I have some rather nebulous feedback (so possibly totally useless) regarding ordering non-Paizo stuff, especially things in advance or things you don’t carry often.
The most recent issue has been with The PACG Adventure Chest. Obviously, that was a special case but word filtered out in January this year that they were finally seeing the light of day. I placed an order here and also with miniature market (who listed that they had “more than twenty” available. Since then, I’ve received two cases from miniature market, in two separate and smooth orders - yet Paizo still lists it as a preorder. Miniature market has now sold out of them and I’m pretty sure you’re eventually going to tell me that they’re out of print, on backorder or something - never having got them in.
I had a similar, long running issue with a batch of campaign coins I ordered in December 2017. Despite numerous conversations with customer service over many months - during which it always appeared the coins were “imminent” I only received that order in March 2019 - 14 or 15 months after ordering an item which was listed as available.
Those are the only concrete examples I have to hand, but similar weirdness (where Paizo lists something continuously as “preorder” until it suddenly shifts to out of print) has occurred on and off throughout the ten or so years I’ve been buying stuff here. Presumably, it’s all automated at some level, but from the outside looking in it really seems like some orders drift into a kind of limbo.
The appearance is that nobody’s actively chasing up my preorders but rather your computer sends in an order to the manufacturer and then sits back passively to wait for a reply. Sometimes the same thing happens with items you have an estimated shipping time on - surely it would be possible to raise a flag when an order drifts considerably outside that window? (Maybe that already happens?)
Anyhow, I hope that waffle is enough to explain the issue. It’s a real peculiarity to the Paizo site and it doesn’t give me confidence - I wanted four PACG cases, for example but didn’t trust your system enough to place them all here so bought two through you and two through miniature market - now I’m regretting the choice to get any here, since when you look into it, I fully expect you to tell me they’ve gone out of print without any actually arriving. Meanwhile, my other options have all sold out of actual stock.
If it’s useful, I can probably go back and dig out some other examples over the years. It doesn’t happen often, but it is often enough to be frustrating (and represents lost sales, obviously - I’d far rather be buying all of these kinds of things through you. I just don’t know that I can trust your computer!)
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention!
While I know you're speaking to a larger issue with preorders and availability, the following is about the specific item mentioned (the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chest). Tracking down this item in our system I was able to find that some modifications to the product occurred at the end of January 2019 that indicated that we might have received/been preparing to receive it. I just chatted with our warehouse to inquire why these occurred, but we do not currently have it in stock. I've forwarded all of that information on to our Licensing Manager to check on the status.
The preorder process for licensed/third-party products: we manually manage preorders for these items. Because dates and production are often in states of flux and if an item is in high demand we will occasionally order more than the number of current preorders to ensure fulfillment on our side. Also, a person at Paizo places supply orders, rather than our software, based on outstanding customer orders. We do have routine processes in place to check on long-outstanding non-preorder customer orders (folks may have seen Customer Service reach out to them in recent history on this front). Preorders are a particular case, and it is frankly atypical and not desired behavior on Paizo's side to have preorders extend further than our preorder window for our own products. I'll reach out to the appropriate parties to explore one-off cases like the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chest.
For transparency, our Webstore Coordinator has recently left Paizo to pursue other adventures in the gaming world. We do currently have a posting to fill this position (on our Careers page) and addressing issues like you've brought up will be within their wheelhouse.
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Thanks very much Chris. I guess there isn't really a problem - as I understand things, both the Campaign Coins issue and the PACG Adventure Chest were special cases - it's not a surprise there were glitches there, I was just worried it might have been a broader system issue.
FWIW, both Rick and the customer service team have always been brilliant at chasing these up for me (as were you, back in the day!) It wasn't a complaint as such, but it does seem like there's an occasional miss within the system somewhere.
I'm really glad to hear there's a manual process for overseeing non-paizo preorders. They have been the only real issues I've had ordering here over the years and I always trust people over machines. (Robots are people too).
While I know you're speaking to a larger issue with preorders and availability, the following is about the specific item mentioned (the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chest). Tracking down this item in our system I was able to find that some modifications to the product occurred at the end of January 2019 that indicated that we might have received/been preparing to receive it. I just chatted with our warehouse to inquire why these occurred, but we do not currently have it in stock. I've forwarded all of that information on to our Licensing Manager to check on the status.
Hi Chris (or Mark, maybe?)
I thought I might touch base on this. Any clue as to what's going on with the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chests?
While I know you're speaking to a larger issue with preorders and availability, the following is about the specific item mentioned (the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chest). Tracking down this item in our system I was able to find that some modifications to the product occurred at the end of January 2019 that indicated that we might have received/been preparing to receive it. I just chatted with our warehouse to inquire why these occurred, but we do not currently have it in stock. I've forwarded all of that information on to our Licensing Manager to check on the status.Hi Chris (or Mark, maybe?)
I thought I might touch base on this. Any clue as to what's going on with the UltraPro ACG Adventure Chests?
Hey Steve, this one is on me. I'm working on the order so things are moving forward, albeit glacially.
Hi Chris (or Mark, maybe?)
Or Jeff, apparently!
Thanks for that. At this stage of the saga, glacially is to be expected. ;)