Since the day I passed my order on the website of a FLGS, a lot of water has flown from the mountains to the sea.

Let´s do the maths yourself: Order passed on July 24th and AdMech Patrol Box received on September 26th (last Tuesday). What went wrong would you ask?

First we might need a small step back in time, just to reset the context: I did not want this Patrol box. Not really. Not as much as I wanted the Extermination Maniple left on shelves of the e-FLGS. But the discount on other products was attractive, and I needed anyway something to get access to their free shippment offer. Just think that after discount I was just bellow the Free shipping threshold for a dime or two. And the postage itself was worth 1 or 1 and a half character blister pack. As these were not under discount, but the Patrol box was. And it looked like being a fair deal fitting pretty well with my New Year New Army Project and the 10th Ed Index and Rules remodelling.

Small detail anyway: the Patrol box was not available in the store but they proudly announced "we will get it for you". Internet coments about game store and order deliveries was quite OK/very positive, so, here I go. Order placed.

But what went wrong? GW ERP? Supply shortage? Post delays? Or a little bit of everything?

The Patrol was already marked as being temporarily unavailable in the GW webstore. So I expected some delays maybe. But then it shifted to available in the Spanish webstore at mid August. Yet still nothing from the the FLGS. A couple of emails latter they wrote it has been ordered, appeared on the bill of material for August resupply, but did not show up in the delivery. Warehouse issue? Probably not - apparently, from the seller´s comment, it look likes it is happening a lot: a kind of ill treatment at preparation stage for B-to-B orders that would predate Covid, Logistic crisis and ERP issue reported about GW IT projects. Interestingly they mentionned too that they are delivered from UK while private buyers are delivered from a warehouse in France (for my country area. It is true the parcel tracking leaves from Lyon´s airport, or at least it was marked as such in the last order I made at GW one year ago...)

August died, September aged, and still no Patrol Box. The FLGS in fact did not get resupplied in anything - they said. Not even new stuff from Sept releases that was publicized but has been shown as unavailable right from being set online. No delivery has been reported, or at least I have been told, although shipment has been done from GW warehouse to the FLGS - "Royal Mail Service sucks" has been the explaination I have been given (And as I saw here on B&C some british fellow gamers complaining about the same, I may tend to believe it could be true).

October came. I had a few trips around and did not had time to spend on this until I came back last week, seriously thinking about cancelling the order btw. But something happened: they called me directly from the FLGS. Not an email, a real phone call, saying "Hey boy, we´ve got it!" It was on Monday 23th of October. Delivery was received at my office on Wednesday by Correos and I picked it up on Thursday after my shift.

So, what went wrong? I don´t really know for sure. Most probable explanation is that the stuff was unavailable and that once resupplied, priority has been given to GW webstore and GW stores´ customers - better marging than through retail sellers surely. It means that a business that manage stores but also count on local retail for distribution of its goods may have a politic of two weights/two measures: to be understood as "me, myself and I" first and retail latter. But what about countries where the GW stores are barely or almost not implanted - Portugal, Spain for example (of course these 2 countries have NOT been selected in any aleatory fashion - it is where I wander)? I am a third class customer?

What else? As a lesson learnt: I will never ever order at any e-FLGS webstore some items that are not physically available on their shelves. Whatever supportive and professional they have been, they are too self-depending of GW good will. Getting their discount is still attractive and GW webstore do not applying that policy: so this will impact on my customer behaviour - I will surely reduce my amount of purchase even more as I could not get any easy access to the material I want and that fits in my budget thanks to discounts offered. And as I will try not to turn compulsive buyer, I may truly become that kind of third class customer I might be supposed to be: the one that only complains and does not buy. 

But anyway, great support from the FLGS.

And what about my Pile of Shame? Well, nothing changed. I painted 2 HE minis from WFB, but nothing more related to 40k. So no news, except the badge issuance from the CtA 2023 Challenge. As I am too goofy to set them properly in a signature, I will share and expose them them right here:

Now, let´s go planing the painting of this AdMech Patrol box!

Edited: I finally managed getting the pic of badges in my signature... It has been so simple that I feel like goofier...