Pathfinder Playtest Preorder Updates

[Chris Lambertz]

This thread will house information for Pathfinder Playtest Preorders sent via "Amazon Standard Delivery." We will post updates to this thread as we receive them.

[Chris Lambertz]

When Paizo was planning this year's Pathfinder Playtest, we expected to exceed our own ability to fulfill orders on a timely basis, so we decided to use Fulfillment by Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon's reports indicate that most customers will not be receiving their orders by tomorrow's release date. They shipped 3 orders on July 28, 3 more on July 29, and no orders on July 30 or 31. Today, they have shipped almost 10% of the outstanding orders, and they are continuing to ship through the night and into tomorrow. They have so far been unable to tell us when they will complete shipping. We will be posting updates as we receive them in this forum thread.

This delay doesn't impact preorders placed with retailers; most of them should have already received their products for release tomorrow. Paizo.com preorders for pickup at Gen Con are also unaffected.

We sincerely apologize for this delay. If your paizo.com Pathfinder Playtest preorder is being fulfilled by Amazon, we will be giving you $15 in paizo.com store credit in the near future.

PDFs of all of the playtest products will be available for free shortly after 6:00 AM Pacific time at paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest.

—The Paizo Team

[Vic Wertz]

While I still don't have a good idea of how long it's going to take, fulfillment has been speeding up; they're quickly approaching 15 percent shipped.

I don't have a good way at this time to look at orders in aggregate, but I can manually examine individual orders once they've shipped. Just to give you some idea of the timelines, I looked at 5 US and 5 international orders that shipped in the last few hours. All 5 of the US orders have expected delivery on August 3. International is (unsurprisingly) much more variable:

Destination: Japan. Expected delivery: August 7.
Destination: Italy. Expected delivery: August 3.
Destination: British Columbia. Expected delivery: August 8.
Destination: New Zealand. Expected delivery: August 13.
Destination: Sweden. Expected delivery: August 7.

Also, while this thread is reserved for updates only, this thread is open for discussion.

[Vic Wertz]

They have shipped 30% of all orders now.

[Vic Wertz]

Some other region info, from requests on the discussion thread

Brazil: One shipped yesterday with a delivery estimate of August 16.
Australia: The earliest I see, 23 hours ago, is going to WA via IPARCEL with a delivery estimate of August 22. The latest, from 2 hours ago, is going to Queensland via IMEX with a delivery estimate of September 6. I also searched for one going to NSW—the first I found shipped yesterday afternoon via DHL with a delivery estimate of August 9.
London, shipped yesterday, Delivery Estimate: September 6
Cumbria, shipped yesterday, Delivery Estimate: September 6
Aberdeen, shipped today, Delivery Estimate: September 6
Ireland, shipped yesterday, Delivery Estimate: September 6

[Vic Wertz]

They have shipped about 40% of orders now.

They are telling me that everything they have spot-checked is scheduled to ship "between right now and tomorrow." But the fact that they only managed 10% in the last 12 hours, and have 60% yet to ship, doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence about that.

[Vic Wertz]

They are also telling me that 6.5% of orders delivered so far today, and by tomorrow, 32% will be delivered. Given that they have only shipped 40% of orders, and many of them are international and definitely won't be delivered tomorrow, I don't have a ton of confidence about that either, unless they suddenly switch to same-day shipping, and I'm not seeing that in recent shipments i'm spot-checking.

[Vic Wertz]

We are currently at 54% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

Regional estimates reposted from the discussion thread:

Belgium, there are a couple both small and large, shipped via DHL on 8/3, Delivery Estimate: August 9

Netherlands, there are a bunch. Large packages shipped via DHL, Delivery Estimate: August 7
Small packages shipped via IMEX, Delivery Estimate: September 6

Norway, Shipped August 1 via DHL, Delivery Estimate: August 3; Shipped August 2 via DHL, Delivery Estimate: August 6

[Vic Wertz]

They are now just past 60% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

We are at 71% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

I was asked about US orders.

US orders are shipping all of the time, from lots of different distribution centers. Looking at delivery estimates for some that have shipped in the past couple hours, I mostly see August 6. (I was surprised to see one for August 5—I can only assume that Sunday delivery is somehow a thing for that particular destination.)

Assuming even distribution of orders in their shipping process, and assuming that most things are traveling at a similar rate, that suggests that a bit under 75% of domestic orders will arrive between now and Monday, if they haven't already.

While they still haven't given me an answer about when they expect to compete shipping, at the current rate, I would expect that the majority of the unshipped US orders will ship between now and Monday for delivery Tuesday, with some on Wednesday.

[Vic Wertz]

They've just passed 75% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

Their velocity has been slowing—we're at 78% now. I can only assume that's due to the weekend, but they haven't contacted me at all since late Thursday, when they provided the information in these two posts.

[Vic Wertz]

We're at 87%.

[Vic Wertz]

I have learned that the percentages I have been using included a large number of orders we placed and cancelled during testing, so my numbers have been roughly 10% too low all this time. We are at 96% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

We have posted the $15 credit to affected accounts, and will soon be sending the following email:

Last week, we emailed you regarding issues with Pathfinder Playtest preorder fulfillment, and we told you that if your paizo.com Pathfinder Playtest preorder is being fulfilled by Amazon, we will be giving you $15 in paizo.com store credit.

This credit has now been added to your paizo.com account.

Fulfillment By Amazon has now shipped approximately 97% of the preorders. We will continue posting updates in this thread on the paizo.com forums.

Again, we sincerely apologize for this delay.

[Vic Wertz]

I'm seeing that we are down to less that 1 percent unshipped. I will be away for a few hours, and I am hopeful they'll have completed shipping by the next time I post.

[Vic Wertz]

There are still just under 2 dozen orders that are either unshipped or partially shipped. (I'm still getting shipping notifications on a regular basis.)

[Vic Wertz]

Sigh. It turns out I was right the first time—the numbers I was using did NOT include the cancelled test orders, so when I "corrected" it to 96%, it was really closer to 86%. And when I posted that there were just under 2 dozen orders, I was misunderstanding one of their status filters—there were more unshipped orders that I wasn't seeing. They are actually at just over 94% shipped.

[Vic Wertz]

I have been informed that the differences I was seeing were due to orders that were "fully prepared but haven't yet left the fulfillment center," which is currently about 6%, and that the percentage of orders yet to be processed is less than 1%.

[Vic Wertz]

It appears that the current state is that 98.4% of orders have shipped, and of the remainder, all but 9 are "fully prepared but haven't yet left the fulfillment center."

[Vic Wertz]

Per request in the discussion thread:

Canadian deliveries are evenly spread out until August 10, with a few outliers—to Newfoundland and Yukon—on August 13.

[Vic Wertz]

Vic Wertz wrote:

We're at 99.3% of orders shipped, and of the remainder, all but 7 are "fully prepared but haven't yet left the fulfillment center."

The first number is up to 99.8%, but those 7 still haven't moved. I asked my contact at Amazon about them yesterday, and he said he pushed them to "an internal team that helped to drive orders." He added they consist of 6 orders to Australia and 1 to Spain, all of which include an Adventure and a Deluxe Hardcover Rulebook that have already shipped and a Flip-Mat that hasn't.

This week, 88 customers received (or will receive today) an additional email saying that Amazon was unable to ship your order, so we are fulfilling it ourselves. (I am still investigating why these 88 orders didn't get handled as expected.)

[Vic Wertz]

Vic Wertz wrote:

We're at 99.3% of orders shipped, and of the remainder, all but 7 are "fully prepared but haven't yet left the fulfillment center."

The first number is down to 5 orders, and the second is down to 2.

[Vic Wertz]

After no movement on the last 5 orders in 48 hours, I have cancelled them from Amazon's system; we'll fulfill them ourselves. I believe there's nothing outstanding at this point. I will post the latest expected delivery dates for each country shortly.

[Vic Wertz]

Below are the latest expected delivery dates sorted by country. (With few exceptions, dates beyond August 17 are associated with non-trackable shipping methods, and from what I've seen, the estimates they are providing for those methods are assuming the worst—many orders with delivery dates that far out are already arriving.)

AT: September 7
AU: September 6
BE: August 21
BR: August 22
CA: August 13
CH: September 6
CZ: September 12
DE: September 7
DK: September 11
ES: August 30
FI: September 7
FR: September 7
GB: September 7
GR: August 9
HK: August 8
HR: September 7
IE: September 6
IS: August 21
IT: September 6
JP: September 7
MX: August 13
NL: September 10
NO: September 10
NZ: September 7
PE: August 20
PH: August 24
PT: August 9
SE: September 7
US: August 18

(Note that Israel and Russia do not appear on this list—Amazon was unable to fulfill orders to those countries, so Paizo fulfilled them ourselves.)