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Looks like they're at least going to try and come back, as a new company (HF MINIS LTD) with the same directors was incorporated on 7th may 2025

could be an attempt to 'Phoenix' and get away from outstanding liabilities,

which doesnt look good at first sight

could be they've got outside investment but the investor wants a clean slate and they'll reappear and fulfil KS backers and private buyers (although not legally obliged to) but avoid liabilities for anything owed on taxes, loans

(we've seen this before with KS company colapses, both where a new player picked up the assets and fulfilled things, and where existing owners new business did the same)

so it's still wait and see

one minute earlier...

Oh I know what I said...

- Arty is available to contact publicly. No one here seems to have done that beyond email

- what exactly are they going to say to a complaint if they had open emails, a Facebook page etc, at the moment.

Well, if personal involvement weren't clouding your judgement

I think your making assumptions here...

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Looks like they're at least going to try and come back, as a new company (HF MINIS LTD) with the same directors was incorporated on 7th may 2025

could be an attempt to 'Phoenix' and get away from outstanding liabilities,

which doesnt look good at first sight

could be they've got outside investment but the investor wants a clean slate and they'll reappear and fulfil KS backers and private buyers (although not legally obliged to) but avoid liabilities for anything owed on taxes, loans

(we've seen this before with KS company colapses, both where a new player picked up the assets and fulfilled things, and where existing owners new business did the same)

so it's still wait and see

At this point anything can go, I have a gut feeling that they will probably do something akin but different enough from their current production model ( that failed and collapsed when they lost their main sculptor/owner to GW). Maybe digital products, terrain, tokens etc who knows,

In an ideal world I would like to see them honouring the KS and outstanding orders first though.

I didn't like CMON because of the way newwave previously collapsed and still took orders before forming CMON, I dont like Archon when they did what they did with the aliens KS etc, I dont like how Mierce was created with the funds of not honouring previous company failures etc... It's a common trend among some companies.
Regardless of how successful their new company preform I will not forget, but most will.
Heck even on this tread you see some of you all happy that Archon is doing well on the back of screwing people.

 Gomezaddams wrote:
I think your making assumptions here...

Well, let's make a list of your assumptions:

1) Not one of the hundreds of backers has attempted to contact Hasslefree

2) If they had, Hasslefree would have sorted things out, because... they just forgot, apparently, and need someone to remind them

3) At the same time, the radio silence is because they are busy packing the orders they forgot about. While also doing 17 hour Call of Duty streams.

This is a level of doublethink rarely seen outside political cults and the fact that you're nearing a double digits percentage of your total post count defending Hasslefree in particular makes me think clone account of one of the staff.

So...

Not one of the hundreds of backers has attempted to contact Hasslefree

Didn't say that. I said I wasn't sure why people were assuming the absolute worst, when everything's publicly available and backers have a means of contacting Arty directly that's also publicly available.

If they had, Hasslefree would have sorted things out, because... they just forgot, apparently, and need someone to remind them

Didn't say that either.

I don't think there in a position where they can regularly ship orders like they did pre-merger. They do seem to have gone through periods of shipping as people had commented on the FB page saying as much. They also had someone posting literally every day.

At the same time, the radio silence is because they are busy packing the orders they forgot about. While also doing 17 hour Call of Duty streams.

I'm saying why hasn't anyone asked Arty directly why he's able to stream 17 hours, but not able to pack an order.

I mean I'll sign up to twitch if you like?

That's... Pretty wild and weird accusation to be honest. I'm not staff, I was staff. I earn twice as much doing what I do now then I did on my highest salary working for any minis company.

I also haven't 'defended' them - my posts are there. I've tried to explain a few things that people don't seem to understand, fundamentally, about companies like Hasslefree. It could equally apply to many others.

I think a lot of things went wrong for HF but slinging insults, calling them entitled boomers... It's so far off the mark, and you have to look beyond the past few years of stuff to see that

I got a private message from a Jon Cybertron here on DakkaDakka last week asking for information about my orders from HF. Did anyone else get that message? They acted like they were going to try and do an Expose about HassleFree.

I notice that Jon Cybertron has no posts and just created their account on July 2nd here on Dakka, so I am not willing to give any info out to someone that anonymous.

Message:
Hi Theophony!

The Dakka thread "Hasslefree - Forcibly dissolved by HMRC" has become the central info point for the current state of Hasslefree Miniatures.

You're posting in it suggests you're a Hasslefree website customer and/or Hasslefree Kickstarter backer.

I'm writing an article about customer trust and miniature wargamers Kickstarters, and am building it around a series of interviews with people like yourself who backed a Kickstarter have been waiting years after the initially promised delivery deadline. Would you be interested in helping?

Thanks,

Jon Simmerton

I got the same and passed on the offer. My sarcastic quips will continue to be posted here publicly. You're all welcome, you glorious bastards!

 Gomezaddams wrote:
Oh I know what I said...

I'm not sure I do. It sounds like you're suggesting that people are weird for not stalking Dameon across the internet. That the decent thing for them to do would be to go harass him via his Twitch gig.

He was plenty contactable through Hasslefree's business channels, he just couldn't be bothered. There were loads of comments on Facebook and on their site from customers frustrated with the complete lack of response to their messages. Most of them just wanted an update on orders that were months overdue.

Not to mention Dameon hasn't touched the Kickstarter in over half a year. That's not an issue that's going to be solved with backers joining his Discord.

 Gomezaddams wrote:
I think a lot of things went wrong for HF but slinging insults, calling them entitled boomers... It's so far off the mark, and you have to look beyond the past few years of stuff to see that

Conversely you have to ignore years of bad business behaviour to pretend like Hasslefree are decent. At some point they must've known they were taking orders they were unlikely to fulfill. Nobody's obligated to look past that.

Not that I'm saying "entitled boomer" is correct. But also, what a mild insult to get upset over.

A fellow mod and myself have also received the PM with the same message, will see what comes from it if a reply materialises or not. Could be a genuine call for info, or it could be a sussy sus thing, as of this moment, dunno. All I ask is that if you do reply and think it's fishy, rule #1 please.

 Fabio Bile wrote:

He was plenty contactable through Hasslefree's business channels, he just couldn't be bothered. There were loads of comments on Facebook and on their site from customers frustrated with the complete lack of response to their messages. Most of them just wanted an update on orders that were months overdue.

This was my experience. Missing mini from my order. Just a small amount of money, really, but I paid for what I didn't receive and then got ghosted for 3 years - including during those "Send an email with the header in all caps, and I'll make it right!" drives that seem to come around the Halloween sales. There was zero response, acknowledgement, or even indication the emails were ever read. No action was taken until I popped into this very thread years ago to warn people about my experience during the pre-Kickstarter hype phase. Then I got told I'd sent my complaint to the wrong email, but silence when I pointed out we were responding to an initial complaint email that went to the email he listed as the right one (as well as every other Hasslefree email I could dig up.) I posted here about what it too to get the issue resolved and tried to warn people as graciously as I could that it was too much effort and required the notice from waving red flags about the Kickstarter to even get a hint of motion on my issue. I regret not having been less gracious and more direct, now.

There's a cycle with Hasslefree - there's an announcement, a sale, a Kickstarter...something...and people come out to warn about not getting orders/minis and no customer service responses. Then others come out to say that well, I've never had an issue, and they're such nice people! This encourages people to try orders during this event, and one or two come back to post they got their stuff, no issues, and they are nice people! Then a month or two later, there's a few posts from people saying they never got something and no response to emails - what should they do to get in touch with someone at Hasslefree? But the event's long over and the thread doesn't get much engagement for these folks.

No matter how lovely the people at Hasslefree are, and yes, they were nice and polite when they could be arsed to respond at all...but it doesn't matter how nice people behind a business are if you're playing get-my-stuff roulette. The prizes are great! But you're not supposed to be gambling for them, you're supposed to be buying them! And frankly, from what I'm seeing online, the game is getting stacked worse and worse against the player, with the Kickstarter being the worst example to date, by far.

The minis are great, absolutely. The people are great, absolutely. I got no personal beef with them. But as a purely practical matter, the business is untrustworthy and appears to be increasingly getting worse. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.

I had been posting weekly on their facebook page and sending an email with a very similar facebook message asking about my missing order (admittedly, I knew ordering was a risk but I was willing to play the hasslefree slot machine). Now it's just back to weekly emails. My latest email I just sent to Dameon and Sally stated that I will continue to email them until the end of July, which if I don't hear back by then I will initiate a chargeback. A real shame because the sculpts were aces but the problems started when Dameon took over and only got progressively worse. Fingers crossed a reputable company gets a hold of the molds since it seems like Hasslefree is done for.

Good evening everyone.

About 12 months ago I reached out to Artemis on his discord, he asked if I was interested in blood bowl and I politely asked if he would provide an update on the kickstarter, he was very polite but didn’t answer my question. Since then I think we have had 4 updates in the 12 month period. I’m not sure I have the inclination to chase him up on this platform.

flanneldud wrote:
I had been posting weekly on their facebook page and sending an email with a very similar facebook message asking about my missing order (admittedly, I knew ordering was a risk but I was willing to play the hasslefree slot machine). Now it's just back to weekly emails. My latest email I just sent to Dameon and Sally stated that I will continue to email them until the end of July, which if I don't hear back by then I will initiate a chargeback. A real shame because the sculpts were aces but the problems started when Dameon took over and only got progressively worse. Fingers crossed a reputable company gets a hold of the molds since it seems like Hasslefree is done for.

Rather have Reaper. Worst case, they could end up gone lile RAFM.

 Psychopomp wrote:
The minis are great, absolutely. The people are great, absolutely.

Two kickstarters ago I had a really bad run in with Sally. Basically that KS was way behind, and orders were gone. Had to email Artemis, who told me he'd get back to me and didn't so I reached out to Sally on FB. She got back to me then nothing. Rinse and repeat for six months. This was when a second kickstarter was launched, by Kev, so it was a separate account but Sally was running it. I brought up on that one the delays and was dogpiled by HF loyalists, including Sally appearing to say how thankful she was for their defence.

The Kev KS started running behind as Sally was running it and she injured herself. Since the first KS was being ignored, emails went unreplied, and complaints and questions were deleted on FB, I got gakky in the Kev KS about it. Sally then made a big update about how she was injured and vagued about how I was a bully and all that. I countered that I was wondering where Artemis was in his KS, and why Kev wasn't doing anything for the KS under his name?

Got dogpiled again called entitled (yeah I gave them a few hundred bucks if you can't fulfil explain why not), they're doing their best etc etc. My order eventually arrived, like two years late, but plenty of others received nothing. So since I could post in the Kev KS, where the Whites were active, I figured I should do what I could to help those people and point out that the first KS was being ignored.

Sally came in and talked gak about me, saying that I got my order so why was I causing trouble and various insults. In the end she posted my full name and address in the public comments to prove I had got my order and was a trouble maker. Lots of other backers supported her and she was thanking them for their kind words. Also blocked me on FB after deleting all the negative comments and people wondering where their orders are. KS deleted all her comments for obvious reasons. Still never resolved the people in the first KS.

When the current KS was launched I pledged $1 and put a warning about the previous ones. Got told I was a hater, they were great, "well I got *my* order on time" and all that.

I don't think they're scammers, but they (Kev and Sally) are not good at running a business and have been deleting and blocking anyone who doesn't kiss their asses for years. Their shutting down comes as no surprise to me tbh.

Sorry to hear about that.

And before thinking going into - theres two sides for every story - I cant justify any business breaching and sharing private sensible information publicly. I don't know but sharing a client name, address and order details is absolutely out of the question and there is no justification to do so.

It looks like the website might be back up and "open", facebook page is still gone. But I was able to log in and look at my order that still says "completed" despite never having shipped or received the tracking number I paid for.

I can't imagine many new people buying from their company. I've been scared away for sure.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I can't imagine many new people buying from their company. I've been scared away for sure.

I certainly wouldn't touch any future Kickstarters with a 10-foot-pole.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I can't imagine many new people buying from their company. I've been scared away for sure.

I certainly wouldn't touch any future Kickstarters with a 10-foot-pole.

Sadly it isn't just kickstarters. I wouldn't even trust them to deliver things marked as in stock on their website.

Gotthammer wrote:


Sally came in and talked gak about me, saying that I got my order so why was I causing trouble and various insults. In the end she posted my full name and address in the public comments to prove I had got my order and was a trouble maker.

Wait, she doxxed you?

That's incredible