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

[redscopeParticipant 2716xp 0]

I have been stung more than once by shipping costs up to 1/3 of the price of the items itself. The problem with kickstarters is often they are not clear on the shipping at the time or later just ramp up the costs. I accept it is a difficult area, but some of these companies are not small and they already supply retail stores across the world. Those retail stores in some cases offer free shipping or at least make use of the local shipping like the postal service. I struggle to understand these companies who deal with shipping to retail have so much isssue ?

At this point the benefits of backing any kickstarter coming to retail seems almost pointless. You know it will end up in the stores, likely at a some discount or nearly the same as the kickstarter price.

I nearly backed same Fireforge models but decided against it. The difference in price per a box to the retail was just 2 pounds. But the kick starter delivery was 10 pounds so it turned out more expensive to back the kickstarter. Because I got free delivery retail.

You know the worse aspect is that I bought them at retail months ago and they still have people who backed the kick starter that they have not shipped to.

I struggle to see what backing a kickstarter is offering for the customer because it is not value for money, you lack and consumer protection an in some cases creates a stress you dont need.

 

[sundancer 42923xp 0]

I struggle to see what backing a kickstarter is offering for the customer

@redscope well with this KS it’s a limited edition printing of the cover, a 4″ Mech and getting it before retail.

Man I really wish they get this sorted soon.

[limburger 21679xp 0]

@redscope

The thing with kickstarters is that they need to ship to backers individually instead of shipping a few big containers to a small subset of locations. The latter is ‘easy’ because that’s what companies tend to do (unless they’re too small to have a retail presence), so they can take advantage of volume deals.

I’ve never backed kickstarters in order to get it *before* retail.
I back because I want to see the thing get made and on the shelves so other folk can enjoy the thing as well.

I really dislike the ‘kickstarter exclusive’ bits for the same reason.

/rant

[pagan8thParticipant 10747xp 1]

@sundancer if you do have trouble with battletech delivery then you could always buy that 3D printer and print your own 🙂

[sundancer 42923xp 1]

Update

Dear backers,

Quick update, as we know you are waiting to hear from us today. We have a meeting set with QML at 4-5pm ET today to go through all of our questions and anomalies we’ve found. We’ll then make an action plan, and get a backer update out this evening.

The QML meeting is also the same time as Tuesday Newsday, so we’ll be pushing the stream back two hours, and Rem will talk about the plan of action.

Stay tuned, and we’ll have more for you later today.

Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/battletech-mercenaries/posts/4067220

[captainventanusParticipant 4936xp 1]

Pretty much the reason I did not back this Kickstarter too start with. For those of us in Europe/UK it was never such a great deal in the first place, something I doubt CGL cared about too much.  The financial savings were negligible once you factored in VAT and even more reasonable postage. Yet the risks and time factor considerable. To make it work out you had to invest heavily that one had to question how why anyone needed hundreds of mechs that aren’t all that different. The exclusives weren’t really that impressive either. Also CGL didn’t need to take this to Kickstarter in the first place. The new plastics line had reached a critical mass and was they were already able to release additional boxes without needing kickstarter funding.

A  shame CGL dropped the ball on the postage side given how invested the community is in them bringing things to Kickstarter anything but a complete reversal on this is likely to sink future campaigns.

[sundancer 42923xp 2]

Well, this moves faster than expected and gives some hope:

Shipping Adjustments Updates!

Hey there backers!

After researching these shipping charges, we have discovered a couple of errors. First, there was an error in the upload of the shipping charges form that included the total amount of shipping, handling, and fees, instead of JUST shipping. Additionally, we identified that the Savannahs Battlemat listed the wrong dimensions (instead, with the dimensions of a BFM). Most backers receive the free Battlemat with their order, so this erroneously upped the shipping fees due to large box dimensions. Because this affects all Veteran [edit by CGL: Battalion] and above backers, QML needs to re-work the entire shipping upload, which will take some time.

Once both fixes are made, 95% of all orders are going to be under $150 for your total amount of shipping (with all backers seeing some sort of drop in their shipping charge). Those remaining we believe are non-continental US, the rest of the world (outside of hub centers) stores, and similar extremely large orders.

Backers that had zero shipping listed were finalized after QML received their last data pull in December, so we’ll be sending the updated list to them, as well. There were also some odd $1 shipping amounts that did not import correctly through the upload, and this will be updated.

Finally, the April 12th deadline is removed. We will take as long as it needs to fix all issues.

We had genuinely hoped that this would be an easy process, and are deeply apologetic for the undue stress this has caused all of you. But rest assured that we are committed to getting shipping issues fixed. This is a monster project, and we are so grateful to all of you for your support.

Thank you dearly to all backers that reached out about these charges to bring them to our attention.

Now let’s see how fast QML fixes their flockup.

[jamescutts 6913xp 1]

Throwing my hat in the ring.  Mines similar is to @hairybrains considering I have some extra add ons, I did also change my pledge around a bit, remoing some initial addons and upping the pledge level as it worked out a better deal.

I will admit I was expecting postage to be a fair bit cheaper than it currently is but given it had a “EU Friendly” sticker i was expecting good old brex** to shaft us UK backers over. Would have thought in the EU though @sundancer you would have got “local shipping rates”

To be honest I’m not overly fussed, and I cant see why the internet gets all ragy about it, it sounds like the distribution company basically gave catalyst false expectations, and really Catalyst have done nothing but try and be as helpful and supportive as they can.

In the end its a Kickstarter, I paid my money in the hope of something coming at some point, it sounds like its probably not too far away so I’ll soon be playing with toy robits and making pew pew noises.

Also the above screenshot from backerkit, doesnt really make it clear at all what the total amount actually is.

[jamescutts 6913xp 0]

Oh I see there is a page 2 I missed with an update. Both slightly encouraging and disappointing at the same time.

Good to see they have identified and are working to correct some issues.

However “95% of all orders are going to be under $150”!!?? in no world is $150 a “local shipping rate”

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 0]

So it seems that CGL took the spreadsheet from QML and just sent it to backerkit without checking it.

Now they are back peddling, admitting it is all wrong, not really making an apology, and insinuating it is QML’s fault. CGL had this data in advance but then dropped it just before the holiday weekend. Coincidence?

At the same time CGL put a lot of effort in to cleansing the Reddit and Discord of any posts from backers about this debacle. They instead deployed the usual suspects to post funny memes for April Fools.

I will be glad to just get my stuff and never have anything to do with CGL again. 3D printing is the way forward for battletech fans until someone else gets the licence from Topps.

[limburger 21679xp 2]

You call it a cleansing.

I call it removing spam posts that add zero new info to the discussions and only serve to fan the flames of conspiracies.  They would have been dammed if they had let this fester.

Spreadsheet imports are tricky. You really need to trust the process as it can be tricky to verify if the numbers you get are realistic. In an ideal world they should have caught it, but so could the 3rd party hired to do the job.

You can’t protect against faulty data like the wrong box size for one of the items.

Well.  You could by limiting what items folk could pick, but both backers and the company got greedy by wanting all of the goodies and trying to please the fans.

Things got discovered and they appear to be making a serious effort in fixing the mistakes.

We all need to realise that the process is done by humans who can and will make mistakes. Especially with a project of this size (one of the biggest kickstarter ever). They might have the resources and fanbase to create the goods, but I’d say that their internal processes aren’t ready for things of this magnitude.

 

[jamescutts 6913xp 2]

Yeah I’m not really holding this against CGL too much, certainly not the the extent of not buying their stuff, I like it and as a whole I don’t mind them either as indivual’s or as a company. I could 3D print but I actually don’t mind their products, they might cost more but they save me time and effort I often don’t have.

Mistakes can easily happen, such as the incorrect box size, and the complexity of this Kickstarter is on both CLG and the backers who just seemed to be constantly asking for more. The blame of not checking data is on both CGL and QML who should have validated and queried inconsistences also.

My biggest gripe would be as per the OP is that even corrected the suggested shipping fees are in no way “local shipping rates” and I would advise CGL not use that terminology in the future unless it can be delivered upon, and to also be upfront about additional VAT charges.

[jamescutts 6913xp 0]

So out of interest, i watched the Tuesday Newsday update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOmU1bYzCUA

In it REM states the total shipping, handling and fees for the campaign are $2.6m, and with $1.4m being the shipping paid by backers and CLG taking up the other $1.2m for the handling and fees.

[sundancer 42923xp 0]

I’d seen that stream too.

Given that the campaign had 23.654 backers that averages to roughly 60USD. So I guess that’s where that weird “Once both fixes are made, 95% of all orders are going to be under $150 for your total amount of shipping” number comes from.

Doing some rough napkin math and guesswork: if QLM had forwarded the full 2.600.000USD to Backerkit instead of the 1.400.000USD it should have that’s 54% to high. If my shipping goes down by 50% I’m fine with that. That’s a reasonable and almost local shipping fee.

I just checked: Backerkit has zeroed the shipping costs on the campaign. Now we wait some more.

Also: this is being handled faster than any big KS that did an upsi! before.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 0]

This is 100% CGL mess up and not QML.

CGL are just too lazy to check the info they send is correct, which caused this problem.

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