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So bit of a random one, but last night at like midnight (Saturday GMT) I got refunded by games workshop for the Sisters of Battle Army Set I preordered last weekend.

I managed to preorder it before the website crashed and got the confirmation email and was charged the £125 for it.

But now i've been refunded, with no email saying the order has been cancelled or can't be fulfilled or anything at all.

On their website on my order history it's still there with the status 'Pending'.

I'll phone their customer services tomorrow when they're open at 10am GMT, but i was wondering if anyone else has had anything similar to this or knows why it might have happened etc?

Thanks!

When I went to order it was long out of stock.

I think, looking from comments on B&C as well there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty around how much stock GW actually have or will receive.

It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

Wayniac wrote:
It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

From GW's point of view it means that they are not left holding stock of something that might not sell or which will continue to sell slowly, but will impact the sale of individual model kits. Consider that Wrath and Rapture is still out there in good solid numbers. Those fiends and models unique to it are more likely sold and bought on ebay or as part of the boxed set than as the actual model in a blister/box.

Furthermore GW has limited production and storage. For one-off releases they can only produce so much stock and ship it out before their system is full. Plus don't forget they are launching all those sisters models in their regular kits with varied build options and such next year.

For anyone wondering why their 40k products have been running out of stock lately, it's likely because 40k has a lot less warehouse space than it did in the past. They have to dedicate space to production of other kits, such as Warcry, Necromunda etc.

I just looked and received a refund as well. Not sure what this means, there's no email saying I won't receive the box.

But I assume giving the money back means nothing is coming in the mail. Distressing...

 MerkalJackson wrote:
So bit of a random one, but last night at like midnight (Saturday GMT) I got refunded by games workshop for the Sisters of Battle Army Set I preordered last weekend.

I managed to preorder it before the website crashed and got the confirmation email and was charged the £125 for it.

But now i've been refunded, with no email saying the order has been cancelled or can't be fulfilled or anything at all.

On their website on my order history it's still there with the status 'Pending'.

I'll phone their customer services tomorrow when they're open at 10am GMT, but i was wondering if anyone else has had anything similar to this or knows why it might have happened etc?

Thanks!

Not had anything yet - will be very pissed if it does do the same.

 Overread wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

From GW's point of view it means that they are not left holding stock of something that might not sell or which will continue to sell slowly, but will impact the sale of individual model kits. Consider that Wrath and Rapture is still out there in good solid numbers. Those fiends and models unique to it are more likely sold and bought on ebay or as part of the boxed set than as the actual model in a blister/box.

Furthermore GW has limited production and storage. For one-off releases they can only produce so much stock and ship it out before their system is full. Plus don't forget they are launching all those sisters models in their regular kits with varied build options and such next year.

One would think they would at least fulfill their pre orders as a priority though. Thats a sure fire way to loose customers.

 Argive wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

From GW's point of view it means that they are not left holding stock of something that might not sell or which will continue to sell slowly, but will impact the sale of individual model kits. Consider that Wrath and Rapture is still out there in good solid numbers. Those fiends and models unique to it are more likely sold and bought on ebay or as part of the boxed set than as the actual model in a blister/box.

Furthermore GW has limited production and storage. For one-off releases they can only produce so much stock and ship it out before their system is full. Plus don't forget they are launching all those sisters models in their regular kits with varied build options and such next year.

One would think they would at least fulfill their pre orders as a priority though. Thats a sure fire way to loose customers.

Aye, however without knowing their back-end setup its really hard to tell why some orders process but then fail to be delivered. In theory their system should only allow them to sell X number of boxes until their stock is depleted. It might be that the surge of orders at launch coupled to them having separate internal stocks for retailers and GW central might have resulted in them having to shift stock around or some such.

It's really hard to tell however it is a great shame that some people are getting refunds.



From GW's point of view its likely very hard to predict demand, esp on an army that likely hasn't given them much viable sales data for a long while. Sure they can ask, but many people will always loudly say they want something and will buy it; only for finances, other commitments or the fact that they "voted" tactically (they don't play Sisters, but they don't want GW to axe armies in case their army is next if GW started a faction squatting spree). So I suspect GW felt there was more "noise" around Sisters which might explain some of the stock issues.

The other is that GW is underperforming production wise. Their new factory isn't yet online and if I recall right one of their others was suffering power shortages due to the local power grid. Plus this close to Christmas GW just had Ossiarchs go out the door and they've Christmas boxed sets going out "soon". Add to that storage facilities and chances are GW just doesn't have all the luxury to produce whatever they want.



Plus things like the box, codex etc.... will all have been estimated and ordered months ago to be shipped over from China. Even if GW has plastic casting machines ready to go to print more Sisters sprues, they can't make up more boxes than they've ordered for.

Moving the pre-order window way back could resolve so many issues.

Like the gaming industry... I can pre-order a game 5 months in advance.

That should give them much better forecasting and therefore more sales. At this point trying to rationalise GW business decisions is like stabbing at a board of ideas whilst blindfolded though

Thing is GW knows that many of their customers are multi-product customers. They aren't just 1 army.

So they don't want to tie up your March hobby money for something coming in July because GW has stuff in March and every month up to July.

In contrast a computer game company is likely only working and releasing one game at a time. So if they take your money 5 months in advance its perfectly fine for them because they won't have any competing product of their own released in those 5 months.



So I can see why GW doesn't want you spending money months in advance on preorders even if it meant that GW could overcome its production shortfall on limited edition products.
Of course another aspect is discount, we don't know how the numbers balance up and it might be that GW doesn't want to "give away" too many products in pre-order at high discounts over their regular retail releases.

This is paranoia and experience speaking. Take it for what it's worth.

I find this not surprising, but disturbing. Mistakes in supply/demand happen all the time, and these things have a lag time.
What does worry me is how easily you can find the box set on ebay for an inflated price. CCG's constantly struggled with people who had early access taking the rarest of things and reselling. I worked for a company that sold video games in the 80's. Certain employees would buy the stock up before it hit the shelf, and you can guess what they did with it.
Do I blame a FLGS for doing this? No. They took a risk if they preordered a large order. Is it illegal? It isn't. Does it make me worry that the trend of "Sorry, we didn't produce enough" will continue (and is possible false/an exaggeration?) Maybe...
Is it in a large company like GW's interest to inflate price through this type of "accident?" I don't think so. In the long run business models like this can and have backfired. But GW has done some strange and counter-intuitive stuff in the past.

Is it because a week passed? Then it's just the bank relinquishing the hold on the funds. If the order gets finalized, the money will still be deducted, even if it's not being held. Happened to me a lot with items with lead time. If you paid with a debit card at least

I know that all UK GW staff members had their orders cancelled earlier in the week - possibly they've not got as many as they thought they had?

So did they make absurdly few of these boxes or was the demand super, super high?
Or both?

It does seem GW massively underestimated the demand for it. Which is kinda absurd when they know people are literally frothing at the mouth like a Khorne Berserker for these new models. They are loosing a ton of potential profit.

 Overread wrote:
Thing is GW knows that many of their customers are multi-product customers. They aren't just 1 army.

So they don't want to tie up your March hobby money for something coming in July because GW has stuff in March and every month up to July.

In contrast a computer game company is likely only working and releasing one game at a time. So if they take your money 5 months in advance its perfectly fine for them because they won't have any competing product of their own released in those 5 months.



So I can see why GW doesn't want you spending money months in advance on preorders even if it meant that GW could overcome its production shortfall on limited edition products.
Of course another aspect is discount, we don't know how the numbers balance up and it might be that GW doesn't want to "give away" too many products in pre-order at high discounts over their regular retail releases.

Except I dont have to spend money in march if theres nothing I want. Thats going on the assumption that customers will spend money on products regardless of offering. Which I know from personal qn vicarious experiance is not necessarily the case. If one has a surplus budget of £90 between march-june and the only thing one actualy needed/wanted was a particular unit/box is coming. One would nor just go spend money on something they dont want or need just because the have to spend money that month etc.

My point is i think you seem to be suggesting GW saying "ohh well its ok.. the people who wanted to buy this box will buy another box Because they have to spend their money so were not missing out on sales"

And customers absolutely do not have to spend their given budget on minis or gw pinins particualrly. If theres no models you want then surely youd get a computer game, some tools, airbrush, toys/collectibles etc. Etc. Instead... no?

 techsoldaten wrote:
I just looked and received a refund as well. Not sure what this means, there's no email saying I won't receive the box.

But I assume giving the money back means nothing is coming in the mail. Distressing...

I guess give them a call when you can and find out too! I’ll post back on here after I’ve spoken to them!

Someone on reddit has said they got a refund for a made to order model they ordered once, and still got the model, and then randomly got charged for it months later.

Another said GW are cracking down on people who managed to buy more than one box, so inevitably people get caught in the cross fire of that.

Either way it’s very worrying! I was so looking forward to the box!

 Argive wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Thing is GW knows that many of their customers are multi-product customers. They aren't just 1 army.

So they don't want to tie up your March hobby money for something coming in July because GW has stuff in March and every month up to July.

In contrast a computer game company is likely only working and releasing one game at a time. So if they take your money 5 months in advance its perfectly fine for them because they won't have any competing product of their own released in those 5 months.



So I can see why GW doesn't want you spending money months in advance on preorders even if it meant that GW could overcome its production shortfall on limited edition products.
Of course another aspect is discount, we don't know how the numbers balance up and it might be that GW doesn't want to "give away" too many products in pre-order at high discounts over their regular retail releases.

Except I dont have to spend money in march if theres nothing I want. Thats going on the assumption that customers will spend money on products regardless of offering. Which I know from personal qn vicarious experiance is not necessarily the case. If one has a surplus budget of £90 between march-june and the only thing one actualy needed/wanted was a particular unit/box is coming. One would nor just go spend money on something they dont want or need just because the have to spend money that month etc.

My point is i think you seem to be suggesting GW saying "ohh well its ok.. the people who wanted to buy this box will buy another box Because they have to spend their money so were not missing out on sales"

And customers absolutely do not have to spend their given budget on minis or gw pinins particualrly. If theres no models you want then surely youd get a computer game, some tools, airbrush, toys/collectibles etc. Etc. Instead... no?

I never said that everyone was going to always spend their hobby money. I said that GW is aware many of their customers have more than one product interest in the company and that as GW is releasing more content at faster rate they have less interest in taking long term pre-orders when they potentially might conflict with launch purchases of new products.

Of course with a specific person there is going to be variation. All the way from people who buy everything at launch without question to those who are dead set against buying anything from GW ever again. Clearly the people who only play Sisters and who only want the box are only going to buy the box; my view is that GW is considering the other portion of players not just that portion. In the end its one of two choices and GW has made their choice. It might be the right or wrong choice depending on the point of view.

I was going to make a point about seeing historically CCG-type problems after making the game mechanics appeal more to the CCG crowd, but after thinking about it I don't believe it's a valid point to make. There's too much overlap between the CCG crowd and the table-top crowd. These are problems that can be laid squarely at the feet of on-line marketplaces, there will always be people willing to try to make a buck buying stuff they think will be rare later and the relative anonymity offered by e-bay et al is a magnet for the hustlers.

LoftyS wrote:
Is it because a week passed? Then it's just the bank relinquishing the hold on the funds. If the order gets finalized, the money will still be deducted, even if it's not being held. Happened to me a lot with items with lead time. If you paid with a debit card at least

I was wondering if it was something like that! I’ve preordered from amazon before and not been charged until the product has been dispatched. So hopefully it is just that! Thanks!

 Overread wrote:

 Argive wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

From GW's point of view it means that they are not left holding stock of something that might not sell or which will continue to sell slowly, but will impact the sale of individual model kits. Consider that Wrath and Rapture is still out there in good solid numbers. Those fiends and models unique to it are more likely sold and bought on ebay or as part of the boxed set than as the actual model in a blister/box.

Furthermore GW has limited production and storage. For one-off releases they can only produce so much stock and ship it out before their system is full. Plus don't forget they are launching all those sisters models in their regular kits with varied build options and such next year.

One would think they would at least fulfill their pre orders as a priority though. Thats a sure fire way to loose customers.

Aye, however without knowing their back-end setup its really hard to tell why some orders process but then fail to be delivered. In theory their system should only allow them to sell X number of boxes until their stock is depleted. It might be that the surge of orders at launch coupled to them having separate internal stocks for retailers and GW central might have resulted in them having to shift stock around or some such.

It's really hard to tell however it is a great shame that some people are getting refunds.



From GW's point of view its likely very hard to predict demand, esp on an army that likely hasn't given them much viable sales data for a long while. Sure they can ask, but many people will always loudly say they want something and will buy it; only for finances, other commitments or the fact that they "voted" tactically (they don't play Sisters, but they don't want GW to axe armies in case their army is next if GW started a faction squatting spree). So I suspect GW felt there was more "noise" around Sisters which might explain some of the stock issues.

The other is that GW is underperforming production wise. Their new factory isn't yet online and if I recall right one of their others was suffering power shortages due to the local power grid. Plus this close to Christmas GW just had Ossiarchs go out the door and they've Christmas boxed sets going out "soon". Add to that storage facilities and chances are GW just doesn't have all the luxury to produce whatever they want.



Plus things like the box, codex etc.... will all have been estimated and ordered months ago to be shipped over from China. Even if GW has plastic casting machines ready to go to print more Sisters sprues, they can't make up more boxes than they've ordered for.

Never forget that the online market place and pos upgrades were project managed and overseen by a 50yr old primary school PE teacher with no applicable skills other than being the MD's wife.

On a side note I pre ordered the LTD edition Spears of the Emperor from BL they had my money for a bout a month and then refunded it a couple weeks after release with a 2 line email saying the website accidentally sold me a copy when there was none available. As far as I can tell there is no human oversight in there processes and they only know somthings wrong when the warehouse come to pick and pack the items and have pages of orders left once the stocks gone.

 MerkalJackson wrote:

I was wondering if it was something like that! I’ve preordered from amazon before and not been charged until the product has been dispatched. So hopefully it is just that! Thanks!

I've had this happen. I'll pre-order something, and there's a charge to ensure I have the money but then a few days later it's back in my account, then I get the charge for the item later just before it ships.

All the more reason why I always tell people to keep a financial ledger and check once a week with your bank to ensure your money is right. I don't trust receipts or general online bank statements.

I’ve not even been charged for mine. In fact I’ve only just been charged for my Inferno issues. They charged me the day they dispatched.

 dan2026 wrote:
So did they make absurdly few of these boxes or was the demand super, super high?
Or both?

It does seem GW massively underestimated the demand for it. Which is kinda absurd when they know people are literally frothing at the mouth like a Khorne Berserker for these new models. They are loosing a ton of potential profit.

Demand was super super high apparently, I got told by a friend at GW that this was the largest print run they had ever done on a limited release set, and it still sold out in 24 mins. As said above they have very limited factory facilities and warehouse space in the UK, so doing another run just now is most definitely not feasible, not without every other product line being short of stock in the run up to Christmas.

Spam wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
So did they make absurdly few of these boxes or was the demand super, super high?
Or both?

It does seem GW massively underestimated the demand for it. Which is kinda absurd when they know people are literally frothing at the mouth like a Khorne Berserker for these new models. They are loosing a ton of potential profit.

Demand was super super high apparently, I got told by a friend at GW that this was the largest print run they had ever done on a limited release set, and it still sold out in 24 mins. As said above they have very limited factory facilities and warehouse space in the UK, so doing another run just now is most definitely not feasible, not without every other product line being short of stock in the run up to Christmas.

Not only that, it would take a month or more for a new shipment of card stock to arrive from China. Plus chances are that there's already an order from there along the lines for the retail release next year.

Which is one thing GW have as a boon - whilst things like collectors codex ARE limited; the actual models aren't limited editions. They are single pose; however that just likely means that they'll appear in christmas/getting started set bundles over the years - meanwhile early next year there's likely going to be an Ossiarch style big release of the main model line. So the "short term" really is only a few months before we get a full Sisters release.

I'm also partly convinced that GW might have done Sisters this side of Christmas; but delays in the AoS line due to the events around Sylvaneth might well have meant that GW ended up with Slaves to Darkness and Ossiarchs delayed to a point where they just pushed out Sisters of Battle from its original production and release slot this year.


It's encouraging to hear that it was GW's biggest and it sold out that fast though - really gives a big boost to GW listening and releasing products for the community and getting such a positive result. Much ilke how Adepticus Titanicus sold out even with the most expensive starter box ever (and again a great example of a limited box - that did come back - where all the core content appeared pretty fast after). In fact right now its only a handful of AoS duel army boxed sets that are abnormally not selling their unique models

I wonder how many were scalpers buying up them in big lots to resell at drastic markup?

edwardmyst wrote:
This is paranoia and experience speaking. Take it for what it's worth.

I find this not surprising, but disturbing. Mistakes in supply/demand happen all the time, and these things have a lag time.
What does worry me is how easily you can find the box set on ebay for an inflated price. CCG's constantly struggled with people who had early access taking the rarest of things and reselling. I worked for a company that sold video games in the 80's. Certain employees would buy the stock up before it hit the shelf, and you can guess what they did with it.
Do I blame a FLGS for doing this? No. They took a risk if they preordered a large order. Is it illegal? It isn't. Does it make me worry that the trend of "Sorry, we didn't produce enough" will continue (and is possible false/an exaggeration?) Maybe...
Is it in a large company like GW's interest to inflate price through this type of "accident?" I don't think so. In the long run business models like this can and have backfired. But GW has done some strange and counter-intuitive stuff in the past.

I don't find it surprising or disturbing, but my main hobby before I started tabletop gaming was going to see live music. For as long as I've been going to gigs, there has always been people buying tickets to resell, be it on ebay or at the venue, and scalpers outside. For anything that there's a limited number, and a demand larger than that number, there will be people trying to make a profit from it. The only reasonable way to stop this at GW's end is to limit them to one per customer and per address (which would suck for multi-hobbyist households, but would reduce people having different accounts to circumvent the per 1 account limit). The only reasonable way to stop this at our end, is for people not to buy at inflated prices. But if someone wants to pay that much, they will. If ebay were to limit how much people could charge for items, or put a ceiling on the auctions, that would mean less money for them for a lot of extra work, and people would then just sell elsewhere. Imo as long as there's demand, it's just something to accept.

The "scalper" issue is also mudded by how many duel sets the are. I've bought several duel sets but only wanted one half of the set. Sometimes not even all the models from one side are wanted (all those eldar players who only want new Banshees and not falcons).

So those models can very quickly appear on ebay to be sold on by regular gamers not scalpers.

Plus gamers are notorious for overbuying plastic and then being left with buyer's remorse or simply a too big to-build list. You can still sometimes fine complete unbuilt kits from 10 or 20 or more years ago turn up on ebay.



So scalpers are a problem, however regular gamers are still going to buy and part with part and full kits at the same time.

Wayniac wrote:
It's almost as if making every goddamn box a limited release isn't a good idea...

well maybe not every one. But clearly sometimes the runs are too small for how many people want them. If there were the same number of wake the dead as the goblin starters, or the SoB bundles, the it would kind of a be very bad. Because people seemed to love goblins for what ever reason, and they really wanted to get the new SoB, while few wanted to get the eldar or primaris SW.

 Overread wrote:
From GW's point of view it means that they are not left holding stock of something that might not sell or which will continue to sell slowly, but will impact the sale of individual model kits.

1. Start with the same low stock as for a limited release.
2. If there are more pre-orders than predicted stock, do a second wave of production.
3. If the second wave won't be done by the release date, contact anyone who didn't make the cut for the first wave and tell them it will be delayed, and offer the option of a refund.

Like, much smaller companies than GW do this just fine. I think GW doesn't do additional runs because there usually isn't much demand, so they profit more on FOMO with a limited release than they'd get from further production runs. Here it's clearly backfired.