BattleTech: Mercenaries – CGL does a shipping booboo? Internet rages!

[dawfyddParticipant 11926xp 1]

Feth’s sake……

[grantinvanman 2181xp 0]

Man: this has been one long sad tale of woe for you all. Just awful!

[sundancer 42976xp 0]

this kickstarter makes waiting on my Bot War stuff back when a walk in the park XD

[lonkelo 3195xp 1]

This IS absolutely ridiculous.  I have noticed by the way that my Post app has been listing a package that’s being prepared for a loooooong time now (months!), to be shipped by FedEx. I do wonder whether this is actually the Battletech package, or some other lost order that I’ve forgotten about.

[sundancer 42976xp 1]

@lonkelo only if you’re in the US. RoW hasn’t started shipping yet. So it’s probably another KS or ebay buy? 😉

[lonkelo 3195xp 1]

@sundancer Really wracking my brain here what else I’m not getting then o_oa

[jamescutts 6924xp 3]

Update from yesterdays “Tuesday News Day”

• There will be a backer update released later in the day.
• Reported shortages have been processed and stock is being moved between hubs at present.  There are 20 shorted swag items that need to be shipped to hubs by CGL. As soon as these are resolved international shipping will commence.
• Several European retailers reported Kickstarter-funded items were being shipped to them this week.  This was due to a miscommunication in street dates and CGL’s sales manager has told distributors to embargo these items.

So in summary for us folks in the rest of the world all are shipments are actually being help up by 20 items of tat swag most of us probably had no interest in. Edit: I checked and Turns out some of those are the silly challenge coins, I did check and apparently I have one, presumably a free reward from my pledge? Mentioned in other places, some of that stock is being moved around, some is also coming from production, several short items are coins, so in reality I would think it wouldn’t be fast to resolve as they seem to be cause issue for the US shipments too, also I really hope there using airmail!

At least we have some sort of update, from the stream and some other sources it would appear Rem is just as frustrated with the communication situation, reading between the lines a bit it looks like all comms need to get approval and the person who does approval is currently off, and/or that updates from QML also require approval possibly from them.

A little disappointing that the backer update later in the day wasn’t forth coming, and the lack of it I think just proves peoples frustration, don’t mention there’s going to be a update and then not send one.

 

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by  jamescutts.
• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by  jamescutts.

[jamescutts 6924xp 2]

Ah apparently the Tuesday update not on Tuesday is sat waiting on approval from both CGL and QML 🙁

[limburger 21706xp 1]

So they have info they can blab about on some sort of live stream, but to post it on kickstarter they need ‘approval’ ?
What kind of bass ackwards company are we talking about ?

Delaying all shipments because there’s 20 things ‘missing/incomplete/not in stock’ seems silly.
I think most kickstarters simply ship whatever pledges that are complete in order to get stock out of the door instead of letting it gather dust (and cost money).

Just when you think that they couldn’t f*ck it up they find new ways of incompetency.

[sundancer 42976xp 0]

From the horses mouth:

Hey backers,

Plenty of updates today, so let’s hop in:

European Retailers
It has been brought to our attention that several European retailers received notifications from their distributors that shipments were on their way for items from the Kickstarter that are not due for release yet.  Our sales manager has contacted all distributors to put an embargo on those items, and to stop any shipments they can to stores. Our release dates were communicated in July, and we expect our partners to communicate and honor those dates. Thank you to the retailers, fans, and friends that reached out to us to tell us about these issues.

Fulfillment
During fulfillment, QML and its hubs, through no fault of their own, identified incorrect stock levels for items that had originally shipped from the manufacturers. Catalyst is working with QML to shift stock between warehouses and hubs.

Other than the stock shifts, The EU, UK, and AU hubs are still short a few items that were either in the US or were first shipped to the US before being parceled out to the needed hubs. The remaining short-stocked items are Catalyst’s focus for the week, and we expect to have those stock levels fixed quickly, including the House Arano Challenge Coin. These items are being sorted now into the needed shipments and we hope to begin international fulfillment in the near future. As these are planned to be resolved quickly, QML is going to wait for these items before shipping.

Parts Replacement
QML has now received the parts catalog and will be able to fulfill defective/missing parts replacements following the completion of full orders.

Art of War / BattleTech Cookbook
These items, for any backer who may not have received them, are being shipped separately from the rest of the orders and will be on their way following full orders. We are prioritizing full orders in this case to expedite the shipping process.

Store Credit
Backers who have not yet received their store credit, please message [email protected] for this issue along with the appropriate email address to send these credits to. These must be done in batches and we will be sending them out as soon as possible.

Segment 6 Fulfillment and Address Verification
QML will be sending out the next batch of address verifications on Thursday to run over the holiday weekend. If you have received your address verification email and have still not received your pledge, please do not worry, as these are sent out in advance to give backers ample time to reroute their order if necessary.
Thank you backers for your patience as we work to fulfill one of the largest Kickstarters out there!

Notice the absence of any specific date? Stop holding your breath! This could go on for some time. *sigh*

Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/battletech-mercenaries/posts/4184781

[buggeroff 15230xp 2]

I’m done with Kickstarters, this, 6 Siege and Dust Babylon. Will just wait until stuff comes out to retail. Ah well

[limburger 21706xp 0]

It’s more like watching a car crash in super slow motion …

two things being shipped separately … I wonder how long they needed to think about that decision.

The only improvement has been that we only had to wait two days after the life stream to get a kickstarter update.

[jamescutts 6924xp 0]

I don’t actually think this Kickstarter is going that badly in all honesty. There was one serious issue which was the shipping cost debacle, and then the whole communications situation. As for actual time frames, considering the estimate was initially June/July 2024 its shocking close to being on schedule, which I think is impressive for such a large and complex project.

There’s a high portion on new to Kickstarter backers on this, I think 25%  iirc along with what appears to be a lot of scarily invested backers, especially in the US. I think I lot of those have been rather vocal about the “delays”, which if you knew you would treat those “estimates” as exactly that, a rough timeframe.

Regarding the communications it has been very very rocky this last year, seemingly forgetting the rest of world existed would seem a pretty big balls up, but I don’t think it was intentional. I think their expectation was to start shipping roughly at the same time for everyone, which was why items had already been shipped to international hubs in advance. There where obviously some longer customs delays than perhaps expected (to be fair we’ve had same at work as EU customs just seems to be hammered this year), the last few months is a pretty big own goal though, and i think caused a lot of frustration. First we got the announcement RoW was delayed, without clear info. Once shortages where identified, they then took over a month to address the actions to correct them and inform us, jetting off to a con and leaving them over a month isnt a great look, along with the key person dependency apparently on signing off any Comms from CGL’s side, in addition to needing QML comms sign off.

I actually thought the last update above was very well done, and to the standard I would expect, I would have been nice to have a vague estimate when our RoW shipping commences but overall I was happy with it. I wasnt happy it took so long to appear, and I was less happy it appeared several days after it was promise the same day (due to mentioned sign offs) but it was pretty clear and concise.

[limburger 21706xp 0]

I kind of agree and disagree.
Yes, when you look at the overal timeframe things aren’t going too bad.

However their communication skills are so bad that even minor issues balloon into bigger issues.
OTOH … there’s the size of the community that further ensures things get blown up more than they might have needed to be.

Then again … this is not their first rodeo.
I seriously expect better from a company that has been down this road before.

Scale75 comes to mind as an example of a company that did learn from past mistakes by reducing their dependency on 3rd party companies.

I think the company still has a lot of internal problems that a kickstarter of this magnitude amplifies to the nth degree. And that’s been the one thing they for some reason haven’t been able to fix.

I’d be tempted to argue that without these internal issues they could easily be as big as GW within the industry and yet they still appear to operate as a mom&pop store …

[sundancer 42976xp 2]

Hey, would you look at that. An update minutes before the Tuesday live stream. Most important bit:

Shortages
We know you’ve been waiting for information on shortages, so here we go!  About 20 SKU shortages were found across the hubs and QML.  After assessing what CGL, QML and the hubs could all ship amongst each other, we also had to work with our various manufacturing partners to produce merchandise to backfill shortages.  Those items should be finished production within 2-3 weeks, then ship directly to both QML and the worldwide hubs.

So mid October all stock *should* be at the hubs and then it will take X weeks for delivery.

I’m not holding my breath that this KS will be delivered in 2024.

[Author]

Posts