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Dear WarStager,
YES, IT’S HAPPENING !!!!
The transportation of all the WarStages products toward the new European shipping hub has been organized as I’m typing this. The goods have already crossed the Channel and have just passed French customs!!
They will arrive at the distribution hub in Germany later this week. The warehouse then needs a week to program and manage the intake of goods.
This seems like a simple enough trip but it’s been a nightmare to get there (all the details below).
After that, the hub said: “... Fulfilment will usually commence within 3 weeks of arrival at the hub, but I think it should be done before this”. So, worst-case scenario is that shipping to all European backers would happen beginning the week of December 6, although it looks like things could go faster.
Since we moved all the goods from the UK to Europe ourselves, NO VAT will be charged to you when you receive your shipment, and the WarStages Kickstarter fulfillment should be finally complete by mid-December.
OK, so that is the big news.
Let’s look at the details and what else is going on.
We will be contacting you directly to confirm that the shipping address that we have on file for you is still current. Expect an email this week. If you're a EUROPEAN backer, we'll ask you to confirm your shipping address.
If you know that you have moved, don’t wait and contact us directly at RagingHeroesTeam@gmail.com to give us your new address.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT go in the Pledge Manager to change your address.
Doing this will NOT update anything for the shipping hub, and your parcel will go to your original address.
Make sure you check your various mailboxes and spam folders in the coming days to make sure you get this email.
Once again, since the previous update I have sat several times at my computer, wrote an update and the day after I would wake up to new information contradicting what I had just written.
I think I wrote 4 full updates this way.
So first of all I’m sorry that once again you had to wait so long to get any news, but once again everything has been so crazily odd, there was no good way to share anything relevant with you.
When you get to a point that your main contractor is sending you virtual hugs because he thinks you’ve been through too much bad luck with your project (see image virtual hugs below) and that UK’s gas station are out of gas because there is not enough truck drivers anymore in the country because of Brexit, you know that you’ve fallen into the rabbit hole and nothing makes sense anymore...
The world is in a very strange state and everything related to European shipping still takes forever and makes no sense at all, and we’ve been left without any tangible news for weeks on end.
But a few weeks ago we finally started getting some good news.
The truth is that we didn't dare share anything with you in case this would fall apart once more a few days after. That is why we waited until we were sure that the products were finally in Europe and on their way to Germany.
Just like it was done for Australian and New Zealand shipping a few months ago, as soon as the products are in the German hub, shipping will start for all the remaining backers who have not yet received their shipment.
In the last 3 weeks, we were organising this transport and getting all the paperwork in order.
It feels a bit stupid because after so much drama and wait, now that we have a solution, everything turns back to simple “business as usual” and there is not much more to say.
Things will get moving like they should have many months before…
Of course, as soon as the container is in Germany and the shipment of your rewards is about to start, we will let you know.
Things have been sorted out and all shipments delivered in early summer in this area of the world (errr… early winter over there...)! The Australian hub handled all the shipments and from the feedback we’ve received, everything went smoothly.
All the backers in this area have now received their kits and that’s great news. If you live in this area of the world and have not yet received your parcel, please make sure to contact us at RagingHeroesTeam@gmail.com and we’ll sort things out for you.
So, what happened during this summer? The situation between the UK and Europe has been surreal…
In summary, after many months of back and forth, our UK hub finally told us they were unable to organise transport by truck and crossing of the border from UK to Germany without a German VAT number.
The problem was still with us not being able to provide a German EORI/VAT number (Germany is where our distributor’s European warehouse is located). A number that the law tells us we don’t need but that our hub’s transporter wouldn’t work without.... To be clear, we are a French company operating in the European Union, and therefore not eligible for a German EORI number, only a French one, which we do have, but that the transporter said would be blocked when crossing over the Channel.
The truth is that the situation at the UK border was and still is quite complicated and I’m not sure Europe really wants to help the UK with that, so the fault was not entirely on the UK hub. Still, it was a very cringy situation.
We even contacted the Europa website to clarify this (the European Union website designed to assist in cross-border intra-european exchanges). They verbally committed to reply within 3 working days (it says so on their website, too). We never heard back.
Anyway, during July we looked on our end for other transporters and we did a test with one of our regular UK suppliers: we work with a UK company that manufactures some of our packaging for our miniatures.
We ordered our yearly restock. Instead of taking 3-4 days to arrive at our office, it took a full month, with VAT and custom mess and paperwork in the middle.
Still, the delivery was made to our offices!
So we tried to set up something with that particular transporter to see if they could take care of the transportation from the UK to Germany.
We wanted to work with a company with whom we would have had at least one positive experience with to make sure they could deliver. But currently, making this kind of test takes at least one month.
Anyway, after some early positive contacts, and emailing for several weeks, they finally told us they could ship to France but would not then pass it on to Germany…
Back to square one again.
So we looked into the standard options like DHL, UPS, etc. But this was not working either for various reasons.
That's where the virtual hug came in:
In the end we went back to the drawing board again with our distribution Hub people in the UK and they succeeded in finding a transporter that would make it work! Hooray!!
Interestingly enough, some options were not initially offered to us because they were thought to be too expensive! And while they were indeed expensive, in the end, it was very much worth it to see things finally moving correctly, with the right tax paperwork etc.
So, in the end, nothing very complicated really, just a series of grains of sand (wrong info, non cooperative administrations, surreal paperwork, scared transporters, etc.) that completely blocked the machine. It took so, so long, it’s just insane. Nothing else in our business has ever been this oddly complicated.
Anyway, this is now another problem solved and you will soon get your well deserved WarStages Kits.
During the past few months, we've received several requests for additional assembly instructions of the kits.
We understand that this is a complex model and that you might need more info that we originally expected to be able to complete your kit assembly.
As promised, we are working on that. We have a PDF file that is nearly done and that shows you how to put together the various parts (stages) of your Cathedral.
Let me remind you to bookmark and check out the assembly videos we prepared for you, with the full Playlist on Youtube.
Also, we know some of you also were missing a few parts and some clips.
We will reorder these elements as soon as the Europe delivery is made and that we have a global assessment of what everybody is missing so that we can make a bulk order to our Chinese manufacturer.
It looks like the missing elements were mistakes from the factory so it won’t be a problem to get replacements.
So that is all for today.
We will post a new update as soon as the shipping from Germany is in progress.
In the meantime, don’t hesitate to contact us at RagingHeroesTeam@gmail.com if you have any problems. We will be happy to assist you in any possible way.
Have a great day.
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Mario
July 19, 2023
Happy days and jubilation!!
It is finally happening!!
Feels like ages ago that I initially ordered the Kickstarter … but with a the hassle you had, it was definitely more stressful for you then for me :) So thanks for keeping this rolling and have it delivered to our doorsteps. Well it’s not here yet but I have good hopes ;)