"This is Games Workshop. How can we help you?"

"Hi, before I get to the specifics of my order, can I ask you a question? Sort of a general company policy thing?"

"Um, well... I just..."

"It's pretty simple, really."

"Well, I'll do my best to answer it."

"Great. Do you, as a company, actually *want* people to ever use your mail order service more than once?"

"Yeah, well, that would be a Yes."

"Okay, I needed to clarify that."

Absolutely unbelievable. And after that phone call they managed to screw it up AGAIN!
Games Workshop makes the Warhammer series of games and miniatures. It's all little pewter and plastic armies you assemble, paint, and stage battles on tabletops with. Troll and I ordered some miniatures online from their website.

That was June 11th.
They don't ship stuff out on weekends, and we payed shipping for 3-Day Mail, so it should have been here Thursday June 15th. June 17th I called them to ask where the hell our miniature Orks and Chaos Warriors were. It seems that some sprues of plastic orks from the "Bargain Basement" were being backordered, so instead of sending out the REST of our stuff, they sat on the order. That's our combined order of $170 worth of stuff being held up all week waiting for $10 of outdated plastic orks. Bloody great. (btw, that's 10 sprues of 8 orks each, fantasy orks with swords and bows. We play Warhammer 40k, not fantasy, but Troll figured they were cheap and he could convert them by adding guns, grenades, helmets, etc. He ordered 10 cuz he figured 80 generic fantasy orks was more than he'd ever need.)

So I bitched, and their phone-answering gretchin said he'd send the rest of the order out right away. Okay, that's pretty helpful. Except for the fact that he didn't put a rush on it or upgrade my shipping to Next-Day, which would have been nice considering that as it was we then didn't get the shipment untill June 22nd, a full week later than it was originally promised. Oddly enough, Troll's 10 sprues of orks were included in the box, but my Plague Marines' arms, backpacks, and weapons were NOT.

So I called the Games Workshop Mail Order department again, kinda pissed off. The phone gretchin are quite considerate and pleasant, and I should know because I think I've talked to pretty much all of them (but not by this point in the story). They assured me that the mistake would be corrected immediately and that my arms, backpacks and weapons would be sent out right away. But they're still not springing for Next Day mail, so I wait some more.

June 28th a smaller package arrives from Games Workshop. Good, I think, I can finish assmebling my new Plague Marines, but I don't have time to open it before heading out to work. I open it the next morning, Thursday June 29th, TWO FULL WEEKS after the original shipment was supposed to arrive...
And there's no arms.

No arms. There's three sprues of "Chaos Close Combat Weapons". There's a sprue of "Chaos Space Marine Backpacks", which, as a minor side note, is still one backpack short of what I'd ordered. But no arms. No "Chaos Space Marine Arms" sprue. Gee, I could have sworn the arms were the first thing I mentioned when I'd called. Mistakes happen, that's okay. But that's three strikes on one order, it got me mildly upset.

After I got done screaming obscenities out the window at passing children, I called Games Workshop again. This phone call started out exactly as written at the top of the page. I think that successfully set the tone for the discussion, because the nice phone grot assured me that he'd have them ship out a whole bunch of Chaosy Arms, including both major arm-pose types for space marines, and a handfull of Chaos Backpacks, AND he told me it would be shipped Next Day Mail!
So an order only has to fourteen days behind schedule for Games Workshop to splurge for the ten dollar shipping fee to get a correction out right away!! Thanks, guys!

The next day another box arrives from Games Workshop. Wonderful, the Next Day mail really works. I was asleep when it was delivered, and so opened it right before I went to work that night. My roommate heard my hysterical laughter from the next room, and came in to see me franticly clutching TEN SPRUES OF PLASTIC ORKS.

It was too late to call that night, and I had to be at work anyway. I went to work. I giggled derangedly for most of the night. I occasionally tried to explain to my co-workers why I kept muttering "Give me my damned plague marine arms before I," followed with assorted graphic descriptions of bodily mutilation/violation. When I got home this morning, Saturday July 1st, I called again.

"Hi, when a customer calls with a bunch of complaints and is really pissed off and is basically a problem call, you transfer him to your manager or supervisor, right?"
"Well, our manager is out of the office today... I can try to help as best as I can, though." "Oh. Damn."

You see, this really ruined my fun. I'd been hoping he'd say yes so I could say "Can we skip the part where I yell at you then, and just put the supervisor on the line?" I know the phone-answering gretchins, grots, and snotlings probably aren't to blame for my order problems, so I have a hard time venting my frustrations on them. And I had a wide selection of clever ways to submerse my complaints in scathing insults and hatred, from having a full shift of work to mull such things over in my mind. I'd really wanted a supervisor. There was so much I'd wanted to say, to let them know just how upset I was at the continual lack of my complete order.

But the manager was at Games Day 2000. He was having fun playing huge Warhammer battles, with troops that probably had arms. So I had to make do with the phone grot. I simply told him I was incredibly pissed, but didn't want to bitch at him because it's not his fault, and had him check something for me. I'm not really sure if this sucks more or less than my original thought that they'd sent me orks instead of arms:

These 10 ork sprues weren't in fact the Next Day delivery from the last time I'd called. They were back-ordered. Apparently somebody found 10 ork sprues to put in the original shipment after all, and then never cancelled the back order. These 80 orks had been mailed 3-Day before I'd called to complain the previous time. Oh, well that's not so bad! It's not like they screwed up the correction of the correction of the delayed order...
But if this package wasn't my Next Day shipment from Thursday, where was IT?

"Let me check the tracking on that... Huh, I've never seen this designation before, I don't know what it means."
"Why does this not surprise me?" "This is weird. It's usually either Shipped or Pending. Let's see... Okay, your order has been prepared and is on the Outbound Stack, but hasn't been put on a truck yet."
"So it hasn't been shipped?"
"That's correct."
"And since it's a weekend it won't be shipped untill Monday, right?" "Yeah, but it is tagged for Next Day shipping!"

The next day after Monday being Independence Day. I'm guessing UPS doesn't deliver on a national holiday. So current projections indicate that July 5th is the soonest that I'll get the rest of my parts. From a 3 Day order that should have been shipped out June 12th. Wait, make that "the soonest I'll get the next attempt at giving me all my parts.

Excellent response time, folks. I can't quite decide if this saga has lost them a customer yet or not. The verdict's still out because I bet this is still To Be Continued...

In fairness: The staff answering the phones was very good, and did seem to be trying to make me happy, even when I was acting pissy or being a smartass. It's some of the best phone service I've ever had in my dealings with ordering stuff. This last time they refunded me the original $15 shipping fee, which is a decent step toward making up for the completely unreasonable delays. The quality of phone service is the main thing that's keeping me even considering using Games Workshop's mail order ever again.

On legality: If Games Workshop ever reads this and wants to raise issues of my using their company name in what could be construed as a negative manner, they can damn well ship my troops with all their body parts next time. It all happened, and as a general rule if you don't want people talking about your screw-ups don't screw up so badly.