Hello Everyone,

Charles has fulfilled 90% of the orders; there's only a handful left for us to do while we wait for a couple of things to finish. 

There are a few Pre-Orders I will be charging on Thursday and those will begin shipping in the next little bit after the other orders are sent. 

It has been a wild ride but it is almost done! 

Hello everybody-- we're finally here at the edge.

I have received shipping costs and applied them to your orders. You will note in your survey on Backerkit that this includes your Shipping Total, then your Taxes/VAT/Tarrifs and taxes on those as well. They will all display separately so you can see what is costing what, and then you can see the added total for your total pending shipping charge. Please bear in mind, I am not responsible for your country's VAT/Taxes/Tariffs. I am as unhappy with those extra costs as you are.

Our fulfillment team has worked really hard to consolidate shipping for EU countries and the UK, looked to combine chests with other items to lower the chest shipping, and reduced costs for multiple chests heading into the EU and UK especially. But as you will see, chests require whole additional shipping charges due to needing their own packaging. I warned people during the campaign that chests will certainly add a good amount to your shipping costs, and they have.

You now have until Friday to check your shipping costs and let me know if something is wrong. It being high is not necessarily something wrong, but if it seems anomalously high, let me know. These are dense little sets, so they are heavy, thus the higher shipping. Friday the 3rd of July, I will be charging these shipping costs.

If your card declines for any reason, you'll have the weekend to take a look at that and get it taken care of. Tuesday the 7th, I will be forwarding orders to the fulfillment company. This will only include people who got their shipping charges handled.

You'll find that we are on a similar, but just barely delayed timeline akin to the tarot projects. So long as your order's shipping charges okay (and you did your survey on time to get shipping charges at all), your orders will be packed in the coming weeks, US+Canadian orders will go in a container to get overseas, while International orders will ship direct from China. 

This will look like US+Canadian orders getting to people's hands around mid to late August, and international orders arriving as early as the end of July and into/through August as well.

Contact me and I can update your address in your surveys still. You should also be able to do that freely on your end, unless you're changing countries. Then you will need to contact me.

Me! My email is on all the projects, but here it is again: [email protected]

You're not alone. 37 people haven't! Log into Backerkit and get your survey finished for this project, or follow this link here to put in your email and get logged in that way.

Thanks for sticking in y'all. We're about to begin shipping-- and then things will wrap up beautifully.

7DA
your pub gob

Parts of this update are copy/pasted across different campaigns.

The overview currently looks like this;
Midnight Ocean ~ In production/shipping phase one
Mythical Garden ~ Shipping (temporarily on pause)
Curiosity Shop ~ In production
Pods and Pots ~ In production
Literary Critters ~ Survey coming soon

This is going to be a rough one folks, I'm sorry. If you're backing from the US or Europe please make sure you read it all over. This kind of hit us out of nowhere. And there's some production stuff too, so keep scrolling. Its a lot and I'm sorry.

There are new paperwork requirements going into place for items moving into the US. The wording is... Extremely unclear, and we're pausing shipping while we figure this out. If you haven't had a shipping notification, it hasn't gone out yet. All the orders that don't include tarot decks are packed and ready to go here, we're just confirming our obligations in case we get into trouble. There are no extra fees associated, just a shipping delay. We're intending to send the remaining orders out at the same time as the summer sale orders, but because they're packed already and because of tariff charges, we cannot combine shipping. 

This one's the kicker, and there's just nothing I can do about it.

As of July 1st, a new rule went into a place that introduced a flat handling fee of £3 per item type included in any package heading into the EU. This is standard across all the EU countries as far as we can tell. We are not sure if that includes free items at the moment, we're still trying to figure out the details. So every EU package that hasn't already been shipped now owes an extra £3 postage per item type.

On top of that, some EU countries are now requiring us to pay customs/import fees up front (so at point of sale). We no longer have the option of shipping 'recipient pays fees'. We aren't entirely sure which countries yet; we're still investigating. So from now on, and including all packages that haven't yet been sent from this campaign, shipping is going to have to include the appropriate customs fees for EU countries upfront.

Until these extra fees are paid, we can't send out your EU orders. We're working with Backerkit at the moment to see if there's an easy way to do this, or if we need to contact everyone individually and request payment that way. Unfortunately, customs fees have always been the responsibility of the customers; but we've always been able to mark that it'll be paid on receipt of the package rather than up front on our end. I know in the UK we aren't always charged when a package arrives. I'm sorry if that was the case but from now on, we just can't do that any more. 

For non US and EU backers, packages are still going out. If they haven't gone before then, we intend to get them out in a big shipment with the summer sale orders.

This is also extremely unfortunate and we're still trying to figure out how to resolve it. 

A while ago we had to change our chosen production manufacturer for the cards themselves for a number of reasons. We switched to someone we'd already gotten samples from and started work towards getting the major arcana printed for phase two of shipping. Their default sizes did not include the size we'd opted to go for, so first we got a whole test print done with one of their default sizes to make sure it met our quality control standards. Since those looked good, we went ahead and paid for the custom die cut mould to get the size we wanted, and paid for a whole test run of the major deck in the size we wanted. They came back a few weeks ago, and unfortunately they look like this;

Its hard to see, but the print is blurry. Its not the same standard as the smaller, default size test prints. We sent these pictures back to the manufacturer to ask what could cause this and it took a very long time for them to get back to us. Their best guess is its either the paper surface, or the matte finish; but both are the same options we chose at the smaller size too. Also I tested the file sizes, these are the same files I used to make the a6 notebook covers, they are definitely large enough and high resolution enough to suit this size. The manufacturer has agreed to send us more samples, the same designs printed on various paper and finish options to see if it helps. And also to retry the matte test print, because honestly I don't want to switch to any satin or gloss finish. I suspect, perhaps they used to proof files from the smaller sized card print and just sized them up; that would cause this blurry finish. I asked them to make sure they were working with the correct size files. But now we are waiting again, and this process takes weeks each time. 

I'm just sorry its taking so long. We had samples made before we even ran the project, I had no idea it would go on for such a long time. All I can do is promise I'm working on it in the background. We will get there... Eventually.

That's it for now. We'll work on resolving the EU charges as soon as possible and I hope we will have the rest of the prepared packages out asap, its just... Very unfortunate its worked out this way. I'm sorry for the delays, as always. 

Hi everyone,

I've gotten a ton of emails in the past week and I apologize if I haven't had a chance to reply personally yet! 

Our two person fulfillment team is working as fast as they can to get everyone's orders packaged accurately and shipped safely. As of Saturday, 460 orders have been shipped. If your tracking information has not yet updated, please don't worry, your order is still being packaged and will be sent soon!

Again, I apologize for the confusion with tracking numbers being sent out early. That's entirely my fault and my lack of knowledge with these systems. I appreciate your patience as I'm learning how best to coordinate all of these processes.

—Carrie

Hello folks,

If you were a backer on the tarot decks (Misery Tarot, Hot Housewives Tarot), you'll be seeing today that their shipping charges are now assigned to their orders. (Currently happening.) You'll also know we had a really weird, like, month+ delay in getting shipping charge info to us.

That is 100% why we are not on time on this project as well, as the fulfillment company handling that is handling this as well. I have been told, promised really, that I will get shipping charge info from them today for the Oracle Dice projects. The issues that were at hand are largely put away now, and they were extensive issues, let me tell you.

That means I will be processing the charge info they get me today when it arrives, figuring out fees, taxes, tariffs, etc. The ocean freight for getting US and Canadian orders to the US, the warehousing fees, the shipping from the port to the warehouse-- all of that has to be figured and molded into the shipping costs for the US+Canadian backers. (We thought shipping Canadian packages direct from China would be cheaper, but it's not.)

Ideally, I will be able to get this stuff figured out today if I receive the shipping charge info today as expected, but if it comes in at the end of day, I will have to handle all that tomorrow. Then I have to have a Backerkit employee import the spreadsheet of charges to your order-- I can't do that on my own. Luckily I have a good helper who is on top of that fairly quickly.

So ideally, we will have shipping charges on your pledges sometime Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I will update when they go live. I will then give you until next Friday to get that looked at, when we will charge your orders for shipping costs.

So the delays on everything are lasting a bit longer for the dice than the tarot. Our manufacturer apparently missed out on some red-tape stuff they should have done, and now our fulfillment team is trying to take care of it before they get in trouble for shipping the items.

The short of it is this: 1) Any printer who produces a book, newspaper, thing like that, is supposed to get Pre-Authorization from their province to print that kind of material. It's basically a certification that they are printing... uhh? Something that can spread information? I worked with a boardgame printer who doesn't typically need to do this, and they didn't seem to know it was the law. So technically our guidebooks and journals are illegally printed. However, they've done books for me in the past, so it's super unclear how important or enforced this actually is, because they didn't get pre-authorization for that stuff either.

Fulfillment is trying to figure out how to get it authorized now that it's already printed, or if we can just.... ship anyways?

2) If US customs so desires, they can open a package and look at a product with suspecting eyes, then ask the shipper to provide proof that the items imported are tested. Tested for what you ask-- well, there is a massive freaking list of imported items and what the materials may need tested for. Right now, if customs asks, the manufacturer can get the items tested and then provide results. However, starting July 8th, items that are so asked after need to provide testing results IMMEDIATELY. In fact, it seems the results need to be provided with the shipment more or less.

Our manufacturer didn't know about this change, and so they didn't test anything. This means our fulfilment team is handling that right now, and the test results for all dice items will be back on (or about) the 28th of June.

Once that's taken care of, we can start shipping. Well-- so long as the pre-authorization element is solved. Either by finding a way to get authorization after printing (which is not how it's supposed to work), or by simply shipping. I also read the articles on the rules/laws/regulations myself and think there seems to be an opening for overseas printing, as it's not clarified that overseas shipping must be pre-authorized, so the timeline for overseas printing/publication may be different.

Worst case scenario, uhhh-- our guidebooks and journals are seized and destroyed and we have to reprint those and then they have to get repackaged into the dice sets. But even in that worst case scenario, the books are the fastest and cheapest part of everything to get made again, it would likely delay things 3 weeks-- 1 week to remanufacture, then 2 to transport and repackage. So no one start doomposting here, even the worst case scenario just, frankly, doesn't do all that much to our timeline.

Will let you all know what happens with that shortly, but also there will be shipping charges.

Alright friends, talk very soon about shipping charges,

7DA
your pub gob