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UPDATE:
They finally got in touch today (9 days after I contacted them) to let me know they're shipping the remaining models.

I've edited my post to tone it down any hints of sarcasm (borne out of frustration after waiting weeks for a reply).



For anyone considering making an order with Brother Vinni Miniatures, I'd urge them to wait a while. It seems that they're having issues with their resin supplier, and orders are being delayed by several weeks. My own order arrived 7 weeks late with missing miniatures (which they are now posting). And they can take weeks to respond to emails. To be clear, I have no criticism of their quality, which is excellent. Its having to wait weeks without a response.

Just be aware of what you're getting yourself into if you order. Keep an eye on their Facebook page until they announce that the issues are all sorted.

[spoiler]https://www.facebook.com/BrotherVinni?fref=ts

20 July
Hi all!
We apologize very much. Now we have some situation: our provider can't ship the regular party of resin. We are waiting it already about a month and now many of orders are slowed. We are sorry and want to offer some gift to all, whose orders are not shipped yet.

4 September
Hi all.
It looks like this summer/autumn we have all troubles that possible.
Now we have problems with our casting workshop. All production was stopped again
frown emoticon
So< please have a little more patience. We are working and will complete all orders earlyer or later.
and, of course, as usual, we provide 20% discount for future order for all our patient clients.
thanks!

Not to throw any stones, but why did this need a new topic. Would it not be better to advise people in his thread? Making a seperate thread comes off a big sour. I understand that your upset by not getting your figures and you have a right to voice your concern, but you also misrepresent yourself at the same time. You said in your opening remark that no apology was given, but then in your own timeline of events you said that they apologized for the delay. They also gave you a discount coupon for your next purchase, which might not be valuable to you given that your upset, but it is better than nothing. Lastly you might not have considered it, but they have partially shipped to you which means they are eating the cost of the next shipment, which might not seam like a lot, but it's costs like that which hurt small businesses.

I have not personally bought anything from brother vinni, and I don't have a dog in the fight, but you have to remember a few things.

1. He is a small company, which means there's always a risk when ordering from them as products can get delayed because of suppliers shorting them items (like the resin), sickness of the owner (one man shops are just that, so when the one man is sick time is lost) and they have little to no room for overhead (your not making stuff and keeping extras on hand to cover for the above two items).

2. Brother Vinni is located in Russia (or Lithuania I honestly forget exactly where). English is not his strongest suit so I'm sure contact is made harder because of that. He needs to translate everything and google translate is good, but also time consuming if you are dealing with multiple emails over and over again. You can see his poor communications skills in his thread with the lack of response to other posters remarks. Not a jab against him, just pointing out he sometimes struggles with that side of business. his location also means that there's not always secondary suppliers available to get specialty items like the resin from, or it might take time to negotiate a contract for them and start receiving the goods.

3. Posting emails to him every day expecting him to answer them is doing nothing but filling his inbox which isn't going to speed up the process. Give him some time to correct the situation, and then shoot him an email letting him know what you'd like done. Obviously he can't ship something he doesn't have, but if there's something else you could take instead maybe he would be willing to adjust your order, or even ask for the refund of the difference if that's more of what you would prefer. Right now your on his backorder list, but he might want to clear some of that if you want your money back and just place a new order when he is back in the flow again.

Sorry, hope this didn't come off as an attack against you, meant more as a way to resolve your problem. Back to sleep for me, woke up with a sour stomach from too good of a dinner with the family.

I have to say this is a pretty harsh way of raising an issue, making a separate thread when this could have been easily added to Brother Vinni own thread.

I understand you have a right to raise a concern after all you have paid for items that you have not received, however as Theo has mentioned this is a small business that has issues with his suppliers.

At least he has kept you informed of the issue via social media, also I would imagine there are several customers trying to contact him concerning their order whereabouts.

I am sure he will rectify the missing miniatures once he gets on top of things and would imagined it was either an oversight or packing error, after all we are only human and we do make mistakes.

Everyone I know of who have dealt with Brother Vinni in the past have only ever said good things about him and his delivery process, so I can only think this is an oversight or one off.

Thanks for the heads up! Good to know about such things

 Theophony wrote:
Not to throw any stones, but why did this need a new topic. Would it not be better to advise people in his thread?

Probably because not everyone reads every single News and Rumour thread. I'm not commenting on the issue described, but I like to know about such things. Had this not been posted in a separate thread (which strikes me as fair, given that it is neither model news nor rumour), I would not have seen it.

As I said, this was prompted by the lack of communication, not by their quality. I would recommend BVM based on their quality, but not at present given their on going production issues. I included the timeline of my own order as a background anecdote to illustrate my grievance. If and when this resolved, I'll he happy to remove it and tone down this post to make it less harsh, but it may be wise to leave the thread here as a heads up to others. No warning is given on their website, or sent via email.

I grant this may be an overreaction but I don't know what else to do given I've already waited nearly 2 months, 6 miniatures were missing and my e-mails have gone unanswered for weeks on end. And I'm not the only customer who's emails go unanswered for weeks at a time (see facebook). Glowing reviews from past customers don't help me in the slightest, even the best companies can implode. This is my first experience of BVM and is all l have to go on. Waiting weeks for a response does not fill me with confidence.

An email right at the start when I made my order on the 29th July (after it was already known that production was delayed) would have pre-tempted my concerns about the late delivery, even if it was just a circular email to all customers. Or a notice on the website warning that production is delayed and to expect late delivery (in which case I would have waited till Christmas). A public post on Facebook is not enough, not everyone follows social media (I was not a follower of their page until 2 weeks after I ordered).

An email when the order was dispatched or a note in the parcel explaining why some miniatures were missing (if they intentionally partially shipped the order, e.g. if they were still having problems with those molds or ran out of resin and wanted to get the rest of the order dispatched asap) would have pre-empted my concerns about the missing miniatures.

And I accept that English is it their first language and I don't except perfect grammatically correct Queens English , but does that excuse not answering emails for weeks? When a customer has already waited 2 months, and even then only receives a partial order, is it really wise to not answer their email for weeks on end?

As for "filling up their inbox" , that's what their website tells me to do. "If you get no answer, resend the email as it might not have been received".

And I did post this in their own News thread.


This may come across as harsher than I intended, but I feel no choice but to escalate the issue in the hopes of getting their attention and actually getting a response. I'm not willing to wait yet another fortnight (the average time they've taken to respond) for a response and explanation regarding the miniatures missing from my order.


Tl;dr: they're having serious issues with production and orders are being delayed by at least a month, and they take weeks to answer emails. Buyer beware. It may be wise to delay making your orders.

Have you tried sending him an email every 10 minutes for a week?

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:
Have you tried sending him an email every 10 minutes for a week?

What?? No...I've sent one message a day since Tuesday on Facebook and email.

Thanks for the heads up! Appreciate it!

I know they have, at least once, not delivered a sculpt they were hired to do for a game, and disappeared.

I found giant red text in his thread was a good way to get him to answer a fething email.

6 days and counting since I contacted him about the missing miniatures and still no response.