Project Update: This is Steve reporting . . .
This is also a big apology. As I assume everybody knows already, some Big Box got into the distribution chain before all the backers were even shipped. Not just W23. And we didn’t have an immediate answer for what was going on! Our rep at the fulfillment house went on vacation and . . . you see where this is going, right? It’s been a week since our last update, because we had no data. We knew we had a mess but we couldn’t even get a return call about its size or shape.
How did the early shipment even happen? It was a right hand/left hand thing. The fulfillment house didn’t come close to meeting its original projection for shipping to backers, or let us know how behind they were, but they shipped to distributors on the original schedule. And we put it on W23 when they shipped to us, which was purely our own failure. Arrrrgh!
At least further shipments to distributors have stopped, so we have quit making the problem worse.
As of yesterday afternoon, our fulfillment rep is back in the office, and he returned my call. Hallelujah. He says that 82% of the domestic backers have been shipped. This makes it sound better than it really is. They did the easy ones first. The remaining 18% unfulfilled are the more complex orders (so the more you backed us, the farther back in their queue you are - which is nuts - and one thing I’m going to expect, on further projects, is that that be fixed). I am expecting a call from higher up in their organization to tell me what they are doing to speed things up, and when we can REALLY expect the last domestic order to go out.
Even more aggravating, he told me that the pallets of overseas orders are still sitting on the warehouse dock because the (domestic) fulfillment house “cannot get a reply” from their overseas counterparts. I don’t know how hard they have tried, and I’m not sure why they can’t ship until they get that reply. I asked them today, in pretty direct terms, to try a lot harder, and WE have started calling, as well.
. . . You will have noticed that I’m not naming names. I won’t do so until or unless I feel that someone has been literally fraudulent, unspeakably lazy, or just plain dumb about fulfilling our order, which is YOUR order. If you’re going to be forgiving, thank you very much, and if you’re going to be mad, be mad at us, because we chose these companies.
So what are we going to do?
- We’re going to be checking fulfillment progress daily. I am sure this will be an aggravation to the contractors. Sorry about that, contractors. Y’all made us do it.
- We’re going to go back and look at why we chose these contractors, what the alternatives were, and what guarantees we’d need if we used them again. There are alternatives. (There are about a million companies competing for fulfillment contracts. It seems that perhaps a dozen of them have actual experience. I typed another sentence here and then deleted it; you’ll never know what I made myself not say out loud.)
- We will not resume shipments to distributors or Amazon until (at least) the North American orders have been shipped and those for the rest of the world are on the water.
- W23 shows as “sold out” because we came to a screeching halt with sales there, not because we have none to ship.
- As of today, I intend to ship Big Box to Gen Con. There is a future in which fulfillment continues to go so badly that we don’t feel we can even sell it there. I hope that future does not come.
- We’re going to TRY to learn the lesson “don’t put so many extras in a project.” It’s hard to be restrained when everybody is BEGGING for those extras! But all those extras led to extra time for fulfillment, which worsened the mess.
Some people have suggested that we do some sort of extra gift for the aggrieved backers. Been thinking about that one. I’m not going to try to judge who is justly aggrieved, or send out some little tchotchke and say “We good now, right?” If a meaningful idea presents itself, I’m all ears.
I expect better communication now from our contractors, every day. And if we don’t get it, we can come on here and say so. That will give you better communication too.
Again, I’m sorry. Angry and sorry. We are doing what we can to sort this out.
– Steve Jackson
Project Update: Munchkin Big Box Fulfillment Update Thread
- The U.S. fulfillment house has put their heads together and come up with a schedule to ship all U.S. orders by July 25. They report that the planned shipping schedule has been updated; they will ship to addresses that are furthest away from their location first, allowing all packages the best chance of arriving by the end of this month.
- The pallet discussion has been nudged to the top tier of that shipper.
- 32% of pledges are scheduled to begin shipping soon.
- These are being fulfilled from Warehouse 23, and we’re nearly wrapped up.
- Canadian fulfillment will begin once Australia & New Zealand have been shipped.
- We have shipped all orders from countries that are not reflected above.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or contact us on our help site.
Thank you,
- Darryll
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When we received the box the other day and after we went through everything we both agreed on one major observation. Major to us at least, and that was the quality of the actual box. Normally when I get items like this, whether board game, card game or ttrpg I find that the box quality tends to be good. For something that was sold as the Munchkin Big Box and was meant to store my cards, including cards I already had, this box (container) was a real let down. It's rather flimsy and actually the lower left corner was already slightly scrunched. (bad packers this time around) I went and checked my other boxes from SJG and they were much more sturdier, like for example Dungeon Fantasy Rpg (I've two complete sets of that material). Anyhow, that was a real let down, it's obvious that for storage for all my cards that his box will quickly fall apart with usage. This is unacceptable and makes me want to not back further boxes of this nature to be honest. It's just one of those things that you add to your list of potential reasons "not to" back another project. The contracted shippers did a really subpar job for this one, the box could move a bit and the outer shipping box was flimsy as well. I'm a super backer of games and I'll note that companies like Pinnacle (Savage Worlds etc ttrpgs), Goodman Games and Free League Publishing all do really well with packaging. Basically I use those three as the standard when looking at my boxes and how they come to me. I considered SJG in the same league but in recent years they've dropped off the list. Older projects had much better shipping, packaging etc. Just wanted to give that feedback to SJG.
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I think the Munchkin crew could really use a lesson in PR. I've not been annoyed with them yet (just a little bummed) but this latest "we broke our promise BUT this is why this time it isnt our fault either" is getting to be a bit much. Take responsibility. FULL responsibility. Over communicate. When you asked if you could give an advertised backer exclusive away on Patreon, we were there for you, and supported you 100%. Where is the support in return? You have us find out ourselves you broke another backer promise, instead of telling us, asking us, trusting us. Just communicate. Let us know you are going to have to list it for general sale and why. Communicate before the issue. No more excuses, please.
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For some unknown reasons, there are not clear information about European Boxes, so please SJG answer clearly to these two questions: 1) Where are they? 2) When they will start to be shipped to backers? I think we deserve these minimal info.
