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 BrookM wrote:
They are usually slow to ship, regardless of stock levels. It usually takes them a month to ship things to me. I switched to US based Miniature Market, which might not have free shipping, but does feature fast shipping and great prices.

I can vouche for Miniature Market, it is local and I have never had a problem with them.

Also, in my type of retail business if a customer ordered something and I didn't have it and didn't know when I would get it in for sure I would go the extra mile and get it from another store, local or online and provide it to the customer to go the extra mile for them. It may cost you a little more but in the end that customer will likely be very loyal to your business.

 Yonan wrote:


As far as I can tell, no one is out of pocket due to Maelstrom?

You could legitimately argue that anyone who has been trying to secure a refund but has been unable to have their communications acknowledged is out of pocket. If they go under without fulfilling or refunding their outstanding orders, a lot of people are likely to be out of pocket.

Actually, I'm slightly out of pocket - I had to cancel my Vallejo Model Air order when after a month and several BS phone calls stalling me it became obvious that they weren't going to get my order in. I was lucky enough to be able to cancel it and when I reordered the same items from another retailer, it cost me more. Not to mention a month of my time, a number of international phone calls and the general stress of dealing with their BS. (The Airbrush setup was a gift to me for my birthday for my wife - finally got it all in hand over a month after my birthday. Yeah, yeah, first world problems, but as a birthday gift from her it holds more meaning to me than another boxed set of figures.) - Going from the last couple of pages in this thread, I'm hardly the worst off either.


Then there's the little factor of their creditors. We've seen how much of a difference even US$10,000 can make to an existing business in this industry through some of the Kickstarter campaigns. That's only £6,200. According to https://www.duedil.com/company/04724863/maelstrom-games-limited

Maelstrom Games Limited was registered on 07 Apr 2003 with its registered office in Nottinghamshire. The business has a status of active. They were founded by Robert Lane, and Andrew Chesney. There are 2 shareholders of Maelstrom Games Limited. They have no known group companies. The company has assets totalling £375,518 plus liabilities totalling £567,481. They owe £567,388 to creditors and are due £130,137 from trade debtors. Their net worth is £-132,432, and the value of their shareholders' interest is £4,523.

That's an awful lot of money to owe people, even allowing for 60 or 90-day payment terms. It has the potential to really hurt a lot of the small businesses in our hobby. Places like Tre Manor's Red Box Games that Maelstrom started stocking earlier this year and and now clearancing. Did Tre get paid? Hopefully, but who knows? And so on for close on half a million pounds.

 mwnciboo wrote:
There is of course a second element to all of this, if Maelstrom does cease trading (a likely prospect) what of the other parts of the Business they are seeking to seperate or have seperated in the last 12 months?

Specifically BANE LEGIONS now owned by Mierce Miniatures (Another Company by the Same owner/ Managing Director of Maelstrom), will all this bad PR and customer service reflect of any further or derivative business? It is difficult to repair damage done through bad customer service or from a Business collapse leaving customers high and dry.

Read this:-

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/industry-talk-rob-lane-mierce-miniatures.html

So he is Managing Director of both? Does he expect to Shaft the Community with poor service at Maelstrom one minute, and then an all Sin's Forgiven policy towards BANE LEGIONS two minutes later?

Why not? It's what David Doust did after New Wave ripped off thousands of gamers worldwide (ironically I was not among them; I received everything I paid for in my one order from them, though it did take around 14 months). He was involved in Dark Age Games during New Wave's collapse and now heads up CMON.

Everyone loves CMON, right?

How many of you remember New Wave?

With those kind of debts, and the lack of assets, I can't really see them surviving as a business. We know from their own website and from duedit that they have almost no assets to bring money in, and it's pretty clear they won't be able to get further credit from their suppliers. There doesn't even seem to be all that much value attached to the name any more -- their customer goodwill seems to be at an all-time low!

It's a shame -- they had a great venue in Eye of the Storm, and good prices for many years, even if their speed of delivery was always a bit questionable.

It's a shame that a company that was set up to support the wargames hobby has had such problems with the biggest wargames manufacturers(GW&BF). A friend of mine asked me a couple of years ago how Maelstrom could afford to carry so many different makes of product, I told him they must be doing most of their trade in the big few brands, and it was great that they still supported the smaller ones too. Good luck to them anyway, and I hope they manage to pull through this and carry on trading in some form...

Dingleson wrote:
Wish I had not pre-ordered £70 worth of X-wing in August

I pre-ordered it in 2011 when Maelstrom first put it up on their shop. I thought about cancelling the order when FFG delayed it for a year but I figured I could wait. I wish I had cancelled it... I have now bought it from Spirit Games instead.

It seems that MG never even got it in stock at all.

 laffe wrote:

Dingleson wrote:
Wish I had not pre-ordered £70 worth of X-wing in August

I pre-ordered it in 2011 when Maelstrom first put it up on their shop. I thought about cancelling the order when FFG delayed it for a year but I figured I could wait. I wish I had cancelled it... I have now bought it from Spirit Games instead.

It seems that MG never even got it in stock at all.

This also happened to me sadly :(, brought from Wayland and Firestorm both where excellent with their communication and speed of delivery, not the case with Maelstrom sadly.

angryboy2k wrote:

 mwnciboo wrote:
There is of course a second element to all of this, if Maelstrom does cease trading (a likely prospect) what of the other parts of the Business they are seeking to seperate or have seperated in the last 12 months?

Specifically BANE LEGIONS now owned by Mierce Miniatures (Another Company by the Same owner/ Managing Director of Maelstrom), will all this bad PR and customer service reflect of any further or derivative business? It is difficult to repair damage done through bad customer service or from a Business collapse leaving customers high and dry.

Read this:-

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/industry-talk-rob-lane-mierce-miniatures.html

So he is Managing Director of both? Does he expect to Shaft the Community with poor service at Maelstrom one minute, and then an all Sin's Forgiven policy towards BANE LEGIONS two minutes later?

Why not? It's what David Doust did after New Wave ripped off thousands of gamers worldwide (ironically I was not among them; I received everything I paid for in my one order from them, though it did take around 14 months). He was involved in Dark Age Games during New Wave's collapse and now heads up CMON.

Everyone loves CMON, right?

How many of you remember New Wave?

Ah yes, the company that would (from what I heard) pack their orders with the shredded remains of other customers order forms (with all their card details on them etc.) instead of bubble wrap.

I noticed this morning that Eye of the Storm now appears on the Games workshop website store finder.

Bit of an update.

An order I received dispatch notification for on 15/10/12 arrived this morning. Everything was present, no errors - but it was only a small order (2 X FOW blisters & 2 Vallejo paints).

Strangely though, it arrived in a (very well) padded envelope instead of the usual box - not complaining though - much less packaging to deal with.

All in all, call me a happy bunny - just another small order to go and all will be well.

 laffe wrote:

Dingleson wrote:
Wish I had not pre-ordered £70 worth of X-wing in August

I pre-ordered it in 2011 when Maelstrom first put it up on their shop. I thought about cancelling the order when FFG delayed it for a year but I figured I could wait. I wish I had cancelled it... I have now bought it from Spirit Games instead.

It seems that MG never even got it in stock at all.

I don't understand..? Have you not got your money back from Maelstrom for it?

the guy who said are people actually out of pocket, very silly


As for being able to cancel Maelstrom are making sure it is as difficult as possible to do so.

Cant cancel by emailing them : Ignored

Cant cancel by phoning them: Ignored

Possibly can cancel via post: will be ignored unless recorded/signed for and will take time/leave one out of pocket.


this whole situation is just massively annoying for a great many people, myself included.

Well no more updates from my end.

No updates from Paypal regarding the claim lodged.

Half my stuff has been dispatched (mostly the order I wanted to cancel...sigh)

The other (all 'in stock' items) are stuck in processing...

another small update here:

01623 629 425 - the store number is now being ignored also.

Seems they dont want to talk to anyone instore or online!

Yes.
I am sure that is what they are doing. Ignoring everything completely.

Mmh some of my orders were packing yesterday. Today, still packing. Now i receive an email saying 'order split", because some of the items are not in stock. The thing is, they had already split my orders to put all the items with stock allocated to them together. So stock was allocated, but now it has been removed. I guess the next step will be that it will move back from packing to processing.

The surprising thing is that the items removed because not in stock are labelled as in stock(10) on their website (stuff from mierce miniatures, which is basically their brand). This is getting pretty confusing.

 Eiríkr wrote:
Yes.
I am sure that is what they are doing. Ignoring everything completely.

Of course.

To repeat what I said earlier in the thread, which appears to have been ironically enough, ignored...

 Grimtuff wrote:
To all those people having trouble getting through, when I was up there on thurs there was a problem with the chip and pin machine for the debit cards and it was simply not connecting (had to go to a nearby cash machine eventually). At the risk of putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, maybe there is an issue with their phone connectivity. Just like Pacific said, Maelstrom don't strike me as a company that's gonna try and run off with your money.

Anyone know if they're still having trouble? If one cannot make card payments there's no surprise you cannot get through on the phone.

captain tanuki wrote:
Mmh some of my orders were packing yesterday. Today, still packing. Now i receive an email saying 'order split", because some of the items are not in stock. The thing is, they had already split my orders to put all the items with stock allocated to them together. So stock was allocated, but now it has been removed. I guess the next step will be that it will move back from packing to processing.

The surprising thing is that the items removed because not in stock are labelled as in stock(10) on their website (stuff from mierce miniatures, which is basically their brand). This is getting pretty confusing.

Same story - yesterday was packing, today it was split. Funny thing is that items "in stock" turned out to be those which I regarded as most likely to be in low stock or out of stock - appears that they still have some Flames of War stuff left. Whereas the item, which made the biggest part of my order - Forged In Battle platoon - turned out to be out of stock, although I was kinda 100% sure that they are supposed to have it physically - they had that platoon box listed for months but nobody wanted it...

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Eiríkr wrote:
Yes.
I am sure that is what they are doing. Ignoring everything completely.

Of course.

To repeat what I said earlier in the thread, which appears to have been ironically enough, ignored...

 Grimtuff wrote:
To all those people having trouble getting through, when I was up there on thurs there was a problem with the chip and pin machine for the debit cards and it was simply not connecting (had to go to a nearby cash machine eventually). At the risk of putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, maybe there is an issue with their phone connectivity. Just like Pacific said, Maelstrom don't strike me as a company that's gonna try and run off with your money.

Anyone know if they're still having trouble? If one cannot make card payments there's no surprise you cannot get through on the phone.

Yup. I suspected that most people have glossed over your post.

they are still taking fresh orders so somewhat bizzare that they are having trouble with card payments.


Also regarding the phone, if there was a problem there it wouldnt be ringing at all. It wouldnt be left to ring off to infinity on both their landlines.

redeyed wrote:
they are still taking fresh orders so somewhat bizzare that they are having trouble with card payments.

I'm referring to buying things physically instore, not over the Internet. The shop's chip and pin machine was not connecting at all, which would indicate a fault with the line. Hence no phone calls able to get through.

But that's just my wild mass guessing there.

 Grimtuff wrote:

redeyed wrote:
they are still taking fresh orders so somewhat bizzare that they are having trouble with card payments.

I'm referring to buying things physically instore, not over the Internet. The shop's chip and pin machine was not connecting at all, which would indicate a fault with the line. Hence no phone calls able to get through.

But that's just my wild mass guessing there.

The phone actually rings, so I seriously doubt there is an issue with the phone line. I even got the engaged tone to begin with, indicating that their phone line was in use, so the two can't be connected.

I suppose I'll chime in and say that I just received emails telling me my orders have been dispatched.
It's worth noting that these were both just Scibor and Gamezone stuff I ordered during these sales, and that I'd picked items that were showing multiples still in stock, but it might be useful information for anyone interested in getting some of those that they still might have left.

According to their e-mail, the part with got splitted has been dispatched today. Which leaves me with two other orders still pending...

Their phone line is fine. It either rings and rings because they're ignoring us, or gives the busy tone because someone else is trying to ring. It's not a technical problem, they've just shut off all lines of communication to stop us getting our money back.

 GCMandrake wrote:
Their phone line is fine. It either rings and rings because they're ignoring us, or gives the busy tone because someone else is trying to ring. It's not a technical problem, they've just shut off all lines of communication to stop us getting our money back.

Yes, that's exactly why they're doing it.

 GCMandrake wrote:
Their phone line is fine. It either rings and rings because they're ignoring us, or gives the busy tone because someone else is trying to ring. It's not a technical problem, they've just shut off all lines of communication to stop us getting our money back.

You're sounding pretty confident there dude.

What if I told you I had the exact same fault twice in twelve months at my shop where the caller would hear a ringing tone but there would be absolutely no indication at my end that someone was trying to get through? Happened to my parents once in the same period too.

So this exact fault can occur on BT exchanges.

Do I think this is the issue?

Probably not.

FWIW The order I placed late last night has shipped today, so some things are still business as usual.

"Yes, that's exactly why they're doing it. :facepalm " as constructive as the rumour mongering there.


Sarcasm aside that is the most likely thing "facepalm". Just because you have not been directly affected by this does not mean others do not have a valid issue/complaint.


If there was a major problem with their ability to take cards OR their phoneline, AND it was something that would seriously affect customers. Wouldnt you think they would send an email round or put a notice up? (I dont know any business that would keep their active phoneline down for over 2 weeks)

If they werent trying to screen their customers dont you think SOMEONE would have got through by now or said otherwise other than putting facepalm emoticons?

Added to this someone would have actually got a reply to their query via email by now instead of being blanked.

AND obviously there are people who want to cancel, most companies would still allow/creative a facility to do this.


They are clearly still operating
They are clearly still sending out orders
They clearly still have the facility to send/recieve emails (even if magically their phoneline is down).

So it is not too much to expect a reply or some information from them.

For the third time in this thread. UK Customers I suggest

Watchdog

There's nothing quite like Anne Robinson glaring at them through a tv screen to get a company's rear end in gear.

Unfortunately, I very much doubt Watchdog will be interested in researching and filming a piece about a few nerds getting ripped off- it's not very compelling TV and in the scheme of things, very small beans.