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

[sundancer 42925xp 0]

Down from $35.46 to $27.23

Not good enough CGL. Not good enough. Anything above 20USD (including bloody VAT) is more than double what you’d be paying for 1st class, high end, tracked shipping. “local shipping rates” my rear end.

Where is my pitchfork?

[dawfydd 11923xp 0]

Yeah, this can go kiss my shiny metal ass…..

[sundancer 42925xp 1]

Oh this is hilarious. Just went into the CGL stream to hear “updates are being made, please hold your comments until a backer update is gone through and we can pick out the anomalies”.  (Paraphrasing)

(I’ll try to find the time stamp)

[sundancer 42925xp 1]

addendum: chat on CGL live stream is “subscribers only”. But even though I am a subscriber for a long time I can’t chat. oO

[jamescutts 6914xp 0]

That was literally the length of the update on the stream, but hey Battletech has a Humble Bundle for fiction! I guess they cant mess the shipping up on that one 😀

I hate to get negative (overall I’m pretty happy with my Kickstarter) but this really is turning into quite a mess, if they have started rolling out updated shipping rates, the first thing they should have done was put out a update saying, we are working through updating the shipping rates we’ll let you know once its done.

 

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 0]

We were told that the previous costs were wrong because backers were being charges all of the costs, when in fact GCL were covering handling etc.

So my revised figure to deliver a company pledge with 1 add-on force pack is 3 dollars less than it was before. So it seems that either CGL have used the most cost effective munchkins in the history of packing boxes….or we are still paying for stuff that CGL should be paying for.

The ‘to my door’ delivery cost from a local hub should be half what I am being charged.

[sundancer 42925xp 1]

So the timestamp on the video should be 8:24

https://www.youtube.com/live/9B7DCopf1g8?si=iaWhaggqfg522XTP&t=504

The ‘to my door’ delivery cost from a local hub should be half what I am being charged.

I’d say the same. It’s a shame they fumbled it so hard.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 0]

It is hard to fathom what CGL are thinking right now. Why is Sarah Krause, a drama student, leading on sorting out complex shipping issues?

This is the second time they have sent out inflated and incorrect shipping costs to backers. The checks seems to have been done by asking a few folks on Discord (who defend CGL at every opportunity) to take a look. These folks thought the original costs were very reasonable so no surprise that they said these ones were all okey dokey.

These inflated costs are not going to be a big deal for me other than feeling cheated. I will chalk it up to experience and avoid CGL and tell others to do the same in future. I feel bad for backers facing significant costs to get their stuff.

I should not really be surprised. CGL have shown that they really don’t like their fans (you probably got caught up in a shadow ban sundancer hence why you could not post a question in the live chat). Sarah Krause has been doing this for a while on the Reddit and Discord.

It may be that CGL have added a lot of costs on to the business since they made bank on the KS (which seems to be the curse of the successful KS) and are now off-loading that on to the backers? Why else are the shipping costs double what they should be?

 

[limburger 21679xp 0]

About the only thing that makes sense is that FedEx apparently are asking silly money prices for shipping outside of the USA.

I really really hope someone out there has a good excuse for that part, because it may simply the only reason why they can’t get the costs down to ‘local shipping’.

I’d also add that they should never ever use that term again.
It’s too vague and opens up a can of worms when the shipping company still asks for silly prices and no one at the company has a real clue as to what people expect ‘local shipping’ to be like.

Maybe Americans are used to silly money shipping costs when ordering from the other end of their country ?

Can we send OTT/Gerry to ask them these questions ?

It’s not the first kickstarter that has had issues with shipping partners stateside either.

But seriously … a company that has a license as old as Battletech ought to be a bit more experienced in these matters.
It’s not like this is the first time they had to ship stuff outside of the USA ?
Surely they must have wanted to go global before ?

I do remember seeing Battletech semi-locally in the days before internet at one of my first visits to a shop for this hobby.

It kind of highlights why small pledges tend to be very expensive when the options vary as widely as they did in this kickstarter.
They should have kept things nice and easy instead of getting greedy because fan boys kept ‘demanding’ more.
One box,  no add-ons … and let retail do the rest. It’s better for the hobby, because once I get my stuff I will never ever feel the need to buy more battletech ever again.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 1]

It was never vague. They promised a local hub located in the UK. So the only cost is from the UK hub to my door. It seems however that other costs are being added, or they lied. Take your pick.

The equivalent order from a UK based retailed would cost £4.99 postage. CGL want to change me £26.52

• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by  tankkommander.

[dawfydd 11923xp 2]

I mean they’ve been talking about establishing UK & Europe distribution hubs for years at this point. And to the best of my knowledge they didn’t use FedEx for the Clan Invasion kickstarter, or at least as best I can remember they didn’t. Part of the issue is that none of the European, UK, or Australian shipments (sorry, can;t remember the specifics of other regions) should be coming from the States. It should all be at contracted hubs in those regions. Last time I think it was GamesQuest?

[jamescutts 6914xp 1]

If I remember correctly the last one was Games Quest? This time the distribution partner is QML, all of it will be shipping from China to various QML hubs around the world, Catalyst had said they are covering that distribution cost, aparently its 50% of it and over $1m.

Fedex is just what the Catalyst store uses for internation shipments, and does have very crazy pricing (ofter £100+), though that is nothing to do with the Kickstarter, I think does highlight their lack of inhouse skills when it comes to anything outside the US and knowledge of things like “local” shipping rates.

I was expecting them to add VAT at somepoint, after all we need to pay it and I would rather it hopefully be handled by the distributor than end up with import duties. Personally I was allowing postage to be about 20% of the pledge based of similar kickstarters I’ve had recently, so it fell into my expectations of that, still I was hoping the point of “local shipping rates” would bring that much more inline with say local courier delivery for a good carrier. I’d never expect it to be the same price as a online store, given i have quite a sizable order and its going to be a big box, plus online stores have a different operating model for their postage rates.

But I was expecting in the £10-20 range, which is what I’d pay for something like a medium sized parcel 24-48h deliver with the likes of UPS/Fedex/DHL “locally”

In fairness the Catalyst they never “promised” local shipping rates, just suggested they would be, it is afterall its a kickstarter so everything should be taken at face value. I do think there not helping matters by the lack of further updates and the potentially confusing information about how the shipping and distribution costs should be split with them covering distribution apparently.

My potentially “revised” shipping has dropped, $40 to me is reasonable, it’s not as cheap as i would like but i don’t think its excessive either for what i have coming, that said I do think sundancers example is bonkers, there’s no way that should be costing that much in shipping.

That said I think the biggest issue is this is going to be potential backers to future kickstarters thinking twice before pledging, I know I will probably just wait until retail in the future.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 0]

CGL have already said they do not intend to run any more KS.

I suspect that backers are just being hosed for a larger amount of shipping so that CGL don’t really have to pay for the full cost of the handling.

The lack of updates makes one wonder why they even employ a ‘community manager’. She might more accurately be called the ‘minister for propaganda’ given the way she suppresses real discussion. Maybe she has now actually read the Battletech lore (after admitting never having played the game) and thinks Word of Blake are the good guys 🙂

[sundancer 42925xp 1]

CGL have already said they do not intend to run any more KS.

Did they say “Kickstarter” or “no more crowdfunding”? Because if the wording is “no more kickstarter” I’m pretty sure they will go somewhere else like Backerkit directly or gamefund.

The lack of updates makes one wonder why they even employ a ‘community manager’.

AFAIK she’s currently doing all the community stuff not only the Battletech KS but also Shadowrun and other stuff. And from the previous video it sounded like they have their hands full. And reading comments in the last Shadowrun KS… oh boy. XD People sound… annoyed XD https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/shadowrun-take-down/comments

[tankkommanderParticipant 6413xp 1]

The TLDR for the latest updates from CGL boils down to “screw you, pay up, no refunds”.

The longer versions is that with 23,654 backers they did a spot check on 80 orders on the (very compliant) Discord and decided everything is now okay.

If they charging the wrong VAT then they might end up in trouble with HMRC 🙂

As for the comms team. Maybe CGL should get rid of Sarah Krause and employ someone who is actually competent? If you don’t want to be deluged with angry comments maybe try not ripping off you backers?

 

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