separate packs of 90th Light Division (Diana + 7.6cm guns) both had missing tank crews.

Today I started to build a 15cm Lorraine Schlepper Battery (packed by C17 NORIEY) only to discover it was missing BOTH crew sprues.

Either I'm somehow rolling a 1 on every purchase, or Battlefront is the absolute worst quality wargaming company I've ever had the misfortune to purchase products from. I do not recall any issue with GW, Mantic, Spartan Games, PSC or the numerous smaller / one-off publisher titles. But Battlefront have consistently shipped sh*t.

The only good thing I can say is, I'm never buying their crap again.

But so far this year (EDIT : ) in what I'm now calling "Daisy's Not Quite Advent Calendar of Despair Over Battlefront's Poor Quality Products":

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

2 packs of 90th Light Division with missing parts

1 Lorraine Schlepper Battery with missing parts

1 El Alamein start set with missing parts (no cardboard sheets present - not a big deal from a gaming perspective as I use 3d terrain, but another example of p*ss-poor quality control)

2 Organised Gaming Kits with missing parts (1 missing minefields, another missing "D" Firing/Ranged In tokens and die)

Team Yankee Token Set missing "Foxholes" tokens

2 boxes of Konigstiger - one with missing Tiger Ace dice and one with missing Big Cat tokens

A box of Desert Escarpments terrain, where BOTH cliff-faces had holes smashed in them. This was definitely NOT done in transit, as there was not a single fragment in the box (otherwise I'd have tried and repaired them)

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---


And their customer service decided - despite me never once being anything less than polite in asking for replacement parts - to just stop responding to me. Sure, take the money (never again!), ship a crap incomplete product, and then hang the customer out.

What is the future of wargaming when new players would be faced with such poor quality "Hope and Pray" purchases, backed up by zero customer service.

Or ... is everyone else having a perfect experience because I seem to have become the Bad Karma Sponge for p*ss poor products from Battlefront so the rest of the gamers get the defect-free boxes ???

Their customer service dept was always pretty lax. It was often a good idea to prompt them by posting your woes in public on their forum to get some service from them.

I guess you could do the same with their Facebook pages. I've no idea what they're like because I never signed up to any of them.

This is a company that completely destroyed DUST and stole all the profit...so...yeah

Yeah Battlefront's QC and customer service are awful and always have been, a lot of their casting is not that great either.

ValentineGames wrote:
This is a company that completely destroyed DUST and stole all the profit...so...yeah

That's just not true. The issues there were as much down to Yau and Parente (mostly Parente) as they were Battlefront.

Edit; Like this quote here - Paolo Parente: That`s correct, the goal of the KS was to help BC pay their overdue invoices to our Factoring Bank that was chasing them... There are no profits on either side. DS have invested 400K USD in the production and tooling... no profits is ok. Life goes on.

So according to you BF stole the profit that didn't exist in the first place then.

im leaning towards extremely unlucky.

not 1 single box/pack for FoW or dust has had missing parts for me.
and i have 2 armys for both ww2 FoW and dust(dust beeing the kickstarter deals), plus several gf9Tanks skimirsh armys.

I've gotten a ridiculous number of Battlefront figures over the years. I've only had a few items I've purchased that had problems.

- SS Panzergrenadier Company Box - two of the metal prone LMG gunners had no faces (they had heads, but no faces; it was a bit odd)
- Team Yankee US Infantry Platoon Blister - one of the Dragon gunners was missing
- Japanese Infantry Company Box - the box has half a dozen two man mortar teams with a gunner and a loader; I ended up with seven of one figure and five of the other instead of six of each

Those are the only accidental issues that I've had (note that I am, of course, ignoring "as designed" bad stuff like the 15mm Romanian rifleman with the "poseable" arm). And as I said, I've purchased a very large number of figures from them. Note that I didn't contact Battlefront customer support about the issues I had. So I can't report on how responsive they might be.

*sigh* Given the issues with the resin kits, I decided to start looking through my backlog pile of "TODO" ...

I think the only way I can come through this is looking on the bright side, so I'm going to make this the equivalent of an advent calendar ...

Daisy's Not Quite Advent Calendar of Despair Over Battlefront's Poor Quality Products


...

Today I opened the 4 packs of Konigstigers that were going to form a (yeah I know, points galore!) Schwere Company:

2 packs were good
1 pack had missing Tiger Ace dice
1 pack had missing "Big Cat" tokens


Tomorrow I'll dip into a pair of Russian T-28 3-vehicle platoons ... and maybe switch the die I'm using to save vs the God of Bad Packers ...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
im leaning towards extremely unlucky.

hehe if its just me attracting all the terrible quality, I'm thinking of the last line in Von Ryan's Express ...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 George Spiggott wrote:
Their customer service dept was always pretty lax. It was often a good idea to prompt them by posting your woes in public on their forum to get some service from them.

I guess you could do the same with their Facebook pages. I've no idea what they're like because I never signed up to any of them.

I don't Insta-Google-Tweet-Face, so I guess this is the closest I'll get

are these boxes you have old?
as in 2 years, 4 years??

who knows, maybe they had package issues some years ago but has improved it over the last years?

or maybe it is your supplyer? tryed ordering from a different place?
i ordered all my FoW stuff directly from BF over the past 3 years, as there are no reliable supplyer in north eu/scandenavia, so i might just aswell take the 3 week shipping time from AUZ.

I've bought 3 full armies from them between FoW and Team Yankee, and I've never had a quality issue. Think it's just poor luck.

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
are these boxes you have old?
as in 2 years, 4 years??

who knows, maybe they had package issues some years ago but has improved it over the last years?

or maybe it is your supplyer? tryed ordering from a different place?
i ordered all my FoW stuff directly from BF over the past 3 years, as there are no reliable supplyer in north eu/scandenavia, so i might just aswell take the 3 week shipping time from AUZ.

Its been a mix - one of the organised game night kits was bought direct from BF.

The others have been across a number of major wargaming retail (online) stores - the same places I get my plastic WH40K and AOS crack - and never had issues - as well as some smaller merchants via Amazon. I've actually had good experience from some Scandinavian companies shipping to Ireland for harder-to-find products.

(This is NOTHING to suggest any of these companies are in any way providing poor quality items - I've had great shopping experience with them all):

In Sweden: Game Maniacs and Alphaspel
In Germany: Frontline Games
In Italy: Steel Models
In UK: Firestorm Games, PSC direct, Element Games (Firestorm and Element Games would be my main "dealers" )


The El Alamein box is a new release for v4, as were the 2 90th Light Divisions and the Schleppers. 90th Light was only released this year, the others were bought this year, but may have been from stock last year - but certainly no older given v4's recent release.

The likes of the Konigstiger though - I'm guessing they are older box sets - they have the v3 branding, and the Bogged Down tokens and Tiger Ace dice are not part of the v4 ruleset.

Likewise, tomorrow's unpacking of the 2 boxes of T-28s - those are older models (not sure when they were boxed, but they would have been created for Early War v3)


It is rather depressing - I'm close to completing my North Africa German and British army, and also have a smaller Italian force and a decent sized American force still in boxes. If I had checked all the goods at the time of arrival, I could have returned them within the distance selling period. But some of them have been sitting in the garage waiting to be built for months and months.

I also have a significant Late War force to build across US, Britain, Russia and Germany - though thankfully I switched the bulk of that to PSC - they recently had a 20% off sale, and as a general rule, a 30 pound BF box is 20 pounds from PSC (without any sale) and just as good quality models.

I made up crew for the AT guns and Lorraine Schlepper from PSC's "Pz38t and Variants" boxes. I was building a mixture of Early War Pz38t and some Marders, but each sprue has enough crew for the Marder. They look a little out of place in the guns, but I think it will be near impossible to tell the difference once painted. Likewise, the fact one of the standing units in the back of the Lorraine Schlepper is on one leg raised at the knee would be extremely hard to spot unless you know what you are looking for.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=15mm+Panzer+38T+with+Marder+options&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitwoiZre3bAhULDcAKHbRkBFAQ_AUICigB&biw=1631&bih=939#imgrc=9Vdm87cgq5uOHM:

If you look at the image there, I've been using #47 and #48 for the missing Lorraine crew men, and #49+50, #51 and #52 to supplement the BF sprues from the 90th Light Division boxes.

Based on my experience, you're unusually snake-bitten.

I think the list of packing/QC issues I've had would be:

-Konigstiger platoon with 4 right rear track guards and 2 left instead of 3/3; US CS had that sorted that in about 4 days after my email.
-TY Abbot battery missing a mud guard; didn't bother to chase that one up as it seems simple enough to make one assuming i decide to use them
-A BMP sprue that had been mangled and had part of the track broken off; was able to put it back together easily enough (yay plastic)
-Some epic amounts of flash on various metal tracks
-Possibly didn't put rare earth magnets into my NATO army box; that COULD also be me misplacing them since I can't seem to lay hands on the decals I know I saw earlier and kind of moot with the stock of them I have anyway.

That's out of a...disturbing amount of product. Seriously. For WW2 my smallest collection is the British where I have 3 different kinds of armored company and an infantry company; I'm not entirely sure how many different flavors of German army I could muster at this point. While I haven't gone through every box, so there still might be surprises ahead, I'd wager the majority has made it through an inspection at least if not assembly.

So yeah, it sucks that you've had a serious run of bad luck and worse that you're not getting a good response from CS but it's somewhat the opposite of what I've seen. It's worth noting that in any case the plural of anecdote still isn't "data' of course. If it's all the same to you though, I'll hope to continue with my trend rather than sharing in yours.

Hi Daisy666

Jonathan here from the UK office of Battlefront.

Sorry to hear you've had some issues with some of our products - it does look like you got the lions share of the bad rolls.

Drop me an email jonathan.peace@battlefront.co.nz with details of everything you have problems with and, stock levels willing, I'll get replacements sent out to you.

Cheers
Jonathan

 JP1138 wrote:
Hi Daisy666

Jonathan here from the UK office of Battlefront.

Sorry to hear you've had some issues with some of our products - it does look like you got the lions share of the bad rolls.

Drop me an email jonathan.peace@battlefront.co.nz with details of everything you have problems with and, stock levels willing, I'll get replacements sent out to you.

Cheers
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for taking the time to chase this up. I'd very much like to take you up on your offer - but just want to clarify some logistics.

So if I'm going to reconsider becoming a BF customer, I'd like to know whether:

- I need to go through all the items below and compile a complete list of issues to resolve in one go
or
- I have a guarantee that BF customer support aren't going to turn their back on me when this thread is out of the limelight if I take my time and work through them as I was planning to build them


As you can see from the photos below (and these represent a subset of what I've got), you've lost one of your best customers - hopefully the wife isn't reading this thread, but we are talking multi-thousands of pounds spent to date - and no more as things stand - all because of over being non-responsive to something that would have cost you a matter of pence to resolve - postage would have been the biggest issue.


The PSC orders (and I've not broken out the Russian stuff, nor listed the PSC British items) amount to the best part of a grand that BF have lost so far this year (ignoring the non-purchase of Team Yankee Nato/Free Nations).



These photos show I've still got a mass of mid-war boxes to go through, not to mention the late war ones.

Also, I didn't even list the Russian Mid/Late war stuff (its packed away whilst my focus was on Desert), and I have 6 large packing boxes full of Team Yankee US, Marines, Germans, East Germans, British and Russian forces (I stopped buying BF before the Nato/Free Nations stuff).


I hope this also explains why I've been so peeved with each and every box I've opened that I've had problems with - I'm sitting on thousands of pounds of BF goods, and it was a kick to the groin to be treated so poorly by BF customer support. The hit rate of problems in recent days has been greater than 50% - so I worry I am sitting on a mountain of issues. Just this evening I opened a box of Desert Escarpments as I am fitting out my desert table, only to find both pieces were damaged. I first thought it was due to damage in transit, but there was not a single piece of fragment in the box - so not only could I not fix them, but it meant someone packed them into the box knowing there were two big holes in them - see pictures below.



And the table - which is also only a subset of the desert terrain I bought from BF - though it does amount to all the terrain opened so far:




So please let me know how you want to handle the logistics of what could be an ongoing list of problems, or a reasonable delay whilst I go through scores of boxes to check for their condition.



Some of the TODOs for Mid-War (ignores Eastern Front - I have a large set of PzIII and PzIV boxes plus infantry from Mid-War that I'm going to spray in German Grey for Eastern Front Mid-War):

US List - have not started on any of these yet:



Italian List - have not started on any of these yet:




Desert Rats ToDo (I've since switched to PSC for the Valentines)




Afrika Korps ToDo




And to show just how much I've built up for the British and German Mid-War:

Afrika Korps - Full Panzer III and Panzer IV Tank Companies, plus recon



Afrika Korps Support - its not legal, but I wanted a full Tiger Schwere Company (2 Tigers HQ, plus 4 platoons of 2 x Tigers and 2 x Panzer III N) - you can see a pair of Tigers are still TODO, although I also did a 4-vehicle platoon of Stug IIIF/8 from PSC, as I know a handful of these were in the desert.



Afrika Korps Support - 88s and Stuff. Note I had one "good" platoon of Lorraines, and one "bad" - there's an image showing how I mocked out the missing vehicle sprue's using PSC models:



In this close-up, the BF crew are on the left, and the PSC are on the right - there's shots of front and side. I think they are well disguised, especially once painted, and you probably can't even see the PSC commander is in a crazy "knee high" stance:



British Tank Squadrons



British and German Infantry and AT Guns





I had also started to build out my Late War forces :

A subset of BF German Late War (e.g. the 4 Kongistiger Platoon boxes have already been opened):



And then I switched to PSC to continue - i.e. these are all lost sales (and its a subset of my PSC Late War order):



I also started a US and British Late War, though have switched to PSC for them too (not pictured here - I got bundles of Cromwells, Sextons and Churchills) - you can see I was working on D-Day forces (I also have plenty of fortifications - 3 each of AT gun and MG bunkers)




Again, things I've not even bothered to break out of storage to photo:

Russian Mid and Late War boxes

Complete armies for Team Yankee - US, Marines (and some Airbourne), West Germany, Britain, East Germany, USSR

Western Europe Terrain (I have a LARGE collection of houses for my Bridge Too Far table I've building - 15x5 feet, with 3 bridges to push through)

Team Yankee Terrain



So I guess the question is worth repeating, since I've ranted on for a while - but the purpose was to demonstrate the mass of stuff I have bought and still to go through, and the concern that the hit-rate of faults in recent days has been >50% :

If I am to reconsider becoming a Battlefront Customer, do I wait until I get through all these boxes and compile a list of problems, or do I have a commitment that I won't get a cold-shoulder down the line when this thread is not attracting attention and I open a box of plastic and/or resin items and discover more problems in 3, 6 , 12 months time?

Never had any problems with BF stuff apart from huge amounts of flash on products but saying that they seem to hit rock bottom with helping you out as a paying customer. Sounds to me like you have been listed as a problematic customer which is very unfair.

Prodos, Defiance Games, Palladium games are ALL on my shortlist of the worst gaming companies EVAH.

Next to those, Battlefront doesn't even rate a mention.

 djones520 wrote:
I've bought 3 full armies from them between FoW and Team Yankee, and I've never had a quality issue. Think it's just poor luck.

That's been my experience as well. I have five armies (mid war US, British, Italian, late war British, and TY USMC) and have had maybe one or two blisters with a missing piece, none of which really mattered to me.

Your wife may not see it, but this will be shown to many wives "see, that's a lot of stuff, I have only a few"

Lathor wrote:
Your wife may not see it, but this will be shown to many wives "see, that's a lot of stuff, I have only a few"

hehehe

I think I may register myself under a different name, and tell her the same thing

My TY Brannon Boy’s set came with a terribly miscast command post. I didn’t bother reporting it, as at the time I was reading that most of their resin models were in pretty bad shape, and assumed it was par for the course (this was when TY first dropped).

I’ve also had serious issue with their customer support - apparently, GF9 and Battlefront minis are a linked company, and when I had issues with the D&D Arcane cards (set had level 1-3 level spells twice, instead of 1-9), I had to wait nearly six months for replacements and they STILL sent the wrong cards to me twice before finally fixing it.

 Stormonu wrote:
apparently, GF9 and Battlefront minis are a linked company

Battlefront owns GF9.

That is one serious stash!

I had a terrible customer service experience with defective Battlefield in a Box product. I'll never spend a penny again with BF / GF9.

 chromedog wrote:
Prodos, Defiance Games, Palladium games are ALL on my shortlist of the worst gaming companies EVAH.

Next to those, Battlefront doesn't even rate a mention.

What did those companies do exactly?

 sing your life wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
Prodos, Defiance Games, Palladium games are ALL on my shortlist of the worst gaming companies EVAH.

Next to those, Battlefront doesn't even rate a mention.

What did those companies do exactly?

All ran shady kickstarters that stole a lot of money. Prodos with Alien vs Predator, Defiance with Power Armour Hardsuits and Palladium with Robotech.

Well, Palladium was a shonky business long before the robotech miniatures ks fustercluck. Kevin Sembieda has never been a "reliable" gaming industry name (Palladium is his company). When they got involved in the project, it killed any interest I might have had in it ... (mostly to use some of the mecha as "unseen" battletech mechs again).

But yeah - Prodos with their fustercluck of their Alien v predator game (oh, and the Warzone one, too) and Defiance with excuse after excuse and their exceedingly dodgy business practices.

I've gotten more than a few boxed sets and blisters from Battlefront over the years, and have had no major issues.