Current state of stock fulfilment with 3rd party sellers

[Burni]

With Legions Imperialis close to release (hopefully…), I wanted to get a feel for GW’s current supply chain. I usually order from my FLGS but they’ve dropped all discounts now and every penny counts so I’m going to shop elsewhere.

 

How is GW’s fulfilment with the large 3rd party UK discounters at the moment? Places like Dark Sphere and Element. In fraters experience, do they have enough stock to cover all orders taken? Or is it a lottery where you find out a few days before release that you’re not getting your order?

 

I’m pretty good at making sure I’m online for 10am Sat mornings to get my orders in, so unless stock is crazy low, I’m confident I can have my ordering sorted. I’m more just worried about that order being honoured.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Burni

[Sky Potato]

I’ve never had an issue with Firestrorm Games - they’ve always been really good with pre-orders etc. If I don’t pre-order direct at GW, I’ll pre-order from Firestorm. Their discount levels compared to others isn’t as good as it used to be since the most recent increase from GW trade prices.

 

I’ve mostly had a good experience with Element, I’ve had a couple of orders go slightly awry when they’ve been awaiting restock of certain items, but when their website says in stock, they’ve been fine. I’ve never used them for pre-orders though.

[Urauloth]

Lottery in my experience. Wayland shipped my Mk III kit today, but they had to refund my previous two preorders because they never got the stock from GW. That said, those were for Kill Team and Warcry products, which I've given up pre-ordering from discount retailers.
Looking at LI... its status as a "specialist game" doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

[skylerboodie]

I've mostly used Alchemists Workshops and The Outpost in recent years and, as long as been able to get the order in in the first place, they've been able to fulfil them.

 

The only exception was The Lion and Retinue box where the amount promised to The Outpost by GW was reduced after preorders.

[pawl]

If it's any help this post has my go-to places for new releases and preorders. I personally favour Hobby Workshop and have yet to have an issue with them (quite the opposite, in fact - they offered me a 'larger-than-one' preorder when requested as they got plenty of stock in for a big box), though I sometimes use Wayland too.

 

https://warhamateur.com/saving-money/best-prices-on-pre-orders-and-new-releases/

[Emperor Ming]

I always used to use darksphere, but now, they must be the only retailer that doesn't offer freepost on a certain order size

[Toxichobbit]

Still a lottery. Some stuff I've been able to get, other stuff has had an email a few days after I've ordered to inform me of whatever GW's excuse is for not fulfilling orders. The latest one (last week) was that the store ordered in plenty of time but never received email confirmation, so they asked their GW rep who said it was fine. They put the items up for pre-order on their store. They emailed again asking for confirmation but got no reply. The invoice arrives and the items are not on it. When they spoke to the rep again he said it was an IT issue and the order didn't go through, or something like that. This particular LGS has never had this before for any of my orders, they're always reliable and their stock levels accurate. So I fully believe them that it's a GW problem.

 

So GW are still a mess and still messing up pre-orders, even after telling stores that the pre-order is fine. I think things are getting better, but honestly it's hard to judge as lots of stuff is just out of stock immediately.

[lhg033]

On 10/29/2023 at 6:44 PM, Emperor Ming said:

I always used to use darksphere, but now, they must be the only retailer that doesn't offer freepost on a certain order size

 

Yep - this has me looking elsewhere (or considering store collection but that isnt easy)

 

I've only ever had issues with Darksphere once and that was in trying to get a copy of The Lion and Retinue. They had the same issues as everywhere else with this one.

Normally they have been pretty good with their registers of interest / then confirming who will get things

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

I am from Germany and my favourite 3rd party retailer hasn´t received any battleforce boxes yet.

[Noserenda]

I often used to tot up orders in a few shops and see what came out cheapest, and Dark sphere often came out on top despite paying postage. Been a while since i was last doing regular orders over free postage thresholds though!

Having ordered from Goblin gaming, The Outpost and Dark Sphere all in the last year or so though, they have all been pretty reliable, mostly problems with the post office! 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

I personally have always had a good experience with:

 

Element Games

Wayland Games

Darksphere

 

In particular Darksphere - though they do seem to struggle with stock for more esoteric or older products they seem to get large quantities in of new releases. 

[Halandaar]

On 10/28/2023 at 2:56 PM, Burni said:

With Legions Imperialis close to release (hopefully…), I wanted to get a feel for GW’s current supply chain. I usually order from my FLGS but they’ve dropped all discounts now and every penny counts so I’m going to shop elsewhere.

 

How is GW’s fulfilment with the large 3rd party UK discounters at the moment? Places like Dark Sphere and Element. In fraters experience, do they have enough stock to cover all orders taken? Or is it a lottery where you find out a few days before release that you’re not getting your order?

 

I’m pretty good at making sure I’m online for 10am Sat mornings to get my orders in, so unless stock is crazy low, I’m confident I can have my ordering sorted. I’m more just worried about that order being honoured.

 

Tricky one really; every retailer will know how many units they've got in their initial allocation before preorders even go live and therefore should only make that many units available to preorder via their site in the first place. There are no doubt a few retailers who continue taking orders long after their allocations have sold out (Wayland used to be bad at this and the most recent store I saw at it was The Outpost), but in most cases they stick to those numbers and the only reason they wouldn't fulfil an order would be if GW fails to provide them with the promised quantity, and that's not something the FLGS have any control over. I've never personally had an order go unfulfilled by Dark Sphere, Hobby Workshop, Goblin Gaming or Rogue Games but there's no reason it couldn't happen to any of them.

 

I know you said you aren't worried about being able to order one on the day but fwiw Dark Sphere run a "register of interest" system for big releases where you complete a Google form stating how many copies you want and then when they get their allocation confirmed the couple of days before the preorders go live, they email to tell you whether or not they can fulfill your request. If they can they send you a PayPal invoice that you can pay any time over the weekend, meaning you can skip the 10am rush altogether. Imo this facility is worth incurring the shipping charge for.

[Pacific81]

Since Legions has released I think I've actually read more complaints of pre-order stock not coming from GW themselves, which is a real bummer as normally people take the hit on paying full RRP to guarantee delivery on release.  Not sure what has happened there.

 

I got my stuff from Firestorm Games and all arrived on day of release. Generally I've used as my FLGS for many years, can't think of a single issue I have had with them. They are not the absolute cheapest, and the free shipping benchmark in particular is quite high, but they have a great customer service and run some great events in store/are the main hub for the local hobby community so I try and support when I can.

[Valkyrion]

I use Dark Sphere and Alchemists Workshop, with a slight preference towards AW for general orders. DS often seem to be out of stock of relatively basic things (e.g, at the moment they have no Bladeguard veterans, and AW do, so they got my order), but I've had excellent service from both of those over the years so will exclusively use them now to the point where I won't order from any other 3rd party retailer even if DS or AW don't stock what I want. 

I've used Dark Sphere's register of interest three times now, and got what I wanted each time, so they are my go to choice for big pre-orders.

 

GW's system is worse than ever though. Over 4 weeks to get Necromunda stuff that was all in stock, over 3 weeks to get some 30k stuff with 2 things refunded that became out of stock, and currently on day 10 of waiting for a third order to come through. 

First world problems, though, right?

[Marshal Rohr]

It might be a first world problem but from my personal experience this is going to keep snowballing for them. Right now they aren’t making enough of everything and selling out quickly so the bottom line hasn’t felt it yet, but the crisis point is going to arrive when whatever technical issue is causing them to keep overselling starts showing up as them making money before the refunds. Once any kind of audit is performed they’re going to start seeing issues with how much they think they’ve sold online with how much they’ve actually sold. Add onto that rapidly eroding an already threadbare customer goodwill and those “hey no worries” emails when orders are cancelled will become “I wanna speak to a supervisor” which will cause institutional attrition as the already beleaguered customer service team runs out of patience for being the front line of a massive corporations ineptitude. Unless they rapidly right the ship this exercise in managerial stupidity that is the new website is going to be a slow and grinding erosion on their bottom line and I have zero faith the ghouls running the upper management at GW have the insight and work experience to correctly diagnose EIT infrastructure issues. 

[Doghouse]

Firestorm Games and Mighty Lancer Games are two I use all the time, I love Firestorm Games but Mighty Lancer seemed to have more stock allocation with my experience of the HH Assault marines having a cap on four boxes per person where as Mighty Lancer was order as many as you wanted as long as they had stock. 

 

Goblin Gaming and The Outpost were ok, I used Goblin Gaming a lot in the past. Zatu were ok as as well.

 

I think I may be in the minority as I've never had any joy with Wayland and Element and as such avoid them now.

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by Doghouse