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BWBits & GW's Web Selling Policy

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News Highlights

• GW Box Sets and Books will be coming off our web shopping cart by end of June.
• Bits will not available in a shopping cart format past the end of summer. (However, they will still be pictured for easy browsing.)
• We will still offer both services via phone, email, and mail orders.
• Our phone lines will be open 24 hours a day starting soon.
• To order call 757.273.1477 (We are currently open from 10-6 Mon -Sat)

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So we made a deal with the empire....

As you know Games Workshop does not let retailers sell their product on the web in any form, box sets, bits or otherwise. This is a policy we will still have to comply with.

We were contacted by GW in the spring and came to terms with them on how we can both get along and still move the hobby forward. Moving forward is just what BWBits will continue to do. In the past months we have built up our website and opened a retail location in the heart of historic Virginia.

As a result of our agreement with GW by the end of June we will no longer be able to sell GW BOX SETS & BOOKS in a shopping cart format on our website. We will still however be able to sell them over the phone, and via email/ mail orders. (see below)

We will also be removing the shopping cart feature from our bits service by the end of summer. Bits will still be pictured for browsing, and ordering via phone or email/ web.

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Ordering

This is the fun part! You can order from us several different ways.

• You can email us your order. Email orders will be easy because you can shoot us a list of box sets you want and we can send you back a paypal invoice via email. We will have a BITS order form available shortly that you can use to make bits orders as well. All you will have to do is put in your quantity and it will calculate the rest. We can also take info such as credit card numbers over our secure live chat, if you are unable to call us.
• Use Order Notes. Each BWBits order placed over the web has an order notes field. When you get other items off our site, just type in the box sets or bits you want in the order notes field. We will then re-bill the order for the additional items when we print the invoice. Please note that for credit orders this will mean two separate charges will appear on your statement. If it is a paypal order, just wait to make payment until we have adjusted the order, and then login to bwbits.com and pay. It's that easy.
• Call BWBits 757-273-1477. We are currently open from 10-6 Eastern, and soon will be answering phones 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.
How can we do this? Its easy, we just have alot of paid staff. Go ahead and call late, don't worry you won't wake anyone up. These are paid professionals working on behalf of BWBits that speak clear English!

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The future...

We will continue to offer the same great products and services you have come to rely on over the past years. Ordering will be about as easy as before for GW items, and in the long run the difference will be minimal.

Alot of internet gaming companies have come and gone, and only a few have stood the test of time. You can continue to rely on Battlewagon Bits for all your gaming needs!

Thanks for all the support and your continued business.

Rob Baer

Owner BWBits

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Wow, and now you'll have Lucas after you too...

Good luck, guys!

Way to go GW... punishing another business for selling your products.

F*&$ing idiots...

BYE

Can you have one phone line that's answered by a friendly robot?  I'm all uncomfortable talking with an actual person when ordering Warhammer stuff...

Good luck on this move; I hope it doesn't impact your business too much! 

Posted By H.B.M.C. on 06/19/2007 2:21 PM
Way to go GW... punishing another business for selling your products.

F*&$ing idiots...

BYE

Ditto... A polite complaint will be going off to GW.

Phil

I've ordered twice form BWBits and I've been very happy with my order on both occasions. It is a shame that GW have decided that BWBits selling their products online wasn't in their interest.

Can I take it that it is still possible to buy online from the GW website in the US? If so then this policy of theirs is surely a loathsome protectionist trick by GW. GW directly limits customer value and choice with this unfair policy.

@ Kesher: What's the US equivalent of writing to your MP? Doesn't the law in the US cover this at all?

Good luck BWBits.

Phil,

When's the last time you bought a GW product?

This is how you know GW has a monopoly of sorts. If this was any other product this behavior wouldnt fly.

Imagine DeWalt Drills telling Home Depot you must sell our products this way and this way alone and we are going to be competing with you using our online store. You know what Home Depot would say? Get lost, there are tons of other companies with comparable drills we can sell.

The problem with GW is there is no other comparable product for their game.

I have ordered twice from BWB, and have a couple of friends who have ordered multiple times. It's a wonderful service, probably one of the best (even if their shipping is a little high).

And now they're not going to have a shopping cart? What is GW's problem with online sellers. BWB offers a service that GW doesn't. How is it in their best interests to mess with BWB?

BYE

Counter sue GW for the monopoly they currently enjoy.
Name one other product that is allowed to do this.
Do HP comps ban places like Best Buy or Walmart from selling thier products?
No they don't .
What GW is doing is stopping places like BWbits from buying there products at  Wholesale prices and turning it over for a small profit. GW doesn't want to have to compete with anyone on the open market that is the Net. Why let someone sell your product at cheaper prices then your willing to sell it for. Sounds like its venturing into the anti-trust areas that Microsoft and AT&T has ventured into in the past. But they are allowed to get away with it cause no one is willing to stand up to them or threaten to stop selling there products.

Stand up for yourself. Stop allowing this to happen. the Gaming community needs to take a stand for once and boycott the product only way for us to make GW listen is to hit them in the pocket book.


Here's the rundown of anti trust laws in the US.
United States antitrust law is the body of laws which prohibit anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both, or generally to violate standards of ethical behavior. Government agencies known as competition regulators regulate antitrust laws, and may also be responsible for regulating related laws dealing with consumer protection. The term "antitrust" was originally formulated to combat "business trusts," now more commonly known as cartels. Other countries use the term "competition law." Many countries including most of the Western world have antitrust laws of some form, for example the European Union has provisions under the Treaty of Rome to maintain fair competition, as does Australia under their Trade Practices Act 1974.

Seems like that what GW is doing. Maybe its time for everyone to fight back.

Anyone that wants to fight back heres your chance

antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov

Hers the address to US anti trust reporting.
Lets get the ball rolling and maybe we can change the way that GW does business.

I love how GW treats businesses that sell their product as the enemy.

Carrying pictures of your IP to SELL your products, so they can order MORE hurts you... how? Not like they're altering the images for misrepresentation, or slander.

Terrible way to treat your distributers.

I think that this is seriously going to impact the profit made by bwbits but all it really is is GW just trying to push out another one of their competetors it is just that this one happens to be selling their own product.  It really doesn't seem to be in the best intrest of GW to keep them around but if BWB selling to much GW product is an issue than so be it.  If this is really GW policy to not let people sell bits online than why were websites like wookiehole.com and conversionbits.com allowed to run free.  I think it is really a load of crap that GW doesn't care what you do until your buisness is a certain size.  Well good luck bwb and I hope this isnt the end for you

Posted By Darkness on 06/19/2007 5:17 PM
This is how you know GW has a monopoly of sorts. If this was any other product this behavior wouldnt fly.

Imagine DeWalt Drills telling Home Depot you must sell our products this way and this way alone and we are going to be competing with you using our online store. You know what Home Depot would say? Get lost, there are tons of other companies with comparable drills we can sell.

The problem with GW is there is no other comparable product for their game.

*Sigh*

GW is not a monopoly. If Dewalt drills had their own retail stores and they didn't want Home Depot to sell their Drills at 30% off in their online store they could absolutely attempt to force Home Depot not to sell their stuff.

There are plenty of other comparable products to play GW games with, starting with Warmachine but finishing with the hundreds of other miniature manufacturers.

Now I think it is silly on GW's part to target BW Bits, but they are proceeding perfectly within their rights to do so.

 

Administrator Calrissian's cape is about three inches too long for my liking, but everything else sounds about right.

Sure, you are jumping through hoops, but this hoop is big enough for three fat guys to waddle through side by each.

*Sigh*

GW is not a monopoly. If Dewalt drills had their own retail stores and they didn't want Home Depot to sell their Drills at 30% off in their online store they could absolutely attempt to force Home Depot not to sell their stuff.

There are plenty of other comparable products to play GW games with, starting with Warmachine but finishing with the hundreds of other miniature manufacturers.

Now I think it is silly on GW's part to target BW Bits, but they are proceeding perfectly within their rights to do so.

 

I I said like a monopoly to try and avoid this confusion, and I said there were no comparable products to play their games with, at least not on a large scale, and besides it wouldnt be tournament legal.

What I was trying to convey is that this a move that very, very few manufacturers can pull. What would happen if your local store stopped selling GW? I remember what happened to that little shop I used to go to.

Wereas gaming stores can not survive with out GW, Other retailers can survive as there is plenty of other brands willing to fill the void.

So basically I can still get stuff from BWBits, but now it's just a lot less convenient for me and for BWBits.

GW. You just nerfed the crap out of my Blood Angels. Now you're being a dick to me, and people I buy your products from.

You are not clever.

I am trying to not get so pissed off at you that I stop playing your games. Please help.

Thats the problem, they piss us off cuz they know we won't do anything I know I'll continue to play until they make a box of Marines $50.

The only reason they're doing it is because BWB is successful. They've gotten a lot of popularity through word of mouth via sites like this, and GW doesn't want them to be a success (because they're weird), so the impose nonsense rules about IP on them.

BYE

Yep, same thing happened to the War Store and the rest of the internet companies.

Yes, it's in their legal right to do so, but they're still p$*@&@ for doing it. Nothing like hurting the competition so the only good pictures of your product are on the website that "Oh! Just happens to have a store!"

GW puts a lot of effort into packaging their products in such a way that you have to buy a whole lot of useless sh!t in order to get the stuff you want.  And then BWB has the nerve to come along and sell the parts separately?  No fair!  That's cheating!!

I agree with everything posted here so far.  But I am not really sure it will be all that big of a problem for Rob at BWB or to us as his customers- except for his inevitable increase in staff (which must be paid...).  Yes it is really convenient to just click something into the shopping cart, but in the end, all of us are online and have access to free e-mail.  We can easily send a quick email with the items we want to BWBits.  Okay, yes it will take about 3 minutes more of my time, but I am not sooooo busy that I can't afford that amount of time to get the exact stuff I want at the discount BWBits offers.

If this is the way GW insists on behaving, then it is the price all of us will have to pay until they pull their collective heads out of their a$$es by (hopefully) reading threads like this.  BWBits is a really convenient and unique service that I have relied on many times to fill out specific parts of several armies and special models.  I'm not going to let GW win by just giving up (and I'm glad to hear so many other people seem to agree) and quitting the hobby.

Rob- hopefully the VP up there at GW in B'more will get wind of this thread and take it to heart.  I'm not holding my breath, but you never know.

BWBits has nothing to fear. Its market base is already made of seasoned customers willing to attempt conversions and army customization - the kind of people able to cut-n-paste a few references to order by email. Slightly less friendly than the online shopping cart, but it won't stop me - nor anyone I know.

GW's move, on the other hand, is another slap in the face of gamers - as if GW was losing money while selling stuff to fellow sellers!!! - and the word will spread as fast as BWBits' service to the community.

I've always been impressed by the impressive ability GW has to take bad business decisions continuously - and survive them. Sometimes, I wonder what wargames could have been if GW had a decent management, and not only decent sculptors.

With all the time and money spent on lawyers going after the little guys, they could have hired a copywriter fresh out of college for 10% of that sum and made a lot of people happy.

Aye, funny thing is I like ordering from BWB - and I order more than I expect each time - because it's a shopping cart and I don't have to call anyone to buy things. I'll likely stick with BWB because I like their prices, customer service and shipping is ok (just don't live in VA, getting hit with tax too hurts), and there are those groovy bits to pick up. GeeDub just makes this less convenient, but may help me avoid throwing extra stuff on an order now

- Boss Salvage

They should replace the shopping cart with a handy little downloadable spreadsheet that people can fill in and it will tally everything for them. Then we just E-mail it back.

Makes the formatting and everything very easy.

BYE

Brilliant HBMC!

Iron Wind Metals has a similar thing for when you want to order a custom Lance or Star of 'Mechs for Battletech. You simple choose the weight class, you get a spreadhseet, fill in the blanks and they do the rest. Easy.

BYE

I like the way you think HB. It's dodgy like GW's stealth price increases but in this case I support it. But since you already talked about it I'm sure GW legal is going to out-loophole your loophole.

I've spent ~$40 on BWBits and I live in VA anyway. The 5% is nothing when you get $20 devilfish hulls or $12 for a squad of 3 stealth suits (when he first released them anyway).

Oh, I love what you did with Lando, BW. He's drawn so weird that it's awesome.

Posted By H.B.M.C. on 06/20/2007 5:40 AM

They should replace the shopping cart with a handy little downloadable spreadsheet that people can fill in and it will tally everything for them. Then we just E-mail it back.

Makes the formatting and everything very easy.

BYE

That is exactly what we are cooking up, and it will automatically tally the qtys and prices for you. Hurrah!

One thing to remember about IP law is that to enforce your copywrites anywhere, you generally need to enforce them everywhere. What this means is that if a company like GW knows that somebody is using their IP (the pictures of their stuff) to sell product, but does nothing about it, they're essentially granting permission. It's not anywhere near that simple, but it does make their case more difficult the next time they try to enforce a more legitimate IP violation.

Also, they're not allowed a shopping cart for the same reasons the warstore and all the others aren't. The problem here isn't that BWBits is being unfairly targeted, but that they were knowingly and willingly not playing by the same rules as the rest of the US internet retailers. Don't you think TheWarstore was on the phone, asking why these guys can sell online but he can't?

GW's policy, as scattershot as it may be, is meant to do two things:
1) make more money for GW
2) Try to keep FLGSs open.

I think they're way more interested in #1 than #2, but we all know that the 20% off from the internet, coupled with no tax, is essently 1/4 off the price, and when you're building an army that's a lot of cash.

I'm not defending GW's overall plan, but I think it's important that we all realize why GW put the screws to BWB, and frankly whey BWB is so excited they go to keep doing what they were doing at all!