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Ok, thanks.

I'm both saddened and glad that my experience of extremely long delivery times for the Black Friday deal I got wasn't unique. I guess the moral of this Battlefoam story is that if you want to get yourself the stuff at a discount then you're basically buying yourself an "I love my models" Valentine's Day gift on Black Friday instead of anything remotely approaching the typical Christmas presents people buy on that day.

warboss- Yeah, it's really interesting to see how many people had to wait months, and useful to know going into this (so that if folks do decide to order, they know the chances of getting it by Christmas, or even close to it, are very slim).

Makes me consider just buying the non-custom foam if the pluck foam doesn't take nearly as long to deliver

I honestly don't think it's reasonable to expect any business dealing with custom designs to churn them out in less than a month at the kind of volume we're talking about here. BF sales are annual (predictable), loads of people wait and save up. There must be hundreds if not thousands of orders placed on that one weekend and anything with custom shapes would take several or even several tens of man hours to process.

I agree the wait should be expected unless they increase their employee size by a bunch for the holiday season. I'm not in a huge hurry either way.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I honestly don't think it's reasonable to expect any business dealing with custom designs to churn them out in less than a month at the kind of volume we're talking about here. BF sales are annual (predictable), loads of people wait and save up. There must be hundreds if not thousands of orders placed on that one weekend and anything with custom shapes would take several or even several tens of man hours to process.

Then I suspect it would be better if they held their annual sale at some time other than the single biggest shopping day for Christmas in the US when there is apparently little to no chance of actually getting it by Christmas. Last year they kept stringing people along who asked about delivery times for Christmas with promises of doing better and working double/triple shifts but at least this year they're not as optimistic. Managing expectations is a part of running a business and I think that they should mention realistic and completely predicatable delay in the sale advertisement. I don't think most people would complain if they celebrated Foam Sale Day! in July as the same people who save up now would still save up and spend then... but the new customers who come in with an expectation of buying something on the biggest xmas shopping day for xmas wouldn't be so disappointed. If I decide to order from them a second time, I certainly wouldn't do so for a Christmas gift because it simply won't arrive even remotely in time judging from my own limited experience and the broader thread responses. As for "tens of man hours" to process, if they're actually manually controlling the lasers in some weird 40k techpriest fashion while chanting benedictions to the photon god, I think they have a huge problem. Realistically, they simply take the JPEG from the custom tray creator and load it into an automated CAD/CAM program that controls the laser and it cuts it. If a single foam piece takes more than 10 minutes from beginning to end to complete, I'd be very surprised.


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 Kirasu wrote:
I agree the wait should be expected unless they increase their employee size by a bunch for the holiday season. I'm not in a huge hurry either way.

See my post above. Last year they responded to inquiries about delayed deliveries with that very quasi-answer but it didn't seem to make much of a difference (unless they were on track for delivering Black Friday orders in May without double shifts).

Thank you, I was getting bored of my sig right about now.

I bought my custom foam Pack AIR during last year's sale. It took a while to receive it, but I expected that going in, and I wasn't counting on having it for Christmas anyway. Thus no drama from me.

They get swamped with custom foam orders during that sale. I have no doubt they do their best to get them all filled before Christmas, but people need to manage their expectations about it. It's not just "loading the JPEG," there's obviously a lot more that goes into it than that. BF contacted me with some questions about my foam, and we exchanged a couple emails about that. Now multiply that by god knows how many, and it's easy to see how it can take some time to work through all the orders.

Custom stuff takes extra time, and I don't think that the 6 or 8 weeks I waited was outrageous given the time of year.

Cripes, I know I'm old, but I remember the days when any normal mail order (i.e. just regular fulfillment of non-custom items) came with the line "allow 4-6 weeks for delivery."

The problem is not the wait; the problem is that a Black Friday sale, by it's very name, carries an implicit guarantee that the goal is a Christmas delivery. Since Battlefoam have no intention of honoring that sort of social contract, they should at least be up front with their customers that a wait of multiple months are to be expected. I got weeks of non-committal responses when an honest answer would have saved me a lot of ill will that I feel towards Battlefoam now.

If there had been a note on their webpage saying that stock would be low and that I would have to wait so long for my bag, I may have decided not order at all. BUT, I would have been willing to come back and order from them at another time, perhaps, instead of associating Battlefoam with all the same crummy behavior and customer service failures that many of us associate with Games Workshop.

 warboss wrote:

Realistically, they simply take the JPEG from the custom tray creator and load it into an automated CAD/CAM program that controls the laser and it cuts it.

You can't cut out a JPEG. Those tray designer graphics are just a guide for the layout people who still have to duplicate each layout manually in their CAD program. And while I'm sure all the standard shapes are in a library and can be copy/pasted pretty quickly in whatever program they use for actual cutting, Battlefoam also offer customers the option of providing traces for unique models, and these have to be re-drawn in the CAD program from scratch. I'm certain someone had to spend the better part of a day on my order last year.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Realistically, they simply take the JPEG from the custom tray creator and load it into an automated CAD/CAM program that controls the laser and it cuts it.

You can't cut out a JPEG. Those tray designer graphics are just a guide for the layout people who still have to duplicate each layout manually in their CAD program. And while I'm sure all the standard shapes are in a library and can be copy/pasted pretty quickly in whatever program they use for actual cutting, Battlefoam also offer customers the option of providing traces for unique models, and these have to be re-drawn in the CAD program from scratch. I'm certain someone had to spend the better part of a day on my order last year.

You're ignorant of the current state of common industrial technology (and I don't mean that as an insult but rather a statement of fact) if you don't think that relatively simple programs exist for taking a standardized output like the custom tray created JPEG and translating that into a 2d set of laser instructions. If you just submitted a random set of scribbles on a piece of paper like they used to advocate, absolutely.. you'd be correct. Or if people just randomly submitted off angle jpegs of using their cell phones of their computer screens, sure... definitely problems there. Translating a custom designed output format from a purpose built program into something you can use? No, not a problem. Can there be issues if people try to combine standard layouts over on top of each other using the tray creator? Absolutely... but at that point you're doing the digital equivalent of tracing around your model and that's not what I was talking about.


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 Bolognesus wrote:
Thank you, I was getting bored of my sig right about now.

Glad I could help!

 warboss wrote:
I'm both saddened and glad that my experience of extremely long delivery times for the Black Friday deal I got wasn't unique. I guess the moral of this Battlefoam story is that if you want to get yourself the stuff at a discount then you're basically buying yourself an "I love my models" Valentine's Day gift on Black Friday instead of anything remotely approaching the typical Christmas presents people buy on that day.

Yes.

I MAY ut in a small order of off-the-shelf stuff on Friday, one piece of which might be Christmas related, but that's about it.

Do these long delivery times generally just apply to custom trays, or to all their bags and standard loadouts? Was hoping to pick up the Infinity Alpha + Beta bag combo with a nice discount.

 Dendarien wrote:
Do these long delivery times generally just apply to custom trays, or to all their bags and standard loadouts? Was hoping to pick up the Infinity Alpha + Beta bag combo with a nice discount.

By the time I cancelled my order and got a refund, the one custom tray was all they could send me; the bag and standard trays were still on back order.

I don't know if San Jose is too far a drive for you from Half Moon Bay, but Game Kastle stocks the Infinity Battlefoam bags and they are also having a Black Friday sale. It might be worth checking out.

 tomjoad wrote:

 Dendarien wrote:
Do these long delivery times generally just apply to custom trays, or to all their bags and standard loadouts? Was hoping to pick up the Infinity Alpha + Beta bag combo with a nice discount.

By the time I cancelled my order and got a refund, the one custom tray was all they could send me; the bag and standard trays were still on back order.

I don't know if San Jose is too far a drive for you from Half Moon Bay, but Game Kastle stocks the Infinity Battlefoam bags and they are also having a Black Friday sale. It might be worth checking out.

Hah, I'm actually at Game Kastle almost every Sunday for Infinity. Had no idea about the Black Friday sale, I'll call them and see what's up. Thanks for the tip!

Anyone know what time zone this sale starts at? Midnight CST/Mountan/EST ???

Last year it was in Mountain time. It does not say anything on their webpage about it at all, so I'm just going by last year's experience.

It's pretty poorly explained, to be honest.

*edit* : And I think it will apply the discount at checkout. Again, really poorly explained.

Its live now. Just got 2 of their discount cases with shipping for 75 total. 12 inches of custom load out for 75 I can live with.

Got myself a Mantic bag and a Spartan bag with some custom Tau trays. This brings my BF bag total up to 5.

I would've snagged one of the new bag pre-orders if it sounded like I would've had it before TempleCon. Perhaps I'll get to buy one there...

As is, just the Prime Axiom tray for me this year.

Just ordered me some Foam for my Chaos Space Marines, including custom topper, and one of their boxes to stack my extra foam.

I also made an order, the 1520 PACK, with a custom load out of all pluck foam. Maybe being just pluck foam will mean it won't take as long to ship it (as opposed to custom cut trays). I'm not in a huge hurry to get it. I'm pretty much a Sabol user, but I needed something even bigger than their biggest transport for my Red Scorpions legion.

I just ordered 2 standard 1520s.. so yeah I'm hoping it comes sooner rather than later.

So I ordered and received my order confirmation via email and everything. Well I decided to check my order's status today and there is no history of the order in my account on their site. Anyone else encountering this issue? I sent an email.

You may want to place a call to inquire about your order. Seems that BF isn't always the best at responding to e-mails.

In many other threads I've warned people about BF's long wait time between placing and receiving an order. I've even said a couple of times to NEVER pre-order from them. I'm surprised that people are still being caught off guard by this.

I'm not concerned about the wait, just that I paid and there is no record of my order in my account.

Got my stuff figured out, looks like I had multiple emails registered by accident.

Out of curiosity has anyone received their Black Friday orders yet?

 Dinamarth wrote:
Got my stuff figured out, looks like I had multiple emails registered by accident.

Out of curiosity has anyone received their Black Friday orders yet?

They told me over the phone last Friday that mine should ship out "by next week". So I'm guessing I should have it by next Wednesday, or around there.