GR Sale and Backorders

[Takasi]

I ordered 29 books for the GR sale, and the other day I noticed one of the books is on backorder.

I checked today and now 5 books are on backorder:

Book of the Righteous Hardcover (d20)
Denizens of Freeport (d20)
Egyptian Adventures: Hamunaptra (d20)
The Black Company Campaign Setting (d20)
Trojan War RPG (d20)

1.) Will I have to wait until all of these backorders are filled before receiving any books in this order?

2.) How long will it take to fill these backorders? (I had planned to give these books as holiday presents.)

3.) Are you reserving the other books on my order so they don't also go on backorder? I ordered very early on the first day of the sale.

[Corey Young]

Takasi wrote:

I ordered 29 books for the GR sale, and the other day I noticed one of the books is on backorder.

I checked today and now 5 books are on backorder:

Book of the Righteous Hardcover (d20)
Denizens of Freeport (d20)
Egyptian Adventures: Hamunaptra (d20)
The Black Company Campaign Setting (d20)
Trojan War RPG (d20)

1.) Will I have to wait until all of these backorders are filled before receiving any books in this order?

2.) How long will it take to fill these backorders? (I had planned to give these books as holiday presents.)

3.) Are you reserving the other books on my order so they don't also go on backorder? I ordered very early on the first day of the sale.

Hi Takasi,

I took a look at your order, and there doesn't seem to be cause for concern quite yet. Backordered generally means that our supplier is out of stock, and is waiting for a new shipment of items to come in from the parent company. You were in on the sale fairly early, so your items may just come in on their own with no trouble.

Generally, we don't have a timeframe for when a backordered item should come in from our supplier. It all depends on when they get their order, and then how fast they can fulfill our order and get it to our warehouse. If it does appear that a backorder is holding your order beyond the timeframe you are comfortable waiting for holiday presents, please let us know at [e-mail], and we will be happy to see what we can do about splitting the backordered item off of the main order.

The other books on your order do appear to have been earmarked, and should ship to you just fine.

[Wyvern]

Thanks Corey! I was wondering the same thing as Takasi.
I'm not in a rush though, so I can wait.

[JoeBlank]

I love when I come here and my question has already been asked and answered.

I do have one follow up question. If we have some backorder items, do we need to do anything to request that the other items go ahead and ship or will that happen automatically?

For reference, my order # is 836685.

Thanks.

[Darren Bezzant]

Agreed - Paizo's Customer Service rocks! I pop on to check the status of my order, see the backed ordered stuff, figure I should ask a question, and find that it has already been answered!

I am also in the same boat, wondering if the 'in stock' orders will ship ahead of the backorders, (Order 628226) and how the shipping costs will be attributed.

Thanks in advance

Darren.

[Cosmo]

Joe & Darren,

Thank you very much for the kind words! :)

As for shipping the in stock items separately from the backorders... We can do this, for the Green Ronin orders or for any order. It will involve separate shipping and handling fees for the separate shipments, but for most orders this will mean you will get your items much more quickly.

However, for the Green Ronin orders, I would suggest keeping them together. We expect the "backorder" status on these items to be very temporary. No one was taken by surprise by the large number of orders that this huge sale sparked off, so the stocks will be replenished right away. In fact, these items aren't really "backordered" in the same manner as other items that have the "backorder" status. The reason these items have that tag is due to some peculiarity in the way the inventories are talking to one another, which is something I neither understand particularly well nor would try to explain if I did. : /

The point is: If you would like me to split your orders up so we can ship the books that are in right away, I will. However, you will probably only need to wait a few extra (business) days before the order will ship together (and this will save you a bunch on shipping and handling verses shipping serparately).

Thanks,
cos

[JoeBlank]

Thanks, Cosmo. That makes perfect sense. I'm fine with waiting for everything to shake out and let the whole order ship together.

[Darren Bezzant]

Hey Cosmo. No problem at all. If it is only going to be a few more days, I am happy to wait. This is one of those spontaneous deals that I just had to pick up based upon the great price, so if I have to wait a little while longer, that's cool. I just want to give a few of these out to the group as Christmas presents, so I have a month or so :)

Thanks again.

Darren.

[Cpt_kirstov]

a related question: do the "usually ships within 3-9 business days" start when the backordered items come in, or is the order all ready for the item to be thrown in and shipped the next day?

[Cosmo]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

a related question: do the "usually ships within 3-9 business days" start when the backordered items come in, or is the order all ready for the item to be thrown in and shipped the next day?

Actually it's 3 to 6 business days, but yes, when the items are all in, then the order enters the shipping queue. The time an order spends in queue is usually around 3 business days (or less), but it can occasionally take up to 6.

Regardless, we always try to get every order shipped out as quickly as possible, but in the sense that we ship orders as efficiently as possible. This means that we will ship all of the like-orders (same shipping method) at once. This may pull an individual order ahead or push it back, but this has an overall effect of getting all orders out in the average (3-6 day) time.

As a side note, orders with an expedited shipping method (UPS Second Day Air or UPS Next Day Air) will nearly always be at the front of the line and get shipped on the day they are filled.

Thanks,
cos

[Don Northness]

Slightly related topic:

The other night I placed a small order, and I added Skull & Bones (From the Green Ronin sale). When I went to proceed to checkout, it was removed from the order because it was unavailable. (It is only listed as backorder, and was then as well.)

I am not asking for this to be "fixed" for me. I am content with the results. Just reporting what might not be working properly.

[Darren Bezzant]

Hey Cosmo!

Is the Medieval handbook going to be backordered for long? I see the other have come in, just curious if I should just bite the bullet and get shipped what you have ready and wait for that one (or just drop that book entirely)

cheers

[Matthew Morris]

Darren Bezzant wrote:

Hey Cosmo!

Is the Medieval handbook going to be backordered for long? I see the other have come in, just curious if I should just bite the bullet and get shipped what you have ready and wait for that one (or just drop that book entirely)

cheers

Mike McCarter posted, in anotehr thread, that if there are any Christmas gifts, you're safer to remove it/ship seperately. I've already E-mailed/posted, asking this.

[Fake Healer]

Any update on when the stock is to be replenished? I have 3 books on "pending", including the Advanced Beastiary.
Also still waiting on a shirt to come in, any idea on when that is happening?

[Cpt_kirstov]

Fake Healer wrote:

Any update on when the stock is to be replenished? I have 3 books on "pending", including the Advanced Beastiary.

Also still waiting on a shirt to come in, any idea on when that is happening?

Lisa said in the long shipping delay thread that they rented a moving van to get books to the warehouse yesterday, and they got 2x 5' pallets of books in today

[Sharoth]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Fake Healer wrote:

Any update on when the stock is to be replenished? I have 3 books on "pending", including the Advanced Beastiary.

Also still waiting on a shirt to come in, any idea on when that is happening?

Lisa said in the long shipping delay thread that they rented a moving van to get books to the warehouse yesterday, and they got 2x 5' pallets of books in today

Sweet!

Oh, Cosmo! I want my loot NOW!!!

j/k. I can be patient. ~chews my nails~ Honest! ~takes up drinking~ I can be patient! I promise!

[Fake Healer]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Fake Healer wrote:

Any update on when the stock is to be replenished? I have 3 books on "pending", including the Advanced Beastiary.

Also still waiting on a shirt to come in, any idea on when that is happening?

Lisa said in the long shipping delay thread that they rented a moving van to get books to the warehouse yesterday, and they got 2x 5' pallets of books in today

All praises to Irori!

[Cassandra_e]

I have another question related to this topic. I put some products in my cart several days ago but was not ready to buy. Now some of those (such as Hamunaptra, and Skull and Bones) are listed as "Currently unavailable." That sounds worse than "backordered" and evidently the system thinks so also, because when I logged in it automatically removed those items from my cart. Unfortunately, some of those were the items I wanted most - along with everyone else, I guess!

It sounds to me like there still might be some hope that the products will become available again - they are only "currently" unavailable, as opposed to totally unavailable. Is that a possibility or am I being foolishly optimistic? I'd be willing to put in an order that includes those products and wait until everything gets sorted out, if I thought there was a chance the books would actually be sent eventually. On the other hand, if there's no way the unavailable ones will be in stock again I'd rather go ahead and put in my order as it stands before anything else disappears!

Can I please get some information about terminology here?

[Vic Wertz]

CassandraE wrote:

Now some of those (such as Hamunaptra, and Skull and Bones) are listed as "Currently unavailable." That sounds worse than "backordered" and evidently the system thinks so also, because when I logged in it automatically removed those items from my cart.

Yep. "Backordered" essentially means that we think we can get more, but we generally don't know exactly when; "currently unavailable" means that we don't think we'll have it in stock again. (We'll remove the product listing once our distributor removes the product from their database, which is their signal to us that they know they won't be getting any more.)

[Takasi]

Corey Young wrote:

The other books on your order do appear to have been earmarked, and should ship to you just fine.

I noticed today that items in my order were canceled. You said they were earmarked, so what happened? If you had those books set aside for me, then why are they now gone?

Also, the shipping has now changed dramatically! Considering I've been waiting for this order since November 15th, can you please change the shipping back to the original order's amount? It was 92.29 (the 29 order) and now it's more and I'm getting much less!