Fantastic write up Avi, I'm absolutely loving all the My new headcannon is now Mios and various other iconics (Seelah? Alain?) out adventuring together and staying up around the campfire debating various styles of governments, or free will vs predestination.
Clearly the answer is to delete the forums. I mean, years of ignoring the people working professionally with them and their experience and expertise, giving the forums no budget, having the people working with them do several other jobs in addition to community work, and constantly berating people by saying that the magic they did manage to make with no budget and resources is a toxic cesspool didn’t work, so there isn’t any other solution than to just delete them. /sarcasm
Hey folks, I want to come back to this thread, but after posting it last week thinking I would have the time to occasionally pop in and answer things, my week got unexpectedly turned in a different direction. I'm going to close it until next week so that I have time to catch up with questions that have already been asked.
I posted a similar thing in another thread but wanted to add the information here too: I know there were a lot of people who were watching the individual product page for Secrets of Magic and seeing the release date as August 25 right up until the 24th when it was updated to September 1st, and that this caused confusion and frustration for folks who were looking forward to it dropping on the 25th. This issue was user error on my part. When we realized the dates were going to change, I went to go update the changes on the August Product Group, and somehow either missed or missed saving the change to the retail release date field. No one who works directly with the Product Groups realized that date was still set for Sept 25th until Tuesday, and even at that point I didn't realize that was the field from which the website took the exact date data (I had it in my head that it pulled the exact date from a different part on the product's individual page). I'm sorry for the confusion and frustration caused by this and thank everyone for their patience. ~sara
I haven't been able to read the thread yet, but wanted to address this part the part about the website release date changing last minute as that was user error on my part. When we realized the dates were going to change, I went to go update the changes and somehow either missed or missed saving the change to the retail release date field. No one realized that date was still set for Sept 25th until Tuesday, and even at that point I didn't realize that was the field from which the website took the date data (I thought it pulled it from a different part on the product's individual page). I'm sorry for the confusion and frustration caused by this and thank everyone for their patience. ~sara
Is anyone else not getting any tracking with their tracking numbers? The tracking number (USPSMI) was generated on Aug 18, but there's still no info. Tracking has been really hit or miss lately. We're still seeing the packages arrive from what customer's have been reporting, but the tracking and delivery confirmation is either inaccurate, slow, or missing all together.
I will make a longer post about this when I can, but we try very hard to not penalize people for buying more from us. When we say that we expect subscription orders can all be shipped in 1-2 weeks, that does include orders from folks who have added additional items.
I noted in a couple product discussion threads there has been some discussion about subscriptions, shipping, digital assets, etc. and I wanted to address some of them without derailing those threads further. https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43e1o&page=12?Secrets-of-magic-hype#590
For the last several years, we’ve been in the habit of releasing new products on a monthly basis on the last Wednesday of a month. Depending on where the conventions fall, PaizoCon and Gen Con might throw that off. Additionally, in the fourth quarter, (September to December), release dates are earlier in the month so that we can get products to distribution and subscribers before the winter holidays. In general, the warehouse begins building pallets and shipping product to distributors about 3.5 weeks before the retail release date. This is so that distributors can receive their products and then turn around and fulfill their retailer level orders in time for the release date. About 3 weeks before the retail release date is when my team typically runs a process that generates orders for subscribers. Typically we try to do this on a Thursday so that we have Friday to address issues, and customers have the weekend to review their order and contact us if something isn’t right. The following Monday my team focuses on questions that have come in regarding subscription orders, and then when we feel confident that all or most have been addressed the warehouse begins shipping out subscriber orders and preorders. Depending on the mix of products involved, it can take 1-2 weeks to package, and process for shipping the pending subscription and preordered new releases. While it’s our goal to have everything that can ship to be processed for shipping before the release date (as that means subscribers will at least have their digital assets), we do occasionally go over our estimated shipping window. While it usually works out that subscribers have their orders processed for shipping and thus their complimentary digital assets prior to the release date, it is not guaranteed. (In the past we have usually had the most issues with warehouse delays around Gen Con (late July or August) as the Gen Con release is typically the one with the most subscribers getting product, as well as the most products, and a large number of staff from the warehouse or customer service are also prepping or working the convention). In order for a product to be included in one of our monthly releases, it has be to be in our warehouse in time for us to include it on orders for distributors. If it isn’t in on time for distributors, it won’t get into retail stores with the other new releases, so it gets bumped to the next month. It would be unfair to have a new release (particularly a big one) not go to stores, but still go to subscribers. Doing that would be a great way to make distributors, retailers, and our fans who shop at those retailers really upset with us. We appreciate customers purchasing our products, whether it is directly through us, or via another retailer. No matter where our gaming community shops, we want people to feel confident, supported, and excited about purchases; not regretting their choice of where they shopped. Within distributors and subscribers, we have a lot of overlap between our RPG brands: Pathfinder and Starfinder; and both brands ship out in monthly releases together. Every month my team (customer service) runs a process that creates subscription orders for customers. This process is not only putting items from various subscription lines into order for folks, it is also building shipments and calculating costs, creating orders which will soon be settling funds on customer payment methods. Its an exciting time for customers who are eagerly anticipating new products, and it is exciting for us too… as well as an intense and sometimes very stressful experience. We take the responsibility of creating orders and charging people’s payment methods very seriously, and it is imperative that we make responsible choices, not just on behalf of for one subscription line or brand, but for all of them; and not just for one subscriber, or only our paizo.com customers, but for distributors and retailers and their customers, too. Logistically speaking, it does not work to separate our process for new releases by brand or product. When I first started at Paizo a million years ago, we were in a position where we had to ship products as they came into the warehouse, and we could not always wait to group them together, though we tried to offer customers the option to ship things immediately or have them grouped together. This was a logistical nightmare for operations and the fall out from it did everyone (Paizo, distributors, retailers, and customers) a disservice. We have been able to be far more consistent and efficient by have a single release date each month, and overall I have found that consistency is something that helps the most people manage their subscriptions more effectively. As far as 2020 and 2021 have gone… its been chaotic, uncertain, and deeply frustrating for everyone. Throughout 2020, my team had a backlog of issues in the thousands, and so far almost every release in 2021 has had logistic and timing issues. I cannot stress enough that globally manufacturing, production, and shipping logistics are all having massive issues. Labor shortages, supply shortages, shipping container shortages, port back ups and delays, the problems right now cover the entire supply chain, for all sorts of businesses not just Paizo. These things are all contributing to rising costs and transit times across the board. In addition to that, we’ve been addressing some internal problems with our shipping code, like updating rate tables that were woefully out of date, working on getting new VAT (Value Added Tax) and retail sales tax regulations sorted and implemented. For some folks this means shipping and handling costs will go up due to increased costs and corrected shipping rates, and for a handful of people, shipping and handling might actually go down or stay stable as we have access to new rates or services that we were missing out on before. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that my team is committed to helping folks sort out their order issues. I don’t know that I will have a whole lot of time to be able to respond to follow up questions, but if you have general questions, I will do my best to answer what I can. I prefer to be forthcoming and transparent about stuff when and where I can be, so that customers can make informed decisions about where and how they spend their money.
The order creation for August's 4 products appears to have successfully finished creating orders. CS will be addressing issues that might have arisen with order creation in the morning. We hope to begin shipping ASAP so if you have something critical like cancelling, updating addresses, etc, please do that as soon as possible or let us know via email if you need assistance. ~sara marie
We are hoping to hear an update in the next hour or so on when the last item (tech revolution) will arrive. Very likely we will be creating paizo.com subscription orders this afternoon, and begin shipping as soon as possible Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. I will update this thread once I hear back on whether we have an update on Tech Revolution and if that will be included in August or September's new releases. ~sara
Hi folks, just a quick note that not all of the items are in the warehouse yet, so the new releases listed might change if they don't all make it here by Thursday, or we might end up pushing order creation for subscribers back a bit further. ~sara
The bookmarks on the pdf are largely missing. Can we get an update here when they are fixed? I'm going to track down the person who can help answer the question about the bookmarks. As far as an update goes, if a file that is in your digital assets gets updated, you should receive an email notification that there is a new version to download when it happens. There should be a checkbox on your account settings to opt in/out of digital asset update notifications. (Thanks for bring this to my attention Aaron!)
Question: Is this accurate? If so, that's a HUGE departure from literally every module or AP book Paizo has ever put out to my knowledge and I think that it may serve everyone well to present this idea far more up-front in the marketing.
Just as a heads up, as we figure some of this stuff out, you might see future subscription shipments' shipping and handling go up. We're looking at current international orders, and it is looking like several locations are/were being underquoted. Please also keep in mind that the EU has new VAT requirements and many places are cracking down on making sure international orders are getting taxed.
Thanks for being so understanding and patient.
Sara: it's probably running slowly because it has to check that our shipping information is correct for the pdfs. :-) I know you said this as a joke, but I just was looking at someone's account and saw their two society subs had "USPS First Class" somehow set on them. -_-
Just a note here, several of our rate tables for shipping costs were woefully out of date. This may mean that your shipping costs are different than you might expect. In many cases it's not that the shipping and handling are incorrectly high now, it's that they were incorrectly low before. Additionally, global shipping along the entire supply chain is a hot mess right now, not just for us, but for everyone. Things are costing more and taking longer in transit. There does seem to be a persistent issue where orders that should have a UPS Mail Innovations Domestic option are not seeing it come up and using USPS Priority instead. I'm looking into this with the tech and warehouse teams since it was supposed to be resolved with yesterday's fix.
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