Kev White does Matt Dixon - Female Fantasy Miniatures

State of the HF Union
about 6 years ago – Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:11:56 PM

Hey Guy and Gals

I was going to put out the penultimate KS update tonight, but it'll be tomorrow now. I had to deal with something today and I don't want to put it out super late at night (UK time).

In the meantime, you can have a read of the latest HF newsletter HERE if ya like.

Arty,

P.s. I 'can' now see and respond to KS messages, as mentioned I had to deal with something today so I didn't have time to clean out the inbox, I should be able to before tomorrow's update though so if you're awaiting an answer to something, I should get to you in the next 24hrs. The only caveat is if my answer to you will be cut and pasting something said in tomorrow's update I'll probably just literally link you to the update tomorrow after it's out instead. Saves a lotof time, if a little impersonal.

Current Shipping Progress
about 6 years ago – Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:59:15 PM

Hey Guys,

Quick update to answer some questions and let you know where we are in fulfillment.

First the good news. Leopards have been arriving in quantity, the last of the signed cards are here and the rest of the metal desolation bases. So, anyone who hasn't received their 'ready to ship email' will get it over the weekend and other than those stragglers who haven't filled in their pledge manager that's everyone accounted for!

Ok, here's the various current issues that may affect your pledge ...

1. The 'ready to ship email. If your order is ready to ship, which is everyone who hadn't ordered any of the above 3 things, then you will recieve from us a Ready To Ship email. It will go to the email address registered on backerkit and will have the subject header of "Kev White does Matt Dixon - Pledge Info". PLEASE CHECK SPAM if you haven't had it. Because it's a mass email, some people are finding it in their spam folder. If you haven't received this and replied to it with 1 of the 3 options then your order doesn't ship. We cannot ship without an answer to that email.
if you have not received this, and think you should have based on the above info, then PM us here on the KS, not through the backerkit support system.

2. The backerkit support system :) That is 'just' for backerkit issues that they can resolve, like problems with payment or forms not working etc. If you send them a question about your pledge or anything that 'I' need to answer then you have to wait for it go through through their support system and finally be forwarded to me.

3. I'm behind on answering PMs. Which kinda makes the above 2 points suck I know, but again, this weekend will see us completely catch up. We're short on staff at the moment and I injured myself in just the most ridiculous way last weekend (I'm fine now, but for a few days couldn't use my right arm properly, which made me about as useless as you'd expect).

4. The backerkit 'shipped by' date. THIS IS A BIG ONE. I mentioned it in previous updates and on the comments page but I am going to make it more clear here cos people have missed it. THAT IS NOT YOUR SHIPPED BY DATE. There was an annoying misunderstanding. When I view your pledges from my end, it says 'shipping' when I click that button, but apparently you see a solid 'shipped' and even the date I clicked the button. The problem is, I was clicking that button to mean 'Printed off, and in the pile'. That pile has been hundreds deep at times. So some orders were going weeks later. Total annoyance and I'm sorry about that, it's my fault, I have a button that lets me see your pledge as you see it (Which has been very handy for resolving 'I thought I ordered this' issues), but apparently it's not 'quite' the same. A learning experience.

5. That is not to say that there couldn't have been an error somewhere. If you think that the above still doesn't explain your pledge not being with you, then PM us here (for example if you were one of the first batches out at the end of last year). 

6. Winter Bambi. An inventory error has cropped up that means we have just run out of her this week. It turns out I typoed a mould order at some point and we have twice as many Shamanic Boudis as we should and had half as many Winter Bambis. She's been emergency re-ordered and should be in next week, so should only affect a handful of people who are at the back of the current queue.

Uhm... I can't think of anything else :) We've had a few miscasts sneak through, not an issue, we'll replace them no problem, just let us know via PM here.

We've currently shipped over a thousand pledges and had a 'lot' of positive feedback etc, so nobody should worry about not getting their pledges :) 

Any questions I've missed, just reply below and I'll keep an eye on it to answer you asap.

Arty.

Shipping Update
over 6 years ago – Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 09:52:46 PM

Hey Guys,

Just a quick update with some clarifications and info.

The first one, and please don't take this as a reverse complaint, If your order says 'Shipped' please don't email us asking where it is until the following times have passed...

UK - 12 Working Days
EU - 22 Working Days
RoW - 27 Working Days

... and trust me, I I know they are 'long' times, but there's literally nothing we can do before then anyway as they're the legal limit for looking into lost mail (+2 for us). The vast majority will show up before then, our mail loss percentage is less than half a percent.  Every 5 minutes I spend telling people 'Yes, it's shipped, no I can't do anything about it sorry' is another order that doesn't make it to the PO that day.

If your order has tracking, check your backerkit login, there 'should' be a note there with the tracking attached. If you think you should have tracking (I.e. you paid for enhanced postage, or your pledge level included it) and you don't see the note, then 'Private Message' us here and I'll get back to you as soon as I can about it.

Please don't use normal comments to ask questions about your orders as I'm legally not allowed to share personal information. Use a PM.

The last one is on us, when using Backerkit we have found there's not way of changing the 'status' outside of the pre-existing ones. So there's no status between 'Ready to Ship' and shipped. So for the first large batch, when we printed off your order, we hit 'shipped',so we could keep track. Of course that was a mistake, as what happened was we printed off hundreds and hundreds of such orders, which took days and days to actually leave the post office.

So that's another god reason to follow the above time limits :)

I think that's everything :) I am currently awaiting stock of the metal Desolation Base and the first batch of Leopards, if those are in your order you are almost there! :)

We also still have 180 people who haven't filled in the pledge manager. I'm guessing if one of them is you you aren't reading this either, but just in case, get to cracking!

Arty

Final Leopards WIP!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 11:25:58 PM

We're technically closed today, but I'm just taking a quick min to throw up an update. This is the last WIP before Kev finishes them off and I get resin castings for proper pics.
(The mini rescue barrel is a separate piece and everyone will get one, you can glue it to the Leopard if ya like or just keep it - we had a lot of enquiries about that and decided it was the best way as many people didn't want the barrel attached)

This means that the very last things are now done. As soon as we start getting production castings of these the last batch of emails will go out to you backers who have patiently waited for these beauties, we hope you like them :)

Our next update will therefore have the final production pics of these guys, and all the Frost variants and will conclude the production portion of the KS. Yay! Then it's just down to getting the rest of the pledges out the door.

You simply have no idea how long it takes to even put together a thousand boxes and tissue paper, never mind picking and packing orders :D

Whadya think?

Arty.

And now for the Weather...
over 6 years ago – Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 08:19:39 PM

We're having some weather here in Wales :)

It's snowing, storming and flooding, which has slowed things down a little. I'm also not staying at the large, metal, unheated, unit until it's over because I like to be alive.

We have been packing and mailbagging the first batches of the KS fulfillment though, hundreds of you answered our emails last week and more go out tonight.

I am letting you into a little secret that may or may not upset some UK backers. We have been prioritising the non-EU ones first, because of Christmas posting dates. We're trying to get as many of these to people before Christmas as possible and it means we have to do it that way around, especially with any weather related slow down in international mail (airports have delays etc). The UK backers aren't waiting until last or anything, we're just doing batches and in each batch we're going non-EU, EU, UK. So UK peeps should start getting theirs this coming week. 

On the positive side it means I might finally find some time to sort those final images of the Frost variants out!

Oh and the second Leopard dolly is done, here's a pic so this isn't just a boring paragraph of text...

 Remember these are just the dollies, they will be furred up etc as they are 'snow' leopards.

Cya next update!

Arty.