New Physical Product Releases in November 2023

[Wzrd]

Cosmo wrote:

For subscribers who have not yet received a shipping notification for your November subscription shipment and still need your PDF, please contact Paizo CS at [e-mail] and we will get you taken care of.

I can wait for the physical books, but being able to read the PDFs is what is important to me. I have sent an email to customer service asking for the PDFs.

Thank you for enabling this.

[Ed Reppert]

I feel like I may be in a somewhat unique position. My Authorization email, when my order was created, divided it into two shipments. Today I received a shipment email for one of those, and access to the items in that shipment: the Player Core and a couple of flip-mats. What I don't have yet is a shipment email for the other half of my shipment, which includes among other things the GM Core book. I guess I better email cs, just in case.

[magnuskn]

My pending e-mail from October 27th is all I've gotten so far, so make of that what you will. AFAIK nothing has been shipped yet.

Anyway, best wishes that y'all can sort this clusterfudge out rather sooner than later. :) And thank you for the update!

[Yoshua]

Shipping notice on Nov 1st, still have not received physical product. Happy I have the pdfs but this is the longest its gone from notice to no arrival.

Some of you guys have received the actual books by now right?

EDIT:

Just saw cosmos post. Back to waiting.

[Jackson Wood]

Thank you all for your understanding and patience as we work through an already large volume of tickets that understandably have come up before Cosmo was able to get in and give an update. If you haven't heard from us yet and have a ticket in, volume is almost always the reason we have yet to get back to you. We are doing what we can as quickly as we can to get through tickets and we appreciate the kindness expressed as we endeavor to get all of this resolved for folks.

[Alizor]

Is there an idea of how long it will take CS to respond to PDF requests? I emailed two days ago (Street Date) and still have not heard back.

I'd normally be pretty understanding but we have a new game starting with mostly people new to the system and we wanted to start them on the remaster. Had our session zero two days after the "estimated end of shipping" but without the book and have been impatiently waiting since then.

[Jackson Wood]

Alizor wrote:

Is there an idea of how long it will take CS to respond to PDF requests? I emailed two days ago (Street Date) and still have not heard back.

I'd normally be pretty understanding but we have a new game starting with mostly people new to the system and we wanted to start them on the remaster. Had our session zero two days after the "estimated end of shipping" but without the book and have been impatiently waiting since then.

Great question! I happened to be peeking here just now while hustling so I will give the best answer I can which is: as quickly as possible. We are unable to give an exact ETA due to the backlog we're working through, but it is safe to say it's comparable to the beginning of the year if not busier. I know this is a bit of a non-answer, but I wanted to give you some sense. Understandably, we are asking folks to email us to get their PDFs but if you (the general you and less specifically you, Alizor) already have we're getting there and I am sorry I can't give you a better idea.

[Kalanth]

I got my PDFs, so I can read the material and patiently wait on the physical product. Fingers crossed this all gets sorted with much lingering issue. Holidays are a bad time to have shipping snafus.

[cheezeofjustice]

Cosmo wrote:

Hello! I know y'all are wanting to know what going on with your subscription shipment and I am here to give everyone an update.

We have gotten an immense amount of support for the release of the Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core, and we couldn’t be more humbled and grateful for this amazing outpouring from the Pathfinder Community. Seriously… you folx are the best!

Unfortunately, however, this added volume is coming in at the same time as a perfect storm of other issues (both foreseeable and unforeseen) and this has resulted in an overall delay in orders leaving the warehouse. Due to some internal shipping issues, a number of orders were erroneously marked as “shipped” but have not yet left the warehouse. Furthermore, a number of customers rightfully reached out to CS about the delay, and we set them up with replacement orders, not realizing that the order being replaced is still waiting to be picked up. The real catch here is that we are unable to determine which orders have left and which are still waiting to go out.

On behalf of the CS team, and all of Paizo, I sincerely apologize for these errors. Rest assured that we have taken steps to address the issue to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Now, for the plan forward, here is what we are going to do:

• As we cannot determine which “shipped” orders have arrived at their destination, which have left and are still on their way, and which are still awaiting pick up, we need to re-establish a baseline shipping estimate that will cover all existing shipped orders. We will now consider the shipping window for all orders that “shipped” since Nov 1 to have left the warehouse on Wednesday, November 22nd. Please note that we will be closed for the holiday on Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th. This should account for both orders that have yet to leave as well as the general holiday-related shipping slowdowns and give all orders, even ones that have yet to leave, all the necessary time to arrive before we give them up...

Does this mean all orders that haven't gotten a shipping notice are delayed until the 27th or is it possible they might still pop a shipping notice?

[magnuskn]

So, people who are still pending without a shipping notice should send CS an e-mail to get billed and access to their PDF's but the books will ship later? Or did I misunderstand things?

[Medriev]

Cosmo wrote:

Hello! I know y'all are wanting to know what going on with your subscription shipment and I am here to give everyone an update.

We have gotten an immense amount of support for the release of the Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core, and we couldn’t be more humbled and grateful for this amazing outpouring from the Pathfinder Community. Seriously… you folx are the best!

Unfortunately, however, this added volume is coming in at the same time as a perfect storm of other issues (both foreseeable and unforeseen) and this has resulted in an overall delay in orders leaving the warehouse. Due to some internal shipping issues, a number of orders were erroneously marked as “shipped” but have not yet left the warehouse. Furthermore, a number of customers rightfully reached out to CS about the delay, and we set them up with replacement orders, not realizing that the order being replaced is still waiting to be picked up. The real catch here is that we are unable to determine which orders have left and which are still waiting to go out.

On behalf of the CS team, and all of Paizo, I sincerely apologize for these errors. Rest assured that we have taken steps to address the issue to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Now, for the plan forward, here is what we are going to do:

• As we cannot determine which “shipped” orders have arrived at their destination, which have left and are still on their way, and which are still awaiting pick up, we need to re-establish a baseline shipping estimate that will cover all existing shipped orders. We will now consider the shipping window for all orders that “shipped” since Nov 1 to have left the warehouse on Wednesday, November 22nd. Please note that we will be closed for the holiday on Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th. This should account for both orders that have yet to leave as well as the general holiday-related shipping slowdowns and give all orders, even ones that have yet to leave, all the necessary time to arrive before we give them up...

Thanks Cosmo but this is a pretty confusing update.

My main takeaway is that shipping will only return to normal from 27th November onward and on that basis I've cancelled my subscriptions, including my pending November order. I will say that Jackson, who has posted in this thread, has dealt with my email queries compassionately and professionally throughout but I'm afraid the subscription model no longer seems to be worth the additional cost to me.

[Alisper]

I contacted support early because my tracking info wasn't available. I've been back and forth with them since trying to get an idea of what is going on. They set me up with a replacement shipment yesterday, then today told me they were stopping that shipment and I would have to wait until December 6th to request a replacement shipment. That would be 41 days after my original purchase before they even start fulfilling the order. It wouldn't ship for probably another week and then take a few more weeks. Seriously, I wanted to get get into PF, but if this is how Paizo treats their customers... I cancelled the order. I'm not waiting over 60 days for an order.

What really bothers me isn't that you've had problems. What bothers me is that you're punishing customers for your problem.

[Ed Reppert]

If I were to cancel my subs, I would be effectively cancelling my interest in playing Pathfinder or Starfinder. Not ready to do that. Yet.

[Medriev]

It looks like I can order the November books I want in the UK and have them shipped on the 28th for free with a 1-2 day delivery window. They are also cheaper than on the Paizo site so this has become a no-brainer for me. I'm not abandoning Pathfinder but subscription is no longer worth the money.

[David Chart]

I don't think it's fair to say that Paizo are punishing customers. They are having serious problems, but there are limits on what they can do to fix them.

The limits on extra work they can demand from the warehouse staff are probably quite tight. This is true for ethical reasons (it doesn't take much harm to the staff to outweigh "people get their game books later than hoped") and probably for contractual ones as well (Paizo is unionized now).

Hiring new staff would probably just make this problem worse. They wouldn't be able to contribute soon enough to make a difference, and people who could help would be busy with the hiring and training process. I'm sure they are looking at this as part of "make sure it doesn't happen again", though.

We don't know what the other problems are, but, again, they can't do anything other than try to fix them as quickly as possible. For systemic problems, that may mean working around them now and applying a proper fix once the crisis has passed.

Paizo is going to have deal with the reputational damage to the subscription program from this, and the top management may well be thinking about that already, but the first priority for the front line should be to minimise that damage by getting everything shipped as soon as possible

Given what I know of Paizo, I am sure they are not deliberately holding up our orders for the lulz. The company is not actually run by (PF1) goblins.

I expect this to be more stressful and unpleasant for the staff than for us. I hope they do get everything solved soon.

[Dancing Wind]

For those of you waiting for your subs, let me give you my little story about picking up my pre-ordered copy from my FLGS.

In May, I placed a pre-order for the Sketch Cover. Paid full price as a deposit.

On November 1, I checked in with the special order desk (in person) and was assured my order was in the system.

On November 15, I walked in, fully expecting to pick up my books, and was told that they didn't have my order ready for pickup. Nice clerk looked into computer system, and discoverd that "we haven't placed an order this week" [yeah, what does that even mean when we're talking about a preorder???]. He and his friends had also pre-ordered the Remastered books and didn't have them either.

That night Nice Clerk texted me that order had been placed and they would contact me when it came in.

Crickets.

And I don't even know if the 'order' that was 'placed' on Nov 15 will result in a Sketch Cover version.

This is not some small struggling store. They have three storefronts in the three largest cities in the state. I intend to ask if they were victims of the '2-regular for every 1-sketch' shakedown by their distributor.

[Cyder]

Dancing Wind wrote:

For those of you waiting for your subs, let me give you my little story about picking up my pre-ordered copy from my FLGS.

This isn't really relevant. 1 store not treating your order properly does not really have any relevance to a paid subscription service being subpar with late and poor communication about issues.

[Alterangel]

Emailed CS several times since I do not have a tracking number or ship date for my pre-order yet. Nobody has responded to me. It's been 4 days.

[Cori Marie]

Well two of those days are the weekend, and as they have posted in this thread, they are hammered with emails right now. They're working as fast as they can. Have grace.

[Calcryx666]

Just received my physical books today in Australia, shipped on the 9th, books in perfect condition, hope everyone else’s speed to them soon!

[Jay159]

Quote:

Getting into numerating the various issues that caused this, both foreseeable and not, smacks to me of making excuses for what happened, when I would much rather make solutions for the people that it is happening to.

Once this is resolved, can we get the post-mortem on this anyway? I suspect it might be funny on some level, and I'm a sucker for process/infrastructure failures.

[cheezeofjustice]

Jay159 wrote:

Quote:

Getting into numerating the various issues that caused this, both foreseeable and not, smacks to me of making excuses for what happened, when I would much rather make solutions for the people that it is happening to.

Once this is resolved, can we get the post-mortem on this anyway? I suspect it might be funny on some level, and I'm a sucker for process/infrastructure failures.

Part of me wonders if the volume was at least a glimmer of the post OGL rush. I mean, I figure not only did most current subs get it but a bunch of new players from the OGL thing we waiting for the Remaster books. So the numbers were probably pretty chonky.

[NumberA]

When are the next APs and Lost Omens line getting announced? Wardens of Wildwood didn't even get announced. It just sort of showed up on the product page.

I'm really wondering what comes after Tian Xia in the Lost Omens line.

https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adventures/adventurePath/wardensOfWildwo od

[damunzy]

Cosmo wrote:

Hello! I know y'all are wanting to know what going on with your subscription shipment and I am here to give everyone an update.

[...]
On behalf of the CS team, and all of Paizo, I sincerely apologize for these errors. Rest assured that we have taken steps to address the issue to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
[...]

I'm glad we got an update but Piazo needs to get it's processes and tech updated. A post in the forums is not enough. I had to spend too much time trying to figure out what was going on. I just got my sketch cover books in today from an order I put in on Friday last week. I'm not removing them from their plastic so I just emailed customer service to get the PDFs- thanks for that info. I don't mind waiting but I need timely updates that are easy to find. We all deserve at least that.

Thanks and good luck fixing the issues!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Just to clarify, I have received my PDFS and am just waiting on the physical copies. Does that mean I just have to do nothing, or should I be reaching out to somebody to make sure that shipment thing on the 22nd includes me?

Just kinda confused, sorry!

[erucsbo]

Glad to hear that others (especially in Straya) have received books. Still waiting on PDFs here after emailing last week. :-(

[Yoshua]

Good news, physical books arrived.

They included one of the promo minis.

However, the mini was shattered. I appreciate those bonus mini's when they come, but man it's like someone hit it repeatedly with a hammer lol

Will try to find a way to use this mini.... thinking a crime scene...

Stats:
Card charged on the 1st, books arrived on the 20th. Shipping usually only takes a couple of days, glad they got them out of the warehouse!

[Ed Reppert]

I probably ought to email CS again. Half my November order was shipped. Far as I know the other half has not.

[Cyder]

N9ne of mine has shipped, no pdfs, no response from CS. No updates here.

[magnuskn]

Cyder wrote:

N9ne of mine has shipped, no pdfs, no response from CS. No updates here.

Same. Getting a bit concerned that unshipped suscriptions have been pushed to the absolute end of the queue, because they are focusing on sorting out the snafu with the shipments where they are unsure of the status. Getting out the shipments which at this late point clearly have not even been touched should be the first priority, IMO.

[skizzerz]

To give a point of data, my experience was that I had the order email on 10/27 and received the shipping notice on 11/8. After a week of the tracking number not working I emailed CS on 11/15 (day before Cosmo’s post). The tracking finally started working on 11/17 and showing movement so it was actually shipped that day. On 11/20 I got a response from CS.

So they are actively shipping out subscriptions still it seems, and expect like 4-5 days for CS to get back to you if your experience is anything like mine.

[kcunning]

My tracking finally updated! I checked yesterday, and it was still not showing, so if you're in my boat, definitely give yours another look.

[Bashkinator]

My watch has finally ended!
As with the Ed Reppert's order my order was split into two parts. The first with Player Core and flipmats was shipped on the 16th (still in transit with tracking working) and the second was shipped today.

[Aaron Shanks]

NumberA wrote:

When are the next APs and Lost Omens line getting announced? Wardens of Wildwood didn't even get announced. It just sort of showed up on the product page.

I'm really wondering what comes after Tian Xia in the Lost Omens line.

https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adventures/adventurePath/wardensOfWildwo od

Our landing page for Wardens of Wildwood came together right at the time the remasters released so we’ll be circling back.

Also, we did a Lost Omens Showcase on Tian Xia and what comes after.

[Aaron Shanks]

damunzy wrote:

Cosmo wrote:

Hello! I know y'all are wanting to know what going on with your subscription shipment and I am here to give everyone an update.

[...]
On behalf of the CS team, and all of Paizo, I sincerely apologize for these errors. Rest assured that we have taken steps to address the issue to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
[...]

I'm glad we got an update but Piazo needs to get it's processes and tech updated. A post in the forums is not enough. I had to spend too much time trying to figure out what was going on. I just got my sketch cover books in today from an order I put in on Friday last week. I'm not removing them from their plastic so I just emailed customer service to get the PDFs- thanks for that info. I don't mind waiting but I need timely updates that are easy to find. We all deserve at least that.

Thanks and good luck fixing the issues!

Thank for the feedback. Cosmo and I are in communication about what the right level of announcements are. Paizo is in the process of a huge update to our systems and tech, so one-time problems should not continue.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Just to clarify, I have received my PDFS and am just waiting on the physical copies. Does that mean I just have to do nothing, or should I be reaching out to somebody to make sure that shipment thing on the 22nd includes me?

Just kinda confused, sorry!

I apologize for the repetition, but I would greatly appreciate some clarification regarding this. Do I need to submit anything if I did recieve the PDFs on schedule and am just waiting on the books, or do I just need to continue waiting?

[David Chart]

I've just heard back from customer service, and I want to publicly say that I am very happy with the content of the response. As you can probably see from this post, the upshot involved cancelling my subscription, but that is because I am in Japan, rather than because of the delay.

Anyway, public kudos for the customer service team for this particular bit of their efforts to solve this problem.

[Chemlak]

Just want to note that I got my PDFs, thank you CS team for sorting that out for me.

I won't pretend I'm not disappointed at having waited so long, it's been a struggle for the last 6 days not to let my frustration get the better of me, but I have always had faith that Paizo's CS team are trying to satisfy their customers. Working in customer service myself, I know how difficult it can be when circumstances create difficulties that you just have to cope with, and the response has been good. Selfishly I did want more frequent updates, knowing full-well that it's unrealistic to ask for.

Anyway, thanks again, and I hope that everyone eventually gets matters resolved satisfactorily.

[erucsbo]

Cyder wrote:

N9ne of mine has shipped, no pdfs, no response from CS. No updates here.

same - emailed 4 days ago and <crickets chirping>.

[Ed Reppert]

I actually have tracking data now on my first half-shipment, and cs did give me all my pdfs even though the second half-shipment hasn't shipped, so I'm being patient for the moment.

[Kronyn]

I’ve had a tracking number for weeks, but the tracker shows no data for it. I emailed CS a couple days ago, and assume it and the books are both sitting in the sizable pile of work.

No rush beyond wanting the pretties I’ve been charged for, so Paizo staff can move past it all. That said, it’s now the 22nd…

[Moshtradamus]

Is the default Mail Innovations page I am being linked to after clicking "track this shipment" on my order page the right place to be looking for tracking information? Or is there a trick with tracking the Reference Number (solution I found on Reddit from ~2 years ago)?

As a new subscriber, the buyers remorse is starting to set in after now 15 business days of no tracking updates..

[Agrafell]

I’m working on my 8th day after contacting Customer Service and being provided a ticket ID with no contact from anyone in CS. Curious if any else has been waiting that long or longer.

I empathize that there’s been some unforeseen issues, but the amount of time between submitting a ticket and receiving CS contact is beyond baffling. Can Paizo CS really be this understaffed?

[Kronyn]

Agrafell wrote:

Can Paizo CS really be this understaffed?

Easily: A small company compared to their customer base (almost a defining feature of the industry), coupled to a high-profile incident, very quickly gets overwhelmed. Under normal circumstances they do fine.

[Zalshox]

I wish all of the 2E spines matched, was hoping they'd rectify this with the release of "remastered," but Player Core has green spine text, and Player Core 2 has red spine text. Why? Also wish Paizo would make all spines standard for their 2E books instead of having Secrets of Magic and Rage of Elements so different. I would buy all the books if they unified the covers and spines going forward in 2E. I prefer the matching style covers and spines of 1E over 2E.

[Cori Marie]

The team is currently four people.

[J03_M4M4]

My watch has ended (yesterday but I've been busy)

[Maecus]

erucsbo wrote:

Cyder wrote:

N9ne of mine has shipped, no pdfs, no response from CS. No updates here.

same - emailed 4 days ago and <crickets chirping>.

Yeah I emailed 8 days ago and nothing

[Cyder]

Cori Marie wrote:

The team is currently four people.

Yeah 4 people is not a lot for dealing with an issue 9f this scale. I feel for them.

[Ed Reppert]

Today I got the shipping email for the second half of my order. First time they didn't get to both halves on the same day, but I got the pdfs for this a few days ago, so I'm good. No tracking data yet, of course.