Hey backers, Alex here.
This update is really only pertinent to the small amount of backers that still haven't received their pledges, but could be an interesting read nonetheless?
I see people frustrated in our threads and in the comments about not receiving their orders yet. I try not to directly answer these questions until I have the full scope of the issue, I'm not trying to avoid them. I just want to give out accurate information before I post.
From the US warehouse, There are 157 orders still pending.
126 of these orders are for US backers and include at least one of of the following add-ons:
- Casual Nightingale Resin Kit
- Tomoe Resin Kit
- Girtiya Resin Kit
- Coven Mother Resin Kit
Basically we ran out of inventory for the boxes for these kits because either our factory didn't send us the listed amount, or they were lost in shipping. I'm not really sure, and no one in the chain of manufacturing or logistics is willing to take the blame.
All I know is we didn't receive the amount listed on our manufacturing invoice.
Since all that are missing from these orders are just some boxes, I'm working on having these orders shipped out without them as soon as possible, and just taking the hit of paying the shipping costs twice.
I've been told that these orders will ship out by the end of this week.
Unless we locate this stock of boxes, these backers will most likely receive replacements of the kits from the new webstore batch which will be ready for shipping by the end of the month.
That leaves the remaining 31 orders in the following regions:
- SAU
- PER
- MEX
- ISR
- CHL
- BRA
- ARG
For these orders, this is what I've been told by our fulfillment company:
"Apparently our system is not getting along with the system for the particular shipping service needed to send these international orders out, and something is being glitchy between the two systems when they communicate with each other. IT has this as top priority and it's the only thing being worked on until it's solved."
"(Our IT team) is telling me to expect the middle of this week before they've been able to thoroughly test and ensure everything is operating correctly and it's ok to ship the orders without them getting returned due to a system error."
"Their orders WILL ship, but we're making sure they don't encounter further delays by getting needlessly returned to us due to whatever this technical glitch is."
I'm hoping that all this is resolved by this week and all of these orders start shipping soon.
Stragglers in Asia and Europe
There are still a few backers in Asia and Europe waiting on their pledges as well.
For Asia, there was an error in the pledge manager involving the zip codes. Backerkit has since corrected this issue and pushed these orders to their fulfillment centers. I'm doing my best to get these orders shipped ASAP.
For Europe, there are a handful of backers awaiting their pledge due to a shortage in stock on certain items. I honestly don't know how this happened, and I don't really even know who's fault it is so I'll blame myself. I think because I started authorizing replacement shipments before the campaign was fulfilled, we ran into inventory issues.
Luckily I had a huge container of product sent to the EU warehouse, which arrived late last week. This product should be ready to disperse to backers soon ( I hope this week....)
Webstore Orders Shipping
With 157 - 200 orders pending out of about 10,000+ I made the decision to begin shipping web orders. I understand that this is very frustrating to the handful of backers still waiting, but from a business perspective, I had to make the move.
The cost of holding storage on all of this stock in two separate warehouses, the constant fluctuation of shipping costs, plus the onslaught of emails I get every day from web store customers wondering what's happening, I just had to make the decision to keep the pipeline moving.
I'm sorry to those backers that feel slighted by this decision. I hope that we can build your trust again.
Alex venting
I just want to say thank you for all the support. This fulfillment has been very stressful and Brooklynn and I are doing everything we can to get everything running smoothly from here on out.
I personally have learned a lot from this Wave 1 fulfillment and I know that Wave 2 will be so much more efficient with the knowledge I now have. So thanks for hanging in there.
If you're trying to email us...
I found about 200+ emails in our spam folder that I'll be working through this week so if I haven't answered you yet, I'm getting to it.
A reminder, the email is support@succubuspublishing.com
If there's anything I've missed please let me know.
Thanks, and I'll talk to you soon.